For Fortune and Glory Part 14

"I am the Sheikh Moussa. Neither I nor any of my tribe have acknowledged the Mahdi, whom we hold to be a False Prophet and impostor.

Whereupon he sent a body of troops to attack the village where seven families of us dwelt. They came at the rising of the moon, and set fire to our huts, but we flew to arms, and thrice drove them back, slaying two for one. But they were ten to one, and at each onset we were fewer and more weary. At last the fight turned to mere slaughter. I sought my dromedary and fled, in hopes of vengeance. They have slain my wife, my children, my slaves; there is a blood feud between the Mahdi and me.

Then I remembered that the Turks led by Englishmen were at Khartoum, preparing for an attack upon my enemy, and I said, I will seek the English Turk, the Hicks Pasha, and I will say, 'I would be avenged upon my enemy, but I am alone, and what can one arm do? I have a sharp sword, I have a far-killing gun, I have a blood feud with your enemy.

Let me fight in your ranks.' I rode part of a night, and a day, and a second night; I had only filled my water-bottle once. It ran dry; my wounds grew stiff. I said, 'I shall never reach Khartoum, I shall die unavenged. It is Allah's will; praise to Allah, and the One Prophet, for whom I am.' When lo! The English-led Turk army has risen up and gone forth to meet me. It is Fate."

He had a drink of water given to him, and then the General asked him if he knew El Obeid well.

"Every street, every corner of the ramparts," he replied. "Did I not take part in the defence when the Mahdi--may his grave be defiled!--was driven from them with slaughter?"

"You may ride with us," said the General. "Look to his cuts, Howard,"

he added, seeing him close by, with a sponge and a bandage already in his hand.

It was a sparing drop of water that was used, and that was presently drunk with avidity, defiled as it was. Howard declared the cuts to be mere flesh wounds of no consequence.

"I am the most unlucky fellow that ever was!" he exclaimed; "I never do get any gun-shot wounds, hardly."

The Sheikh Moussa certainly proved an acquisition that day, for he took them a route diverging somewhat from that which they had been following, and so cutting off some three miles of their journey to the wells where they were to halt till the moon was up. And three miles when the water is running low are a matter of tremendous import to the traveller in the desert. After that the General often sent for the Sheikh Moussa to ride with him on the march; and he questioned him, and compared his answers with the maps and plans he had. And the more he was tested the more genuine did the man appear. The tribe, too, to which he claimed to belong was known to be friendly, and not as yet overawed into owning allegiance to the Mahdi.

And so the square dragged slowly on from well to well through the long scorching mornings and the bright moonlight nights, and was swallowed up in the desert.

CHAPTER TEN.

SENT OUT SCOUTING.

It is one of the first principles of warfare that an army should always keep up communication with what is called its _base_, that is, the safe place from which food, ammunition, stores of all kinds, and fresh men to supply the place of those who fall, can be sent to it, and to which the sick and wounded may be returned. But as there is no universal rule in anything, and people have often to do what they can, rather than what they know to be best, it so happens that columns have sometimes to be launched into an enemy's country without any communication with seaport, town, or friendly frontier, so that they are entirely self-dependent, with no resources beyond what they have at hand, and liable to be attacked on all sides.

This is termed being "in the air," and is a very great risk, which is only voluntarily incurred for the sake of gaining some equally great advantage. In civilised warfare failure under such circ.u.mstances means surrender; in expeditions against barbarians it involves utter destruction.

Hicks Pasha's little army was now thus isolated, and, after several days' march across the desert, matters began to wear a very serious aspect. As has been said, ten miles a day were the utmost that could be accomplished, and the distance between the places where water could be obtained increased as they advanced.

Water was carried by camels in tanks with galvanised linings, which kept it fresh, and free from the nauseous taste which it gets from the skins in which travellers generally have to keep it. It is true that there is an earthenware water-bottle, which is in much request, and the inhabitants of a town on the Nile earn their livelihood by manufacturing them. But the porousness of the clay, which keeps the contents so deliciously cool, makes them very brittle.

In these tanks sufficient water could be carried for twenty-four hours, which meant at the present rate of marching but ten miles. There came an occasion when, at the end of the first day's halt from the last well, an order was given to put men and horses on a half ration of the precious fluid. Considering that the full ration was very insufficient, this caused much suffering, especially as, there being no moon, night marches were out of the question, and the parched troops had to toil through the sand in the mornings and evenings, though they were forced to rest and get what shelter they could in the hottest part of the day.

That night Harry was roused from a dream of plunging in the river at Harton, which, however, refused to cool or wet him, but seemed to turn to hot sand at his touch, by a shot and then a volley, a little in their front. He started to his feet and found Howard standing beside him.

"Some stupid mistake of a sentry, very likely," said he. But presently the outposts came running in with three of their number missing, and two others with slight spear wounds, and reported an attack of the enemy.

The force stood to its arms at once, and as it bivouacked in square, in the order in which it marched, every man was in his place without delay or confusion, and there was no danger of surprise, and some of the men would keep firing uselessly into darkness, and it gave their officers some trouble to stop them. This was done, however, and the waste of ammunition was left to the Arabs, who kept up a dropping fire till dawn, wounding a poor camel by chance, but unable to do much damage by starlight from the distance at which they kept.

"No gun-shot wounds for you at present," said Harry, when he rejoined the surgeon.

"I don't want any," replied Howard. "I could not attend to a poor fellow after treating him, in any satisfactory way, on the march, and without water. Do you know, I am tempted to drink the contents of my medicine bottles."

"Then you _must_ be thirsty, poor fellow. But, I say, do you call this being under fire? There! Something struck the ground which I fancy must have been a bullet."

"Yes; they are making very long shots, but as some of them get into our neighbourhood, I suppose one may be said to be so. Why?"

"Only because I have never been under fire before, and I expected to be in a funk."

"There is time enough; I daresay you will get a satisfactory test of your nerves before long. But courage is a comparative thing, depending very much upon circ.u.mstances. I, for example, am a non-combatant, and though I have little dread of infectious diseases, which many heroes would shrink from risking contact with, I hold all lethal weapons in strong dislike. And yet, if there were a barrel of beer in front, though it were guarded by the best shots in Boer land, I would have a fight for it."

"I should think you would!" cried Harry. "Beer! How can you be so cruel as to mention the word?"

But though the Arab fusillade was almost innocuous, it hara.s.sed the troops, keeping them on the alert all night. And when, with the first streaks of dawn, the dreary march began, all traces of the foe had disappeared. All the morning dragged along, till fatigue and the heat of the sun compelled the mid-day halt. Then forward again till dark; and no wells reached! Hardly a drop of water left for each man!

Several had dropped and died in the course of that day's march, and several horses. The bugle bands, which had been so cheery in the start, were silent now; the poor fellows were too parched to blow their instruments. Even the tam-tams were silent. Not that either would have been prudent, for though, doubtless, they were never lost sight of by the enemy's scouts, there was no advantage in publishing their whereabouts.

Harry was on outpost duty that night, and when the firing was renewed, which happened soon after dark (though no enemy had been sighted all day), he, not being hard pressed, would not withdraw his men. The stars were very bright, and objects were distinguishable at about thirty yards distance; perhaps further by Harry, who was particularly clear of vision, that being the reason, possibly, of his fine shooting. The Arabs got closer to the rocks, amongst which the outpost was situated, with sentries at intervals connecting it with the square. Harry felt savage with thirst, fatigue, and this aggravating annoyance, and was strongly tempted to try and make an example. He took a rifle from one of his men, and began stalking carefully in the direction of the flashes; not directly towards them, of course, which would have been trying to meet the bullets, but on the flank.

Crouching down under a sand ridge, he got pretty close, crawled a little nearer on his hands and knees, and peered forwards. There was a flash and a report quite near to him, and then Harry could plainly distinguish the man kneeling up, withdrawing the old cartridge from his Remington.

He levelled his rifle, but could not see the fore-sight, so as to align it with the object. For a moment he was nonplussed, but suddenly remembered having read of a dodge for night shooting, and resolved to try it.

He had in his pocket a small box of matches, and, taking one of these, he broke the end off and rubbed in on the fore-sight very gently, careful not to let it explode, and succeeded in making the little projection so luminous that he could align it with the back-sight and the Arab's body. Then he pulled the trigger, and saw the dark figure leap forward and fall p.r.o.ne. Saw it, indeed, but only in a fraction of a second, for he stole back to the sand ridge, slipping in another cartridge as he went.

There he lay still a minute, listening and peering. Presently a tall figure, which looked gigantic in the dim light, bounded close to him, with a gun in his left hand, and a spear in his right. He had evidently made a rush in the direction of the flash, and now stood, looking right and left for the man who had fired. Harry almost touched him as he pressed the trigger, and the savage lay at his very feet. "I'll have his spoils any way," thought he; so he picked up the spear and Remington, and got back to his men as fast as he could. The Arab scouts, bothered by these two shots, were probably uncertain about the movements of the troops, and thought they had shifted their ground since they had marked them down, and possibly had flanking parties who might surround them. For they withdrew to a distance, fired a few shots in the direction where Harry _had been_, which was quite away from the main body, and the outpost too, and then gave no more trouble for that night.

In the course of the next day the water gave out entirely, and there was not a drop in the army beyond what some few far-seeing, self-denying men, had h.o.a.rded in their gourds.

Harry had not been one of these, and when the mid-day halt came he thought he was dying, and fell down in the glare of the sun, senseless.

When he returned to life he found himself under the scanty shade of a mimosa tree, supported by the strong arm of a man whose sun-burned face and flowing beard, the loose robe which he wore, and the silk scarf which surrounded his tarboosh, with the pistol and dagger thrust into a shawl round his waist, seemed to betoken a native of the country; but the kindly eyes were those of an Englishman, as were the murmured words, "Poor lad! Poor lad!" which fell on his ear. His brow was deliciously cool, and his throat less parched; and he recognised that it was the man whose wonderful journey to Merv had so enthralled him when he read of it who had now spared the water, which was life, to damp his brow and give him respite; and he was certain that it was Mr O'Donovan, the newspaper correspondent, now accompanying the army of Hicks Pasha, who had saved his life.

Howard, who came up at the moment, was almost awe-struck at the sacrifice.

"I have known one man allow his veins to be drained to supply the life- blood which might be infused into the veins of his friend; but what was that to sparing water _now_!" he said.

The patience and discipline of the men during this trying time were admirable; there was no grumbling, no repining against their leaders; and just fancy how the st.u.r.dy Briton would have growled!

The officers did their best to cheer them up, a.s.suring them that they were certain to reach the wells that afternoon, and always bearing an air of confidence in the future before them. But when they were alone together, and looked into each other's eyes, it was evident that they thought they were in a very desperate position.

However, let them reach and carry El Obeid without too great delay, and all would yet be right. Their a.s.surance to the men concerning the wells was verified; and when they approached the mud-holes which bore that name, discipline for once broke down. First the Bashi-Bazooks urged their fainting steeds to a gallop; then the infantry broke from their ranks and hurried forward; and had the enemy come down in force at that moment, they would have had an easy prey. But, oh horror! The puddles were choked with the putrefying bodies of men, horses, and camels, who, wounded in a recent fight near the spot, had crawled hither to drink, and die.

Thirst, however, overcame disgust; the contaminating carcases were dragged away, and many plunged their faces in the filthy pools. Others had the self-control to dig or sc.r.a.pe holes for themselves, and wait till a purer water had percolated into them, when they slowly satisfied themselves and their faithful horses, and then managed to collect a supply for the next march.

Wonderful was the effect of the water, when at last a sufficiency for all had trickled out. The musicians found their instruments, and played once more; the outposts stepped off to their stations with alacrity; and all felt as if El Obeid had already fallen.

But several days' more terrible marching, with insufficient water, and many a death from sheer hardships, fatigue, or sunstroke, were to elapse before they neared the fortress. At last, however, the time came when, on starting at dawn, the guide a.s.sured the General that he should see the sun set behind its walls. After four hours' march one of the senior officers called Harry.

"You and your nag look pretty fit," he said; "that comes of being a light weight. Is your water-bottle full?"

"Yes," replied Harry; "I have not touched it since we left the last wells."

"That is right; I want you to take six men out scouting. You see that rocky hill, with trees, out to the north?"

"Yes."

"The General wants to know if the enemy are behind there in any force.

Go cautiously; and if you see no one, pa.s.s through the wood, and have a look on the other side of the hill; you can see from here that it cannot be very extensive on the top. But if you find Arabs in the cover, try to draw them; and if you succeed, and they are in force, come back at once. But should they keep in cover, so that you cannot tell whether there are half a dozen or a considerable body, skirt round the hill, and see if there is any sign of a camp, or a large body of the enemy concealed by it. Be cautious, so as not to get cut off. I have selected six of the best mounted Bashi-Bazooks, in case you have to make a bolt for it. Of course, you see the importance of knowing what we have in our rear before attacking the place."

"All right, sir," said Harry; and in another minute he was trotting across the plain, followed by his six picturesque, irregular hors.e.m.e.n.