"Suakim is built of madrepore," he replied to the above question; "very curious. Houses and mosques all of the same materials as these reefs we are now coming to."

"Madrepore--why, that is a sort of coral--isn't it?"

"Yes, it is coral."

"That's queer though. My shirt-studs are made of coral; fancy a town built of shirt-studs!"

"Shirt-studs are quite a secondary use of the article; the princ.i.p.al being to help babies cut their teeth. Have you got your coral still, Green?"

Green was a very young subaltern, who had not been to a public school, and was somewhat easily imposed upon.

"No," he said; "at least not here. It is somewhere at home, I believe."

"That is right; you will want it when you come to cut your wisdom teeth.

You know, I suppose, that you cannot get your company until you have done that?"

"I knew I had to pa.s.s an examination," said Green, not convinced that this information was quite _bona fide_.

"Of course, but this is in addition to that. When a vacancy occurs, you send in your certificate of having pa.s.sed in tactics, and then you are ordered to go to the Veterinary College, and there they look in your mouth."

"But I am not a _horse_!" exclaimed Green.

"No, but the rule applies to other animals," said his tormentor, gravely.

"I know you are chaffing me," said Green, and indeed the roars of laughter were alone sufficient to show him that.

"But all the same, it is curious that a town should be built of child's corals."

"That is why it has been selected as a good station for infantry," said a young fellow amidst a chorus of groans.

"I tell you what it is, Tom," said one of the captains; "I will not have you in my company if you do that again. The man who would make a bad pun and a hackneyed pun in such beautiful scenery as this, would--I don't know what enormity he would _not_ commit. Come late on parade, very likely."

"Oh, no!" said Tom Strachan, for the lieutenant was no other then our old friend, "I hope I know better than to infringe on the privileges of my superior officers."

A general grin showed that Strachan had scored there; for Fitzgerald, his captain, was noted for slipping into his place just in time to avoid reprimand, and no sooner. But he could not make any reply without fitting the cap; so he grinned too.

"Is Suakim an island?" he asked.

"Not now," replied MacBean. "When I was last here it was, but since that Gordon has had a causeway made to the mainland. There, you can see it now," he added, as the vessel steamed through a gap in the outer coral reef.

"I wonder whether these pa.s.sages in the reef were made by cutting the coral out to build the town," said another.

"No," replied the doctor. "Their origin is rather curious. Sometimes, in the wet season, torrents rush down from the mountains to the sea, and the fresh water kills the polypus which makes the coral, and so stops the formation of it just there, and makes an opening. This theory is confirmed by the fact that all such pa.s.sages through the reefs are immediately opposite valleys."

"The town looks like a large fortification; I suppose the dwelling- houses are behind the walls."

"No, those are the houses; and what look from here like loopholes are the windows. The place is worth looking over, though you won't have much time for that, I expect, nor yet for boating amongst the curious coral caves, or looking at the queer creatures which serve for fish and haunt them, until you have chawed up the Hadendowas and got Osman Digna in a cage."

"Not then, I hope," said one of the seniors of the group. "I hope they will send us across to Berber, when Osman's forces are swept from the path."

"I doubt if they will," replied the doctor, shaking his head. "It will be frightfully hot in a couple of months."

"It is the only way to save Gordon."

"I fear you are right, but I hope not. But here is a boat coming off to us."

It was a man-of-war's boat dashing along with the smart, lively stroke which can never be mistaken. It was alongside presently, and almost the moment it touched, the naval officer they had seen in the stern sheets stood on the quarter-deck; a harlequin could not have done it more quickly.

"It is a mistake your coming in here, sir," he said to the commanding officer; "you are to go to Trinkitat."

So the chance of closely investigating a coral town, and seeing how closely or otherwise it resembled a similar sort of colony in an extravaganza, was lost for the present for the First Battalion of the Blankshire, who growled. And yet, oh fortunate ones! If they but knew it, they gained two more comfortable meals, and one comfortable night's lodging, by having to go on.

For they did not anchor in Trinkitat harbour till it was too late to land that night. The delay caused a last rise to be taken out of poor Green, or rather a final allusion to a long-standing one. When the battalion got its route for the Soudan, the lad was as keen to see active service as any one of them, and it was a severe shock to him when one of the most mischievous of his brother officers pretended to discover that one of his legs was crooked, which would incapacitate him, he feared, from marching across the desert.

"You would knock up in an hour's march, and have to be carried, you know," said the tormentor; "it would never do."

"I am sure my legs seem to me all right," urged poor Green.

"Well, of course, I may be quite in error," candidly admitted the other.

"We will ask a doctor."

So Doctor MacBean was called in, and he made an examination of the accused limb.

"Dear, dear!" he said, "however were you pa.s.sed for the army? The _scarsal bone_ of the _fons ilium_ is all out of drawing."

"But you won't tell, doctor?" pleaded poor Green; "it does not inconvenience me in the least, I a.s.sure you."

"Not now, perhaps," said the doctor, nodding his head; "but after a long march in sand, it might be serious. I am very sorry, but I must do my duty."

But, being much entreated, the doctor was persuaded to try what an invention of his own, which he spoke diffidently of, would do. So Green's leg was done up in splints for twenty-four hours, and then plaistered up. And after a bit the doctor saw so much improvement that he agreed to say nothing about it, and so Green sailed with the rest.

"How is your _fons ilium_, Green?" he was asked that evening in the saloon.

"Hush!" he whispered, anxiously; "the colonel will hear you! I am all right. I'll walk you ten miles through the deepest sand we meet with for a sovereign."

"Thank you; no amount of sovereigns would tempt me to accept the responsibility of putting your scarsal bone to so severe a test. But I am glad it is so much stronger; very glad. I would not have the regiment miss the aid of your stalwart arm on any consideration. Never shall I forget the way you delivered that Number 3 cut which caught Mercer such a hot one the other day, when you were playing singlestick on the deck. I say, by-the-by, have you had your sword sharpened?"

"Yes!" replied Green, with enthusiasm. "It has a good butcher's-knife edge upon it; so the corporal said, who ground it for me. It is quite as sharp as my pocket-knife."

"I am not quite so soft as they take me for," he added, confidentially, to Strachan presently.

"Of course you are not, my dear fellow," said Tom. "I doubt if it would be possible."

"Now that MacBean, the doctor, you know: did you hear what he said about the fresh water coming down from the hills in the rainy season, and making gaps in the coral because fresh water killed the insects that make the coral?"

"Yes, I heard him," said Strachan, wondering what fault Green could find with what seemed to him a very lucid explanation.

"As if I was going to swallow that!" said the other. "The rainy season, indeed! Why, every one knows that rain never falls in Egypt."