“I heard that a spy has just come in with the information that he has determined not to wait for our attack, if we go out, but to attack us in our zereba,” said Miles. “He is evidently resolved not to commit the same mistake he made last year of letting us attack him.”
“He has pluck for anything,” remarked Moses.
Osman proved, that same evening, that he had at least pluck enough to send a pithy defiance to his foes, for an insulting letter was received by General Graham, in which Osman, recounting the victories he had gained over Hicks and Baker Pasha, boasted of his having destroyed their armies, and dared the general to come out and fight him. To this the British General replied, reminding Osman of our victories of El-Teb and Tamai, and advising him to surrender unless he wanted a worse beating than he had got before!
Mutual defiance having been thus comfortably hurled, the troops were at once detailed for service in the field, and the very next day set forth. As our hero did not, however, accompany that expedition, and as it returned to Suakim without doing anything remarkable—except some energetic and even heroic fighting, which is by no means remarkable in British troops,—we will pass on to the expedition which was sent out immediately after it, and in which Miles Milton not only took an active part, but distinguished himself. With several of his comrades he also entered on a new and somewhat unusual phase of a soldier’s career.
Chapter Seventeen.
The Expedition—Enemy reported—Miles in a Dilemma.
Every one has heard of the expedition, sent out under Sir John McNeill, in which that gallant general and his brave troops fought with indomitable heroism, not only against courageous foes, but against errors which, as a civilian, we will not presume to criticise, and against local difficulties which were said to be absolutely insurmountable.
Blame was due somewhere in connection with that expedition. Wherever it lay, we have a strong conviction—founded on the opinion of one who was present—that it did not rest with the commander of the force. It is not, however, our part to comment, but to describe those events which bore upon the fortunes of our hero and his immediate friends and comrades.