A CAMP IN THE DESERT
Photos, in colour by Capt. Frank Hurley
One Too Many
It was a hell of a night. Thunder enough to wake the “Jacko” dead, and raining fit to swamp old Solomon’s Pool. I was a good ten miles from camp, and it was with a dinkum bullocky’s curse that I swung into the saddle again and turned the pony’s nose for home. For about an hour we battled along, and then the supply dump at S—— hove in sight. Glad of a brief respite, I guided him toward it, and for a few minutes we rested in the shelter of a huge stack of tibbin.
The rain had eased off, and for a brief second a sickly-looking moon gazed down on things earthly. That was what started the trouble.
An Algerian guard was on duty, and, to the initiated, there is no need to say more than that. You might trick a Tommy or induce a Billjim to look the other way, but the man who beats an Algerian is going some.
But, as I was saying, it was the moon that caused the trouble. When she took that peep from behind her cloud bank she gazed fair on to four shadowy figures, each surmounted by a bag of barley and a felt hat.
Chuckling a little, she dodged behind the clouds again; but it was too late. The mischief had been done, and in a trice the “shadowy figures” found themselves surrounded by about a dozen sons of the Sahara and a like number of business-like bayonets.
The result was a confused babble of voices for ten minutes, and then a procession to the Supply Officer’s tent. From where I was standing I could see and hear everything that passed, and everybody seemed to be trying to talk at once. As the “shadowy figures” could not speak a word of Arabic, and the Algerians vice versa, the result was laughable. But with the advent of the Supply Officer things took a different turn. He had been wakened from a sound sleep, and was arrayed in the pink pyjamas the girl had sent him, and a desire to be “firm in the matter.” He had no knowledge of Arabic, and was placing the “shadowy figures” under guard pending the arrival of an interpreter in the morning.
That would have been serious for the said “shadowy figures,” so I decided to see whether I could help them at all. I had borrowed a cobber’s flash civvy raincoat in the morning, and that and the Jacko pony I rode must have made the S.O. think I was an officer. Anyhow, he greeted me very decently; and when I told him I could yabber Arabic pretty fluently, he was more than delighted at my arrival.