“What hae ye got there, sergeant?” asked Saunders, refolding the letter he had been quietly perusing without paying any regard to the Irishman’s good news.
“A parcel of booklets from the Institute,” answered Hardy, turning over the leaves of one of the pamphlets. “Ain’t it good of ’em?”
“Right you are, Hardy! The ladies there never forget us,” said Moses Pyne. “Hand ’em round, sergeant. It does a fellow’s heart good to get a bit o’ readin’ in an out-o’-the-way place like this.”
“Comes like light in a dark place, don’t it, comrade?” said Stevenson, the marine, who paid them a visit at that moment, bringing a letter which had been carried to the wrong quarter by mistake. It was for Miles Milton. “I know’d you expected it, an’ would be awfully disappointed at finding nothing, so I brought it over at once.”
“You come like a gleam of sunshine in a dark place. Thanks, Stevenson, many thanks,” said Miles, springing up and opening the letter eagerly.
The first words sent a chill to his heart, for it told of his father having been very ill, but words of comfort immediately followed—he was getting slowly but surely better, and his own letter had done the old man more good in a few days than all the doctor’s physic had done in many weeks. Forgiveness was freely granted, and unalterable love breathed in every line. With a relieved and thankful heart he went on reading, when he was arrested by a sudden summons of his company to fall in. Grasping his rifle he ran out with the rest.
“What is it?” he whispered to a sergeant, as he took his place in the ranks. “Osman again?”
“No, he’s too sly a fox to show face in the day-time. It’s a steamer coming with troops aboard. We’re goin’ down to receive them, I believe.”
Soon after, the overworked garrison had the immense satisfaction and excitement of bidding welcome to reinforcements with a stirring British cheer.
These formed only the advance-guard. For some time after that troops were landed at Suakim every day. Among them the 15th Sikhs, a splendid body of men, with grand physique and fierce aspect, like men who “meant business.” Then came the Coldstream Guards, the Scots and the Grenadier Guards, closely followed by the Engineers and Hospital and Transport Corps, the Shropshire Regiment, and many others. The desire of these fresh troops to meet the enemy was naturally strong, and the earnest hope of every one was that they would soon sally forth and “have a go,” as Corporal Flynn expressed it, “at Osman Digna on his own ground.”