For Fortune and Glory Part 32

"And I hope it will be before I have worn-out my third pair of boots,"

said Macintosh. "Eh, but this is a grievous waste of shoe-leather."

"I had sooner wear that out than my own skin," said Kavanagh.

"I'm not that sure," replied Macintosh. "The skin grows again, and the shoe-leather doesn't."

The sergeant laughed.

"Well, I think I may promise you that you will have no more of this work after to-morrow," he said. "You will get your camels at Wady Haifa."

Barton had been specially instructed in camel drill, and selected for his proficiency to a.s.sist in training the corps to which Kavanagh belonged.

His story was a very simple one; he was not one of the plucked, who, failing to get their commissions, join the ranks rather than not serve at all, for it was most likely that he would have succeeded in any compet.i.tive examination, being a clever and industrious youth, who was doing well at Oxford when his father lost all his money, having shares in a bank which suddenly failed, and left him responsible to the extent of every penny he possessed. The undergraduate had been accustomed to a handsome allowance, and owed bills which he was now unable to pay. This he could not help, but being an honourable man he would not incur a farthing more, but took his name off the boards at once, divided his caution money, and what was obtained by the sale of his horse, the furniture of his rooms, and whatever else he possessed, amongst his creditors, and enlisted. Having once chosen his profession, he went at it with prodigious zeal, and lost no opportunity of attending any school of instruction which was open to him. When he had once acquired his drill, he was soon made corporal, then sergeant. He distinguished himself at Hythe; he learnt signalling both with flags and flashes. And when useful men were wanted for the formation of Camel Corps, and the battalions in Egypt searched for them, he was one of the first pitched upon to learn and then to instruct. For, when people talk of the super- human intelligence of German officers and soldiers, and speak of ours as a set of dunder-headed idiots, you need not quite take all they say for absolute fact. I think if you took the adjutants, sergeant-majors, and musketry instructors of the British army, you would find it hard to pick out an equal number of men in any country, even Germany itself, to beat them for intelligence, common sense, and prompt.i.tude.

"There will be a new drill to learn!" growled Tarrant.

"Oh, that won't be much," said Kavanagh. "Lots of old words of command would do over again, I should say. For instance, 'Shouldare--oop!' only it would be the camel's shoulder which has to be mounted."

"Now, that's mighty clever," said Grady. "Will you tell me something, Kavanagh, you that's a real scholar now--can a man be two things at the same time?"

"Of course he can; he can be an Irishman and a barge horse, you see."

"Ah, then a Mounted Infantry man can be a trooper and a foot soldier all at once. And a camel rider, would you call him a horse soldier, now?"

"No, Pat, I could not afford it. I'm an Irishman as well as yourself, and dull people would think it was a blunder."

"That's a true word," said Grady. "And have you not noticed now, when folks laugh at an Irishman, he is mostly quite right if they had the understanding? Now you have observed, and heard, what a bad country Egypt is for the eyes. Sure they give us green goggles, or we should get the--what do you call it, Mr Corporal, sir, if you plaze?"

"The hop-fallimy," replied Corporal Adams, proud of being appealed to.

"Thank you; the hop-family, what with the sun, and the sand, and the flies. And if you get the hop-family you are likely to go blind, and that is a bad thing. Is it not curious that the great river of a country that is so bad for the eyes should have cataracts itself in it?

Now that would sound foolish to many people, but you, who are an Irishman, see the bearings of it, don't you now?"

"But," observed Macintosh, "a cataract in the eye is a skin, or something growing over it, and a cataract in the river is a kind of waterfall. They are not the same sort of thing at all."

"And is that so? To be sure, now, what a stupid mistake then I made.

And did you ever undergo the operation, now, Macintosh?"

"Well, beyond vaccination and the lugging out of a broken tooth, I don't call to mind that I have been in the surgeon's hands; and if ye want to know the truth, I don't care if I never am. Eh, but that tooth now, it took a tug!"

"I thought you had never had it done," said Grady. "It's a pity, sure.

And what do you say makes a cataract in the Nile?"

"Surely you have seen enough of them for yersel'. It's a rapid where the water comes down a steep part with great vehemence. But what operation are ye talking of? I expect ye mean some sauce or other."

"Sure, no; it's only that which they say a Scotchman must have done before a joke can be got into his head. But I don't belave it at all; folks are such liars!" said Grady.

"I would have ye to know," said Macintosh, when the others had stopped laughing, "that a Scotchman is not deficient in wut, but he can't see it in mere nonsense."

All this talk was not spoken right off the reel, as it reads, but at intervals, during pauses in the harder part of the work, and rests. And it was lucky they could keep their spirits up; there is health and vigour in that:

"The merry heart goes all the day; The heavy tires in a mile--a!"

Shakespeare is always right.

But the sergeant was better than his word, and that was their last afternoon of rowing or towing, for they reached the place where the camels were collected that evening before sun-down. On the very next day the new drill commenced, for there was not an hour to be lost.

The last days of 1884 had arrived, and Khartoum still held out. The chances of reaching that place and rescuing Gordon were always present to every mind; that was the one goal to which all efforts were tending.

But there was no good in for ever talking about it; on the contrary, it was more healthy to divert the thoughts, if possible, in other directions. A fall from a horse is unpleasant, and risky to the bones, but a tumble off a camel is worse, because it is more dangerous to fall ten feet than five. The first step was a difficulty--to mount the creature at all, that is. It looks easy enough, for it lies down for you. Apparently all you have to do is to throw one leg over and settle yourself in the saddle. But the camel has a habit of springing up like a Jack-in-the-box just as your ankle is on a level with his back, and away you go flying. Experienced travellers, who have camel drivers and attendants, make one of them stand on the creature's fore legs to keep them down while they settle themselves; but troopers had no such luxuries provided for them, and had to look after their animals themselves, and it took several trials and severe rolls on the sand before some of them managed to mount at all. There the camel lay, quiet and tame and lazy, to all appearance as a cat dozing before the fire.

But the moment the foot was over his back he resembled the same cat when she sees a mouse, and away you went. Taught by experience, you spring into the saddle with a vault. Up goes the camel on the first two joints of his forelegs with a jerk which sends the small of your back against the hinder pommel so violently that you think the spine broken. Before you have time to decide this important question in your mind, the hind legs go up with an equally spasmodic movement, and you hit the front pommel hard with your stomach.

Surely now you are settled; not a bit of it. The beast jumps from his knees to his feet with a third spring, and your back gets another severe blow from the hind pommel. After these three pommellings you are mounted. But when you want to get off, and your camel lies down for you, you get it all over again; only your stomach gets the hits one and three, and your back the middle one. Opinions differ as to which is the most pleasant, but after several repet.i.tions of it you feel as if you had been down in the middle of a scrimmage at football, and both sides had taken you for the object to be kicked at. The ordinary traveller, when once on his camel, would stop there some hours; and again, when he got off, would remain off till it was time to renew his journey, and so he would not get so much of it. But a soldier learning camel drill must go on till he is perfect.

After mounting, dismounting, and re-mounting a certain number of times, the troopers learned to antic.i.p.ate the camel jerks, and avoid the high pommels which rose in front and rear of the saddles, or rather to use them as aids instead of enc.u.mbrances. But it took a good deal of practice, and some were longer about falling into it than others. But they were not always at drill, though they had so much of it.

Some went in for fis.h.i.+ng, and hooks and lines had been provided by the authorities for that purpose. But the sport was very poor, little being caught, and after trying it once or twice Kavanagh preferred to sit under the tree or in an arbour and smoke his pipe either alone or with a companion--Sergeant Barton for choice, but he was not always available.

When that was the case the honest Grady would sometimes join him, and though he would rather have been left to his own thoughts, it was not in his nature to show a want of cordiality towards a good fellow who made advances to him. From the day of his enlistment Reginald Kavanagh had frankly accepted the situation, and had been careful above all things to avoid giving himself any airs of superiority.

"This is a mighty pretty spot you have fixed on, any way," said Grady, stretching himself under the grateful shade of a palm-tree, "and reminds me of Oireland entirely!"

"It is rather like Merrion Square," said Kavanagh, gravely; "or that perhaps combined with the Phoenix Park, with a touch of the Lakes of Killarney."

"Sure, now, you are making fun of a poor boy! Look at that bird now!

Isn't he an illigant bird that? There's a many of them about, and they are the best looking I have seen at all in Egypt."

"Do they remind you of Ireland, too?" asked Kavanagh.

"Well, now, you are too hard on me."

"Not a bit of it, it is only natural that they should, for they are called Paddy birds."

"And is that a fact now?"

"Certainly it is. Sergeant Barton told me, and he has been some time in Egypt, and knows most of the birds and animals," replied Kavanagh.

"Well, now, it is only natural that the loveliest bird in the country should be called Paddy. Are not the finest men and the prettiest girls at all Irishmen? They call us every bad name there is, but they can't do without us. Why, the general is an Irishman, and the Goughs and Napiers are Irishmen, and the Duke of Wellington was an Irishman."

"And Grady and Kavanagh, the best men that ever rode on camels--or who will be when they can sit them--are Irishmen," cried Kavanagh, laughing, and Grady chuckled too.

"But, now, there's a thing I want to ask you, since you are larned about animals. You may not have thought it, for I am no scholar, but when I was a gossoon I went to school," said Grady presently, "and they had pictures of bastes hung about the walls, and the queerest baste of all to my fancy, barring the elephant, was the camel. I remember purty well what they told me from the mouth, though I was bad at the reading and the sums and that; and the master he said that a camel with one hump was meant for carrying things, water and potatoes and other necessities, and that was why he had only one, to make more room, and have something to tie them on by. And he said there was another camel with two humps, and he was created for riding, and was called a dromedary, and when ye rode him, ye sat at your ease between the two humps, which made a soft saddle, just like an arm-chair ye straddled on, only without arms. And ye could go fast and easy for a week, with provisions all round ye, and the dromedary he only wanted to eat and drink once a week. Now, have the dromedaries died out, do ye think? Or are they more expensive, and is the War Office that mane it won't afford them, but trates Christians like baggage?"

"They were out of it altogether at your school, Grady," said Kavanagh.

"A dromedary is only a better bred camel; it is like a hack or hunter, and a cart-horse, you know; the dromedary answering to the former. But both are camels, just the same as both the others are horses, and one hump unluckily is all either of them possess."

"But I saw the pictures of them," said Grady, with a puzzled look.

"I wish that the pictures had been painted from real animals, and not from the artist's fancy," repeated Kavanagh. "It was a general idea, I know--I had it myself--that there were two-humped camels, mighty pleasant to ride. But I believe it is all a mistake."

"The one-humped beggar is not easy to ride, any how!" said Grady.