The Dash for Khartoum Part 17

"And a very good thing too, Richard," his wife put in.

"I do not think so at all. It is the hardest thing ever heard of that the regiments here that have had all the heat and hard work, and everything else of this beastly place, are to be left behind, while fellows from England go on. Well, Smith," he went on, turning to Edgar, "I am glad to say I have been able to do you a good turn. When I was in the orderly-room just now a letter came to the colonel from the general, saying that a trumpeter of the Heavy Camel Corps is down with sunstroke and will not be able to go, and requesting him to detail a trumpeter to take his place. I at once seized the opportunity and begged that you might be chosen, saying that I owed you a good turn for your plucky conduct at Aldershot. The adjutant, I am glad to say, backed me up, saying that you have done a lot of credit to the regiment with your cricket, and that the affair at El-Teb alone ought to single you out when there was a chance like this going. The colonel rather thought that you were too young, but we urged that as you had stood the climate at Suakim you could stand it anywhere on the face of the globe. So you are to go, and the whole regiment will envy you."

"I am obliged to you indeed, sir," Edgar said in delight. "I do not know how to thank you, sir."

"I do not want any thanks, Smith, for a service that has cost me nothing. Now you are to go straight to Sergeant Edmonds. I have sent him a note already, and he is to set the tailors at work at once to rig you out in the karkee uniform. We cannot get you the helmet they are fitted out with. But no doubt they have got a spare one or two; probably they will let you have the helmet of the man whose place you are to take. You will be in orders to-morrow morning, and I have asked Edmonds to get your things all finished by that time. Come in and say good-bye before you start in the morning."

There was no slight feeling of envy when Edgar's good fortune became known, and the other trumpeters were unanimous in declaring that it was a shame his being chosen.

"Well, you see, you could not all go," the trumpet-major said, "and if Smith had not been chosen it would have been long odds against each of you."

"But he is the last joined of the lot," one of the men urged.

"He can blow a trumpet as well as any of you," the sergeant said, "and that is what he is wanted for. I think that it is natural enough the colonel should give him the pull. The officers think a good deal of a fellow who helped the regiment to win a dozen matches at cricket, and who carried off the long-distance running prize at Aldershot; besides, he behaved uncommonly well in that fight, and has as good a right to the V.C. as any man there. I think that a fellow like that ought to have the pull if only one is to get it, and I am sure the whole regiment will be of opinion that he has deserved the chance he has got."

By the next morning the suit of karkee was ready, and Edgar was sent for early to the orderly-room and officially informed by the colonel that he had been detailed for service in the Heavy Camel Corps.

"I need not tell you, Smith, to behave yourself well--to be a credit to the regiment. I should not have chosen you for the service unless I felt perfectly confident that you would do that. I hope that you will come back again safe and sound with the regiment. Good-bye, lad!"

Edgar saluted and left the room. Several of the officers followed him out and bade him a cheery farewell, for he was a general favourite. All knew that he was a gentleman, and hoped that he would some day win a commission. He then accompanied Major Horsley to his quarters, and there the officer and his wife both shook hands with him warmly.

"You will be a sergeant three months after you come back," Major Horsley said; "and your having been on this Nile expedition, and your conduct at El-Teb, will help you on when the time comes, and I hope you will be one of us before many years are over."

Edgar then went up to his barrack-room to say good-bye to his friends, and took off his smart Hussar uniform and put on the karkee suit, amid much laughter and friendly chaff at the change in his appearance. The adjutant had ordered a trooper to accompany him to the camp of the Camel Corps, which was pitched close by the Pyramids, and to bring back his horse. He therefore mounted and rode out of the barracks, amid many a friendly farewell from his comrades. He rode with his companion into the town and down to the river, crossed in a ferry-boat, and then rode on to the camp. Inquiring for the adjutant's tent Edgar dismounted and walked up to that officer, and presented a note from the colonel.

The officer glanced at it. "Oh, you have come to accompany us!" he said.

"You look very young for the work, lad; but I suppose your colonel would not have chosen you unless he thought you could stand it. I see you have got our uniform, but you want a helmet. We can manage that for you.

Sergeant Jepherson, see if Trumpeter Johnson's helmet will fit this man; he is going with us in his place. Fit him out with water-bottle and accoutrements, and tell him off to a tent."

The helmet fitted fairly, and only needed a little padding to suit Edgar, who, after putting it on, ran out to where his comrade was waiting for him and fastened his own head-gear to the pummel of his saddle.

"Good-bye, young un!" the trooper said. "Hold your own with these heavies for the honour of the regiment. They mean well, you know, so don't be too hard upon them."

Edgar laughed as he shook the man by the hand, and as he rode off turned to look at the scene around him.

There were two camps at a short distance from each other, that of the Heavy Camel Corps to which he now belonged, composed of men of the 1st and 2d Life Guards, Blues, Bays, 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards, Royals, Scots Greys, 5th and 16th Lancers. The other was the Guards Corps, composed of men of the three regiments of foot guards. Edgar's first feeling as he looked at the men who were standing about or lying in the shade of the little triangular Indian mountain-service tents, was that he had suddenly grown smaller. He was fully up to the average height of the men of his own regiment, but he felt small indeed by the side of the big men of the heavy cavalry regiments.

"This way, lad," the sergeant into whose charge he had been given, said.

"What is your name?"

"I am down as Ned Smith."

The sergeant smiled at the answer, for no inconsiderable number of men enlist under false names. He led the way through the little tents until he stopped before one where a tall soldier was lying at full length on the sand. "Willc.o.x, this man has come to take the place of Trumpeter Johnson. He is detached for duty with us from the Hussars. He will, of course, share your tent."

"All right, sergeant! I will put him up to the ropes. What's your name, mate?"

"I go as Ned Smith," Edgar said.

"So you are going in for being a heavy at present."

"I don't care whether I am a heavy or a light, so that I can go up the river."

"Have you been out here long?"

"About a year; we were through the fighting at Suakim, you know. It was pretty hot down there, I can tell you."

"It is hot enough here for me--a good deal too hot, in fact; and as for the dust, it is awful!"

"Yes, it is pretty dusty out here," Edgar agreed; "and of course, with these little tents, the wind and dust sweep right through them. Over there in Cairo we have comfortable barracks, and as we keep close during the day we don't feel the heat. Besides, it is getting cooler now. In August it was really hot for a bit even there."

"Where are we going to get these camels, do you know?"

"Up the river at a.s.souan, I believe; but I don't know very much about it. It was only yesterday afternoon I got orders that I was to go with you, to take the place of one of your men who had fallen sick, so I have not paid much attention as to what was going on. It has been rather a sore subject with us, you see. It did seem very hard that the regiments here that have stood the heat and dust of this climate all along should be left behind now that there is something exciting to do, and that fresh troops from England should go up."

"Well, I should not like it myself, lad. Still I am precious glad I got the chance. I am one of the 5th Dragoon Guards, and you know we don't take a turn of foreign service--though why we shouldn't I am sure I don't know--and we are precious glad to get a change from Aldershot and Birmingham and Brighton, and all those home stations. You are a lot younger than any of us here. The orders were that no one under twenty-two was to come."

"So I heard; but of course as we are out here, and we have got accustomed to it, age makes no difference."

"What do they send us out here for?"

"There are no barracks empty in the town, no open s.p.a.ces where you could be comfortably encamped nearer. Besides, this gives you the chance of seeing the Pyramids."

"It is a big lump of stone, isn't it?" Willc.o.x said, staring at the Great Pyramid. "The chaps who built that must have been very hard up for a job. When I first saw it I was downright disappointed. Of course I had heard a lot about it, and when we got here it wasn't half as big as I expected. After we had pitched our tents and got straight, two or three of us thought we would climb up to the top, as we had half an hour to spare. Just as we set off one of the officers came along and said, 'Where are you going, lads?' and I said, 'The cooks won't have tea ready for half an hour, sir, so we thought we would just get up to the top and look round.' And he said, 'If you do you will be late for tea.'

"Well, it didn't seem to us as if it would take more than five minutes to get to the top and as much to get down again, so off we went. But directly we began to climb we found the job was not as easy as we had expected. It looked to us as if there was but a hundred steps to go up; but each step turned out to be about five feet high, and we hadn't got up above twenty of them when the trumpet sounded, and we pretty near broke our necks in coming down again. After that I got more respect for that lump of stone. Most of the officers went up next day, and a few of us did manage it, but I wasn't one of them. I did try again; but I concluded that if I wanted to go up the Nile, and to be of any good when I got there, I had best give it up, for there would not be anything left of me to speak of by the time I got to the top. Then those Arab fellows got round, and shrieked and jabbered and wanted to pull us up; and the way they go up and down those stones is wonderful. But of course they have no weight to carry. No, I never should try that job again, not if we were to be camped here for the next ten years."

"I have been up to the top," Edgar said; "but it is certainly a hard pull, and there is nothing much to see when you do get there--only so much more sand in all directions. The view from the great mosque at Cairo is much finer. Do you have much drill?"

"Morning and evening we work away pretty stiff. It is infantry drill we have. They say we are not going to fight on the camels, but only to be carried along by them and to get off and fight if we see the enemy, and as we are all new to each other there is a good bit of work to be done to get us down to work as one battalion. We and the 4th make a troop together. We have drill in the afternoon, too, for a bit. Of a morning those that like can go across and have a look at the town. I went yesterday. Rum old place, isn't it? The rummiest thing is the way those little donkeys get about with a fat chap perched on the top of a saddle two feet above them. Never saw such mokes in my life. They ain't bigger than good-sized dogs some of them, and yet they go along with fifteen or sixteen stone on their backs as if they did not feel it. Those and the camels pleased me most. Rum beasts those camels. I can't think what it must feel like to be stuck up on top of them, and if one does fall off it must be like coming off a church. Have you tried one?"

"No. I have never been on a camel. Of course we always have had our horses."

"Why didn't they get us horses?"

"I don't know. They could have bought a couple of thousand, no doubt, if they had tried; besides, they could have got some from the Egyptian cavalry. But if they had they would never have sent out you and the Guards; though the horses would have done very well to carry light cavalry. I fancy the idea is that in the first place we have to go long distances without water. Camels can stand thirst for three or four days together, and each camel can carry water for its rider. Then, too, we may perhaps march sometimes, and the camels could carry water and food.

So, you see, they will be useful both ways."

"Well, I suppose it is all right," Willc.o.x said; "and as you say, if they had gone in for horses they could not have carried us heavies. I am precious glad to come. So are we all; though why they wanted to bring us and the Guards--the biggest and heaviest men they could pick out in the army--on a job like this, is more than I can say."

"It is more than anyone can say, I should think," Edgar said; and indeed no reason has ever been a.s.signed for the singular choice of the heaviest men that could be collected in the service for duty on a campaign such as this was to be, and for which light, active, wiry men were especially suitable.

"There is the dinner call."

"What troop are we in?" Edgar asked, seizing his trumpet, and on learning at once gave the troop call.

"We are in messes of eight," Willc.o.x replied. "We and the three tents to the right have one mess. It is our turn to go over and get the grub."

Accordingly Willc.o.x and Edgar went across to the field-kitchen and received the rations for their mess, consisting of beef and vegetables--the bread for the day had been served out early. Returning to the tents the rations were divided between the party of eight, and Edgar was introduced by Willc.o.x to his new messmates.