Winter passed and spring followed, bearing in its arms fierce suns and weary scorching winds. The desert camp remained until we learned to hate the country that once had amused us. By day, and more rarely by night, we manœuvred in the desert, making ready for the task which was so tardy in arriving. The life was hard; but I did not find it barren of pleasure. Many a long gallop had I over the shining sands, when the sun was scarce awake. I have spent mornings perched on some observing station while the batteries came in and out of action, and the heliographs flashed and the flags wagged. The Colonel proved a good master, though impatient and abrupt of speech. He spurred from point to point with half a dozen of the Staff on his heels, or sat in some trench on a hilltop, looking over the country with keen eyes. Also I learned the ways of the adjutant, a quiet man with little to say. On horseback he, too, moved swiftly about his business, covering many miles in a morning’s journeying.
Sands—Sands the marvellous—became a telephone expert, and was to be found anywhere haranguing the cable-cart men, or kneeling on the ground, ear glued to the receiver of a field telephone. His conversations were worth the listening. One he held at midnight in the desert. We had word of an attack by infantry, and Sands hurried to the telephone to call up Eaves at the next station. “Eaves! Hullo there! Eaves, I say! Oh, damn and blast the thing, it won’t work! Message for you! Eaves, are you there? Can’t you hear me, man? Are you deaf? Message for you. Infantry advancing——! I say, are you there, Eaves? Eaves, I say! Oh, blast! Oh, damn! Oh, how beastly! Eaves, answer me at once! Mr. Sands speaking. Eaves, do you want to go under arrest?” Eaves (walking up and down somewhere in the Libyan desert to keep warm): “This game’s no good to a man keepin’ a bloke ’anging round ’ere all night doin’ nothin’. If a relief don’t come soon, I’m goin’ ’ome.”
Truly Sands was a man in a thousand: none like him for cool effrontery; none like him for ignoring rebuffs; none like him for going back on statements without turning a hair. He pulled me up in stables one fine evening.
“Lake, your horse is very poor. Is it getting the extra feed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what’s it doing now? Why isn’t it eating?”
“I was waiting for the order, ‘Feed,’ sir.”
“Oh, man, you’re a fool. I told you to feed that horse all day long. Feed it at once!”