The Dash for Khartoum Part 15

Edgar's squadron was among the first line when the charge was made to the a.s.sistance of Colonel Webster's squadron. He was in the rear rank and could not well see what was pa.s.sing in front, and he was astounded upon seeing men spring up apparently from the earth and furiously attack the hors.e.m.e.n with spear and sword. He himself had a very narrow escape.

His horse swerved as it leapt a low bush, and almost simultaneously a native sprang to his feet and lunged at him with his spear.

Instinctively he threw himself forward on the neck of his horse, and as he did so felt the spear graze his back below the shoulders. The next moment his horse had taken him beyond the Arab's reach; but at that instant he heard a cry and saw Corporal North's horse fall with him, pierced by a spear thrust given by a native lying on the ground.

Before the corporal could rise the Arab was upon him with his sword, and struck him down with a sweeping cut upon the shoulder. Edgar had wheeled his horse round instantly, and before the blow was repeated was within striking distance of the man and his sword fell upon the uplifted wrist.

Dropping his sword the Arab sprang upon the horse and strove to tear Edgar from the saddle, while at the same instant the Arab who had first thrust at him ran up. Fortunately he came up at the side on which his comrade was clinging to Edgar, and was therefore unable to use his spear against him; but after a moment's hesitation he plunged it into the horse, which reared high in the air and then fell. Edgar had at the moment rid himself of the man who was grasping him, by shortening his sword and plunging it into his body, and as the horse reared he drew his feet from the stirrups and dropped off over his tail, coming down upon his feet just as the animal rolled over dead.

The other Arab rushed at him with his spear. Edgar cut at it with his sword and severed the iron head from the staff, and then springing forward ran the Arab through before he could take to his sword. But several others were running up, and Edgar felt that his case was desperate. By this time the corporal, though badly wounded, had freed himself from his fallen horse, and drawing his carbine from the bucket shot the Arab nearest to him. The others, however, came on without a pause. Edgar and his wounded companion made a desperate defence; but both received several sword-cuts, and Edgar felt the end was at hand, when with a roar like thunder the second line burst down upon them, and the Arabs were instantly cut down.

"Take those two men up behind you!" an officer shouted.

Two of the troopers reined in their horses and a.s.sisted Edgar and his companion to climb up behind them, and then riding at full speed soon regained the line. In another minute the trumpet sounded for a halt.

Edgar and his companion now slipped from the horses and joined their own squadron. The corporal was scarce able to stand, and Edgar was not in a better plight. Major Horsley rode up to them.

"Not badly wounded, I hope?" he asked. "It is a miracle your getting in when once dismounted."

"I think I am pretty nearly done for, sir," the corporal said. "But I wish to report that Trumpeter Smith has saved my life by coming back to my a.s.sistance when my horse was stabbed and fell with me. He killed the two men who attacked me, and so gave me time to free myself and to aid him in making a fight of it until the second line came up." As Corporal North concluded he fell insensible from loss of blood.

At that moment the surgeon came up. "Are we going to charge again, major? because if so, these men, with the others badly wounded, had better be sent across at once to the infantry. There are too many of these Arab scoundrels about for them to be left behind here. But if we are not going to charge I will give their wounds a first dressing at once."

"I don't know," the major said. "I will ride to the general and ask him, and speak to him about the wounded. Sergeant Meekings, if the order comes to charge before I return, tell off a trooper to take up each man too badly wounded to ride, and let them carry them straight across to the infantry."

After giving this order he rode rapidly away, but returned in two or three minutes. "We are not going to charge again, doctor," he said; "they are mustering too strongly for us to attempt it. The general says he will halt where we are until the worst cases of the wounded are attended to. Here, two of you men, dismount and a.s.sist the surgeon."

"Get their jackets off, lads," the doctor said. "Take this corporal first; he is the worst case."

The other wounded men were now brought up, and their wounds were all bandaged. Those who could sit a horse then mounted behind other troopers, while a number of soldiers were ordered to dismount and to lay the others upon blankets and carry them in.

Edgar was one of these. He had received one cut on the top of his head, and his helmet had alone saved his skull from being cleft. He had another gash on the right cheek. His side was laid open with a spear-thrust, the weapon having fortunately glanced from his ribs, and he had another sword-cut on the hip. He was unable to walk from loss of blood, but he felt that none of his wounds were very serious; and the surgeon said to him cheerfully, "You will do, lad. Your wounds are ugly to look at, but they are not serious. You will be on horseback again in another ten days."

Major Horsley had not spoken to him, but he had given him a little nod of satisfaction when the corporal gave his report. The cavalry moved across at a walk towards the wells of El-Teb, the wounded being carried between the lines, as there was no saying how many Arabs might be lurking among the bushes. On reaching the wells they were taken to the field hospital, which had already been organized. There their wounds were more carefully examined and re-dressed; and after a drink of lime-juice and water, with a little brandy in it, Edgar soon dropped off to sleep. In the morning Major Horsley and Captain Atkinson came round to see how the men of their regiment were getting on. The surgeon's report was favourable except in the case of Corporal North.

"I think he will pull round, major; but I am sure he will never be fit for service again. That wound on the shoulder, which he tells me is the first he got, has cut clean through the collar-bone and penetrated almost to the upper rib. I doubt whether he will ever have the use of his arm again; but that I cannot say. Anyhow, it will be long before it is fit for hard work. Trumpeter Smith? There is nothing serious the matter with him, but he has had a marvellous escape. If his helmet had not saved his head, the blow would have cleft right through his skull; if the wound in his cheek had been a couple of inches higher, it would have opened the temporal artery; and if the spear had penetrated instead of gliding off his ribs, that alone would have been sufficient to have done his business. As it is, he is not much the worse except for loss of blood, and with luck will be fit to take his place again in the ranks in a fortnight."

"I am glad to hear so good an account of you, Smith," the major said as he went up to his bedside. "I have reported your conduct to General Stewart, and your name will be sent in among those recommended for the Victoria Cross. Mind, I don't say that you will get it, lad, I don't think you will; for so many men distinguished themselves yesterday in that hand-to-hand fight that the names sent in will be very much larger than the number of crosses given. Still, your having been recommended will count in your favour when the time comes." So saying, with a kindly nod he moved on to the next bed.

At nine o'clock the force moved out towards Tokar, half the Gordon Highlanders being left at El-Teb for the protection of the hospital and stores, and with orders to find and bury the Europeans that had fallen.

During the day many of the Egyptian garrison of Tokar came into the camp from the surrounding villages. In the afternoon a mounted orderly brought in the news that the force had met with no resistance whatever on their way. Several parties of the enemy had been seen, but these fled as soon as they saw the troops advancing. In Tokar seventy of the Egyptian garrison were found in a half-starved condition. While their comrades had consented to join the Arabs they had steadily refused to do so, and had been very badly treated in consequence by them and by the inhabitants of the town. The arrival of the troops was hailed with great joy. The inhabitants had had a terrible time during the occupation of the place by the Arabs, and the whole population were preparing to accompany the troops on their march back to the coast. The cavalry had ridden out to Debbah, where the camp of the force besieging Tokar had been established.

In the afternoon Edgar was so far recovered that he was able to sit up.

His wounds were sore and painful, and the strapping of plaster in which they were enveloped rendered him very stiff and uncomfortable. But, as he said to another soldier, he had been just as stiff and sore after a football match, and felt confident that in a few days he should be as well as ever.

The next evening the force returned from Tokar, and Edgar and the other troopers who were well enough to go outside the hospital tent to see them come in were amused at their appearance, for they had before starting armed themselves with spears taken from the fallen Arabs; for the fight on the previous day had shown them that their swords were of little avail against the tactics of the Arabs in throwing themselves flat upon the ground, and that spears were much better suited for warfare against savages. They were accompanied by the greater portion of the population of Tokar, who were to be conveyed in the ships up to Suakim. The cavalry had found that the Arabs had left the camp at Debbah before they arrived.

The expedition there was, however, by no means useless, for they found an immense quant.i.ty of rifles and ammunition, together with a Gatling and mountain gun, all of which had been captured by the Arabs at the rout of Baker Pasha's army, or at the destruction of the force under Colonel Moncrieff some months before. The guns captured in the intrenchments made up the complete number of those that had fallen into the hands of the natives on those two occasions, and so left them without artillery. The work of burying the dead had been carried on by the force left in camp, and by the aid of those who now returned was completed in a short time.

No less than a thousand Arabs were found to have fallen in and around their intrenchments, and numbers must have got away only to die subsequently from their wounds. It was learned from prisoners that Osman Digma had not himself been present at the battle, but had sent a thousand men to reinforce those engaged in the siege of Tokar.

The force now moved down to Trinkitat with three hundred men of the garrison of Tokar who had rejoined them, and four or five hundred men, women, and children from that town. The re-embarkation was speedily effected, and a few hours later the ships entered Suakim harbour.

It was found that the natives of that town had received the news of the victory of El-Teb with absolute incredulity, but the arrival of the Tokar fugitives convinced them that the Arabs had really been defeated.

One of the prisoners taken at Sinkat came in a day or two later, having made his escape from Osman Digma's camp. He reported that the news of the battle of El-Teb had arrived there before he left, and that it had been given out that seven thousand of the English had been killed, and that it was only nightfall that saved them all from destruction.

The first step of Admiral Hewett and General Graham on their arrival at Suakim was to issue a proclamation calling upon all the tribesmen to leave Osman Digma and to come in and make their submission, promising protection and pardon to all who surrendered. This proclamation was backed by a letter by the Sheik Morghani, who was held in the highest estimation for his holiness. He told them that G.o.d had sent the English to destroy them because they had forsaken the old religion for a new one, and entreated them to come in and make their peace.

A fortnight had now pa.s.sed since the fight at El-Teb. Edgar, who had remained on board the hospital-ship, had made rapid progress towards convalescence, and was now reported by the surgeons as fit to return to duty, which he was most anxious to do, as it was daily expected that the force would move out against Osman Digma, who was at Tamai, a place sixteen miles to the south-west of Suakim. The troops had been disembarked, and he was delighted when he was again able to join his squadron. Spies came and went daily, and they were unanimous in saying that Osman would fight another battle. The news that El-Teb was a disastrous defeat was by this time known, but his explanation that the misfortunes were solely due to his orders having been disobeyed, perfectly satisfied his followers, and their belief that he was invincible was wholly unshaken.

The most fanatical of the coast tribes still held to him, and on the 9th of March twenty-one of their sheiks sent in a defiant reply to the proclamation, saying that the ten thousand men they commanded would meet us in the field. It was therefore evident that the struggle to come would be much more serious and determined than that of El-Teb.

Edgar received quite an ovation upon rejoining his troop. The manner in which he had defended his wounded comrade had awakened their lively admiration, the more so since the man for whom he had so imperilled his life had but lately been his personal antagonist.

"Well, young un, you are getting on," a sergeant said to him. "I won't say you are getting all the luck, for luck has nothing to do with it this time, anyhow. You are doing well, Smith, and it won't be many months before you are in our mess, and it needs no prophet to see that you have every chance of going higher if you keep on as you began. Here you are only about seventeen years old, and you have made a big mark in the regiment already. You have got the major and the rest of the officers on your side from that affair at Aldershot, then the fact that you are the best cricketer in the regiment counts for a lot, and now you have got wounded and have been recommended for the Victoria Cross.

"If you don't mount up after all that it will be your own fault. You have every advantage. The fact that you have been a gentleman is in your favour, for naturally men are picked out for promotion who are best fitted for the position of officers; and your having been able to take a first-cla.s.s certificate in the school in itself brings you into notice. Be careful with your self, lad. I know you don't drink, so I need not warn you about that. Don't get c.o.c.ky. I don't think you will, for you haven't done so at present, and the notice you have had from your cricket and that Aldershot affair would have turned a good many lads' heads. But it is a thing to be careful about. You know there are a good many old soldiers who are inclined to feel a little jealous when they see a young fellow pushing forward, but if they see he is quiet, and gives himself no airs and is pleasant with every one, they get over it in time; and in your case every one will acknowledge that you deserve all the luck that may fall to you. So be careful on that head, Smith.

"You will find very little jealousy among us sergeants when you once get into our mess, for there are very few of us who have any idea whatever of ever getting a commission, or would take one if it were offered. A sensible man knows when he is well off, and except for a man who has had the education you have had one is much more comfortable as a sergeant, and better off too, than one would be as an officer. When one is with other men one wants to do as they do, and an officer who has got to live on his pay finds it hard work and painful work. Of course most men promoted from the ranks--I mean my cla.s.s of men--get quarter-masterships, but there is no great pull in that. Quarter-masters are neither one thing nor the other. The officers may try to put him at his ease, but his ways are not their ways; and I have known many a quarter-master who, if he had his choice, would gladly come back to the sergeant's mess again."

"Thank you for your advice, sergeant," Edgar said quietly. "I will follow it to the best of my power. I don't think there is anything to be c.o.c.ky about; for the thing at Aldershot was pure luck, and so it was the other day. I happened to be next to North when his horse fell, and of course I turned round to help him without thinking who he was or anything about him. It was just instinct, and it hasn't done him any good after all, for I hear he is not likely to live many days."

CHAPTER VIII

TAMANIEB.

"Are you sure you feel fit for active work again, Smith?" Major Horsley said as he met Edgar in camp.

"Yes, sir," the lad said saluting. "I am a little stiff, and it hurts me if I move suddenly, but I am sure I should not feel it if we were engaged again."

"Well, do not do anything rash, lad; these fellows are not to be trifled with." That, indeed, was the general opinion in camp. The men were ready and eager for another fight with the enemy, but there was little of the light-hearted gaiety with which the contest had been antic.i.p.ated before they had met the Arabs at El-Teb. The idea that savages, however brave, could cope with British troops with breech-loaders had then seemed absurd; but the extraordinary bravery with which the Arabs had fought, the recklessness with which they threw away their lives, and the determination with which they had charged through a fire in which it seemed impossible that any human being could live, had created a feeling of respect. There was nothing contemptible about these foes, and it was expected that not only would the force be very much larger than that met at El-Teb, but as it would be composed of Osman Digma's best men, and would be fighting under his eye, the battle would be much more hardly contested than before. The cavalry were particularly impressed with the formidable nature of these strange foemen. While they would have hurled themselves fearlessly against far superior forces of the best cavalry of Europe, they felt that here their discipline and mastery of their horses went for little. They could charge through any number of the enemy, but the danger lay not in the charge but after it. The Arab tactics of throwing themselves down only to stab the horses as they rode over them, and then rising up cutting and thrusting in their midst, were strange and bewildering to them.

"I am game to charge a dozen squadrons of cavalry one after the other,"

a trooper said as they sat round the fire on the night of the 9th of March, "and if we had orders to go at a square of infantry I should be ready to go, although I might not like the job; but as for these slippery black beggars, the less we have to do with them the better I shall be pleased. You go at them, and you think you have got it all your own way, and then before you can say knife there they are yelling and shouting and sticking those ugly spears into you and your horses, and dancing round until you don't fairly know what you are up to. There ain't nothing natural or decent about it."

There was a general murmur of a.s.sent.

"We shall know more about their ways next time," another said. "But lancers would be the best for this sort of work. There is no getting at these beggars on the ground with our swords, for the horses will always leap over a body, and so you cannot reach them with your swords; but a lance would do the business well. I don't care much for lances for regular work, but for this sort of fighting there is no doubt they are the real thing. Well, there is one thing, if we get among the n.i.g.g.e.rs this time we know what we have got to deal with, and up or down there will be no mercy shown."

On the 10th the Royal Highlanders marched out six miles towards Tamai and formed an encampment there, defending it with bushes interlaced with wire, this kind of defence being known among the natives as a zareba.

The next afternoon the rest of the infantry marched out and joined them.

Next morning the cavalry moved out, and in the afternoon the whole force started, the cavalry thrown out ahead. A few shots were exchanged with parties of the enemy, but there was no serious fighting. The march was slow, for the ground was thickly covered with bushes, through which the troops with the ambulance and commissariat camels moved but slowly. The sailors had very hard work dragging their guns through the deep sand, and it took four hours before they reached a spot suitable for encampment, within two miles of the enemy's position.

The spot selected for the halt was a s.p.a.ce free from bushes, and large enough to afford room for the encampment and to leave a clear margin of some fifty yards wide between it and the bushes. As soon as the column halted the cavalry and part of the infantry took up their position as outposts to prevent a surprise on the part of the enemy, and the rest set to work to cut down bushes and drag them across the sand to form a fresh zareba. When this was completed the cavalry trotted back to the post held on the previous night, as they would be useless in case of a night attack, and their horses might suffer from a distant fire of the enemy.

Inside the zareba the greatest vigilance was observed. Fully ten thousand determined enemies lay but a short distance away, and might creep up through the bushes and make a sudden onslaught at any time. The moon was full, and its light would show any object advancing across the open s.p.a.ce. Had it not been for this the general would not have been justified in encamping at so short a distance from the enemy. The march had been a short one, but the heat had been great and the dust terrible, and the troops threw themselves down on the ground exhausted when the work of constructing the zareba was completed; but after a short rest they took up their posts in readiness to repel an attack.

During the early part of the night all remained under arms. But Commander Rolfe of the Royal Navy crept out at the rear of the camp, gained the bushes, and crawled among them until he came within sight of the enemy. He saw them in great numbers sitting round their fires or stretched upon the ground, and returned to camp with the news that whatever might be the case later on, certainly no attack was meditated at present. The greater part of the troops were thereupon allowed to lie down and get what sleep they could.