Dick followed Torpenhow wherever the latter's fancy chose to lead him, and between the two they managed to accomplish some work that almost satisfied themselves. It was not an easy life in any way, and under its influence the two were drawn very closely together, for they ate from the same dish, they shared the same water-bottle, and, most binding tie of all, their mails went off together. It was Dick who managed to make gloriously drunk a telegraph-clerk in a palm hut far beyond the Second Cataract, and, while the man lay in bliss on the floor, possessed himself of some laboriously acquired exclusive information, forwarded by a confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who said that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an excellent descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was Torpenhow who—but the tale of their adventures, together and apart, from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill many books. They had been penned into a square side by side, in deadly fear of being shot by over-excited soldiers; they had fought with baggage-camels in the chill dawn; they had jogged along in silence under blinding sun on indefatigable little Egyptian horses; and they had floundered on the shallows of the Nile when the whale-boat in which they had found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock and rip out half her bottom-planks.
Now they were sitting on the sand-bank, and the whale-boats were bringing up the remainder of the column.
“Yes,” said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into his over-long-neglected gear, “it has been a beautiful business.”
“The patch or the campaign?” said Dick. “Don't think much of either, myself.”
“You want the Euryalus brought up above the Third Cataract, don't you? and eighty-one-ton guns at Jakdul? Now, I'm quite satisfied with my breeches.” He turned round gravely to exhibit himself, after the manner of a clown.
“It's very pretty. Specially the lettering on the sack. G.B.T. Government Bullock Train. That's a sack from India.”
“It's my initials,—Gilbert Belling Torpenhow. I stole the cloth on purpose. What the mischief are the camel-corps doing yonder?” Torpenhow shaded his eyes and looked across the scrub-strewn gravel.
A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to their arms and accoutrements.
“'Pisan soldiery surprised while bathing,'” remarked Dick, calmly.
“D'you remember the picture? It's by Michael Angelo; all beginners copy it. That scrub's alive with enemy.”