It was long dark when we came into the town proper, and neared the railway station. This way and that way we flowed through the twisted lighted streets, bringing the girls to the windows again, and the shopkeepers to their doors. The better quarters we did not see; for we followed back streets haunted by strange cries and stranger smells. Half the shops were eating-houses, where natives smoked together, drinking coffee, playing dominoes and backgammon. They would look from their square of light, and peer at us threading the outside dark. I do not think the blessings of Allah followed us every time.
We swept out of these places later on, into European parts. There came in sight a business quarter, hedged by brick walls with narrow lanes abutting. Here we joined other bodies of troops moving for like destination. Above the jangle and clatter sounded the whistles of engines and the bumping of trains. All at once we passed under a gateway, and came beneath the shadow of the station.
We—or the head of the column, that is—clattered into the courtyard and offsaddled. In no time the place was crowded with men and horses and vehicles. The square was in deep gloom, so that chaos took charge. I made out a long water-trough against a wall; I felt cobbles under my feet; there were tall buildings closing us in; and in a wall a lit-up window which might have been a ticket office, for I saw a man and a woman looking in there with luggage about them, and an hotel porter lolling by. There seemed two entrances to the square, one dim, leading from the streets, and one lit by an overhead lamp, where a ramp ran up from the yard on to the station platform. I received a hazy idea of all this ere the whirlpool caught me.
Men hurried this way and that; men shouted to one another, and cried out orders and swore; horses stamped and bumped and sidestepped. In truth it was no spot for a dreamer. Now, and again now, went up the cries, “Gangway there, gangway!” or “Clear the way!” and rattling and jangling a fearful warning to careless toes, a gun or limber manhandled rolled by towards the platform and the trucks. The Staff woke up to find itself pushed along the edges of the courtyard, some men holding three or four horses, and going through a pretence of hand-rubbing. Others discovered themselves unstrapping nosebags to push over tossing heads, or packing saddles in grain bags brought for that purpose.
The night became very close—and the steam from the horses, the odours of manure, and the personal discomfort occasioned by pushing about in the jumble of animals under weight of full marching order did not case matters. Every few seconds some cross-grained four-legged brute would swing round or crush up; and it was sauve qui peut with a vengeance. All over the place showed Sands like the demon in a pantomime, ordering, expostulating, and reviling; and doing his best to survive sword, revolver, haversack, and the other impedimenta which trapped his movements.
“What are you doing standing there, Oxbridge? You’re as useless as you are long! Lake, you’re the slowest man in Egypt! Hurry, man, hurry! I told you not to pack those saddles that way, Eaves! You are the stupidest man I know. Oh, how damnable! How perfectly damnable!” And then he would disappear in a riot of horses, and someone would mutter, “I hope he’s done in this time!”
The slender patience of the Staff failed under trial. Out of the darkness rose a voice.
“A bloke ought ter get six months for coming on a fool’s game like this! Do they think a man’s a dirty nigger all his life? Yer don’t catch me ’ere again. Blast the Empire, I say.”
“Fer Gawd’s sake, shut yer row!”