"And what will we want with reinforcements?" asked Grady; "haven't we bate the inimy into fiddle-strings already?"

"Yes, if they only knew it," said Kavanagh.

"But they seem to take a lot of persuading before they own themselves beaten."

"They do, the poor ignorant creatures," said Grady, reflectively. "And we can't kill the lot of 'em, which is what they seem to want; they are too many."

"If there _is_ a big fight in a day or two we shan't be in it," said Corporal Adams, who had come up in time to hear the end of the conversation.

"The orders are out, and our company has got to go ten miles off to- morrow."

"Only our company, corporal?"

"That's all detailed in orders."

"And does it say what for?"

"It does not; rikkernottering most like. But you will hear them read presently."

That was done, and Corporal Adams was quite correct. This particular company was ordered to take a certain amount of ammunition both for mouth and rifle, and march out in a certain specified direction. If they found water they were to make a zereba, or otherwise entrench themselves and remain until further orders; if not, they were to return at once. There was a little disappointment amongst both officers and men of the company.

"We will be out of all the fun entirely," said Grady. "They will catch the Mahdi, relieve Khartoum, rescue Gordon, and have all their names in the newspapers--and we will have nothing to say to it at all, at all."

"Don't you believe it," said Kavanagh. "The general would not send a rifle away if he were going to attack. He has heard something, or knows something we can't guess at, and means waiting for more troops to come up, you may depend. And our expedition has something to do, I should not wonder, with covering the flank of the reinforcements. We shall be called in, no fear, before the big battle is fought."

But even with those who thought differently the matter did not weigh very heavily. They had already fallen into the true campaigning frame of mind which takes things as they come--good quarters and bad; fighting and resting; outpost duty or guarding stores, even wounds and death-- very philosophically.

As the company was to start some time before daybreak, the men wisely left off discussing matters, and went to sleep. Then came their rising while it was still night, and the raking together of the embers of the bivouac fire, and breakfasting; then the saddling and lading of camels, amid the dismal lamentations of those grievance-mongering animals; then the start in darkness, and the mind adapting itself to the lethargic monotony of the tramp. Every one was chilly; every one was a trifle sullen at not being in bed; no one was inclined to talk.

The silence was only broken by the _swish_, _swish_, _swish_ of the camels' feet through the sand, the most ghostlike and uncanny of sounds; so slight, so continuous, so wide-spread. To meet a train of camels in the dark would be enough to convert any unbeliever in supernatural phenomena, I mean if he did not know anything about it.

When the sun rose every man seemed to wake up and feel new life in him, and they began to talk, just as the d.i.c.ky birds tune up for a song on the like occasion. Yet the scene was desolate and dreary enough for Dante or Gustave Dore.

After some hours' march they pa.s.sed this barren land and approached the foot of a hill where the mimosa was plentiful again, and other shrubs were seen, with herbage, scant indeed, but good for camels, who will browse upon what would hardly tempt a donkey. Here a halt was called, and while the men dismounted and lay down, the three officers who were with the company explored the spot. There were two mud-holes which supplied water, and had a couple of palms near them, pretty well in the open, and a third spring a hundred yards from the others, larger and deeper, and apparently yielding a better supply than both the others put together, but so near a patch of rocks and thick mimosas which would afford dangerous cover to an enemy, should any be in the neighbourhood, that it would never do to camp close by it.

So when the colour-sergeant was called out presently, he learned that it had been determined to form the zereba so as to include the two smaller water holes and the palm-trees, and the ground was marked out accordingly. Then all set to work to cut down mimosa bushes, and make a hedge of them all round, a gap, just admitting of one camel to pa.s.s at a time, being left on the side nearest the outside well, but not at the corner, and this gap was marked by a short hedge inside facing it. It was determined to use this outside well while they had the place to themselves, and reserve those within the zereba in case of an attack.

The s.p.a.ce enclosed was as limited as was consistent with convenience to render it more capable of defence, and the hedge was breast high, so that the men could fire over it without their aim being in any way impeded. Shrubs beyond those required to form the zereba were cut down and stored for firewood, so as to remove all cover where Arabs might conceal themselves as far as possible.

Most of this work was done before dinner, and the men had two hours'

rest. After that tapes were brought out and the lines of a trench marked off, six feet from the hedge all round, and when that was done the men began to dig it out, five feet wide, one foot and a foot and a half deep, throwing the soil out on the hedge side, flattening it down and making it as firm as they could, so that if exposed to heavy fire the men might find protection, since the p.r.i.c.kly walls, though difficult for men to struggle through, would not stop bullets. And so a good day's work ended, and the night sentries were posted between the trench and the hedge.

There was no alarm that night. The next morning the camels were taken outside the zereba and watered at the large well, from which also a supply was drawn for the company; and it sufficed for all, evidently a valuable spring. That day the trench was completed, deepened a little, but not much, as it would not do for the defenders to be too low behind the hedge, and a small watch-tower commenced in the centre of the square. Some quaint, distorted trees were found at a little distance, and from one of these enough timber was got for the erection contemplated. There was a flat rock which formed a foundation for it, and a rustic-looking affair, something like a summer-house, was raised some twelve feet from the rock it stood on, which was already six feet from the level plain. From this elevation an extensive view could be obtained.

On the third day a balcony was made round the top of the watch-tower, the sides of which were composed of logs, which it was reckoned would be bulletproof. A few good marksmen might, without being exposed, do considerable execution from this. It also had a roof fixed over it, and the look-out man had thus a protection from the sun. The saddles, with all cases and packages, were arranged to form an inner court of the zereba, within which were the camels, and when they were lying down they were very well protected. Hump, who of course had followed his company, took great interest in all these proceedings, and when the men were at work he stood with his head on one side watching them critically, and from the expression of his face, and the vibration of his tail, it was gathered that on the whole he approved. Captain Reece, who commanded the company, did not, as a matter of fact, much expect an attack, but he thought it only right to be prepared in case one were made, and being a man of an ingenious turn of mind, who, when a boy at Harton, was known as the "Dodger," he felt a special delight in constructing devices. On being ordered off on his present duty, he had gone to a friend in the Royal Engineers and begged a good bit of gun-cotton, carried for blasting purposes, and with this he proposed to make a mine, an electric battery and a coil of wire forming part of his baggage. There was a group of boulders two hundred yards off, which was certain to be taken advantage of by an enemy, since it formed a perfectly safe redoubt from which to fire on the zereba, or to shelter a group forming the forlorn hope of an attack. This Reece fixed upon as the most favourable spot for his mine, and here the gun-cotton was placed in the position he deemed most adapted for a favourable explosion, and connected by a wire, which there was no great delay or difficulty in concealing in the sandy soil with the zereba, and so with the electric battery.

"It's a sight of trouble we have taken to resave the inimy, and it will be mighty onpolite of him if he doesn't come at all," said Grady.

"I don't believe there's any Arabs about these parts," said Macintosh; "they air all together at Matammeh, or else before Khartoum."

"You think yourself very clever, no doubt," said Corporal Adams, indignantly. "But do you suppose that the captain would have taken all this trouble without good information?"

"Nay, but with all due respect to the captain, and the colonel, and the general, and yersel', too, corporal," said Macintosh, "the reports they have acted upon are native reports, and they may be good, and they may be bad, they may be honest, and they _may_ want to get detachments sent aboot to weaken the force at Gubat."

"Well, I think you are very presumpterous," said the corporal, "very presumpterous indeed, to suppose your superior officers can be took in by a lot of Johnnies that you can see through. They may attack us or they may not, seeing how ready we are for them; but they are somewhere's, you may take a haveadavy."

As everybody is generally somewhere, it was difficult to contradict this statement. Besides it is imprudent for a private to contradict a corporal, who has many ways of making himself disagreeable or the reverse. So the prudent Scot acquiesced.

"Well, I am a paceable boy meself, and hate fighting," said Grady.

"But still it seems a pity to make such iligant fortifications and not to thry them. Is there not sinse in that, now, Kavanagh?"

"I don't know about sense, but there's a lot of human nature in it,"

replied Kavanagh. "I know I learned to box when I was a lad, and was never happy until I had a turn up to try my skill without the gloves.

And a jolly good licking I got for my pains."

"To be sure!" cried Grady. "And if ye get a new knife ye want to cut something with it, or a new gun ye must be after shooting with it; and so on with anything at all. And now we have got the fortifications one is a thrifle curious to know if the Johnnies could get into them."

I don't know whether many of the company wanted to be attacked, or, indeed, if any did, but certainly there was a restlessness about them.

They listened all day for firing in the direction of Matammeh, some lying down with their ears to the ground to hear the farther. But all was still as the desert only can be, and the great battle which was expected had certainly not yet begun. But expectation of a fight excites men, and if at a distance they itch to be in it, this feeling even actuating men who fail to show any particular heroism when the pinch comes.

However, wishing or not wishing to be attacked could make no difference; the Arabs were not likely to consult their feelings on the subject.

There was no alarm that night, and all but the men on duty slept soundly by the bivouac fires. In the course of the next morning the camels were to be taken to the outside well to be watered, and a few impediments which blocked the gap being removed they began to move out. The leader had gone twenty paces, and three others were following, when Grant, one of the lieutenants who was in the gallery of the look-out with a field- gla.s.s, shouted, "Halt! Come back!"

The man with the leading camel looked round to see if the order applied to him, and saw the lieutenant beckoning to him. "Come back at once!"

he repeated. The four camels went to the right-about not a bit too soon; for a puff of smoke spurted up from a mimosa bush beyond, and the vicious whiz of a bullet hinted to the leader of the camel nearest to it that it would be better for him not to stop to wind up his watch or pare his nails before he got under shelter.

Pop, pop, pop, pop! A camel is a big mark, and it was clever to miss the lot. One indeed had a lock of hair chipped off him, as if the marksman were an artist who wanted a painting brush; but that was the nearest approach to a casualty.

The other bullets went high over everything, save one or two, which struck the sand and sent little stones flying about in a dangerous manner. But they came in contact with nothing vulnerable, and the four were back in the enclosure presently.

Macintosh, Cleary, and two other men, the crack shots of the company, were ordered up into the balcony to try if they could show the attacking party that they could make a better use of their weapons than they could. Captain Reece was now up there, and the bullets were whizzing about and thudding into the logs in a nerve-shaking manner.

"Crouch down, men, till they are a bit tired of wasting their cartridges," said the captain, standing erect himself, however; "you could not get a fair shot yet for the smoke."

When they had done so, he sat on a block of wood himself, and was then protected by the balcony. The two lieutenants and the non-commissioned officers were below cautioning the men, who were now in position all round the zereba, against firing until ordered.

It was a picked corps, and they were perfectly in hand, so that not one single shot was fired during this first storm. And a storm it was; the air seemed perfectly alive with the rush of bullets, all aimed high.

Whether it did not occur to the Arabs that the bushes of the enclosure were not impervious, or the watch-tower offered a more tempting mark, or the Remington rifle stocks did not suit their arms and shoulders, and came up high I don't know, but certainly all the bullets which hit anything struck the wooden erection and the rock it stood upon.

Splinters of wood and chips of stone were flying in all directions, but nothing was wounded which minded it, not a man or a camel or Hump, who thought the whole affair got up for his amus.e.m.e.nt, and barked with delight at the noise.

The leaden shower raged for about five minutes, died down to a sputtering, and ceased. Every man grasped his weapon and peered over the hedge, expecting a rush. But the enemy seemed to want to know whether they had annihilated everything with their fusillade, and kept close in cover. Slowly the smoke lifted, and rolled above their positions.

"Now there is a chance for you, Macintosh," said the captain; "above that bush, do you see? About three hundred yards."

Macintosh took a steady aim and pulled.

The man he aimed at staggered, and came down in a sitting position, seizing his right leg, which was broken, with both hands.