If the latter people were right, the authorities acted wisely; if the former had reason on their side, they acted foolishly. But as to which is which, it would be very rash for any one who does not know all the ins and outs, and has not the evidence which influenced those who had to decide, before him, to give an opinion. Anyhow, the expedition returned to Suakim, and the majority of the troops sailed away for different places. And Osman Digna had time to gather fresh fanatics together, and the Soudanese recovered from the shock to their superst.i.tion and conviction of invincibility which the hecatombs of slaughter had given them, and were soon ready to fight again.

And Tom Strachan was not so very badly hurt, but was soon able to be taken home to England to be nursed, and rejoined his regiment in six months.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

AGAINST THE STREAM.

A swift broad river, with the water broken into foaming wavelets by rocks which were everywhere showing their vicious heads above the surface; a string of nuggars, or half-decked boats, fifteen feet broad, forty-five feet long, flat-bottomed, each with a thick rope attached to the bows, and a string of men on the bank towing it under a hot sun.

Perhaps you have yourself towed a skiff on the Thames, when the current was so strong that the progress made with the oars was unsatisfactory.

Well, if you have, you _don't_ know one bit what this was like. In the first place, the Thames, even by Monkey Island, is still water compared to the Nile between Surras and Dal, a sixty-mile stretch. Then your skiff did not carry six tons of beef, bacon, biscuit, and other stores.

It may also be safely a.s.serted that the towing-path you walked on was not composed of sharp pointed rocks.

Those were the conditions under which certain picked British soldiers, one of whom was an old friend of ours, lost sight of for a considerable time, were dragging their nuggar up a series of cataracts. Towing always looks to me an absurd business, much as if a man were to carry a horse about, and call it going for a ride.

"Are you growling or singing, Tarrant?" asked Kavanagh of the man behind him on the string.

"Not singing, you may take your davy," growled the man addressed.

"I fancied not, though there is a certain likeness in your way of doing both which made me ask. I suppose you are growling then--what about?"

"What about, indeed!" grunted Tarrant. "D'ye suppose I 'listed as a soldier or a barge horse?"

"Don't know; never saw your attestation papers."

"Why, it was as a soldier then. I should have thought twice if I had known I was to be put to this sort of work."

"Really! Why, when we were rowing, you did not like that, and said you would sooner be doing any work on your legs."

"But I didn't mean this; why, I have cut two pairs of boots to pieces against these here sharp rocks since we began it."

"Ay," said Kavanagh, "but you had already worn-out some of your garments at the other game, so it was only considerate to give the feet a chance."

"Well, it's a pity them that likes it should not have the doing of it,"

said the judicious Tarrant.

"Well, you know, you could not pull an oar, and you _can_ pull a rope,"

said Grady, "so you are a trifle more useful now than you were before; and begorra you had need."

"I could pull a rope if it were over the bough of a tree, and the other end round your neck," snarled Tarrant.

"Oh, the murdering villain!" cried Grady. "And would ye be after hanging a poor boy who never harmed ye in all his life?"

"Well, keep a civil tongue in your head."

"Sure, and it's myself that has kissed the Blarney stone, and can do that same. And if you had such a thing as a bottle of whisky or a pound of tobacco about you, I would make you believe you were a pleasant companion, and pretty to look at besides. But what's the use of telling lies when there's nothing to be got by it?"

"Suppose you were to pull a bit harder and talk a bit less," said Corporal Adams.

"And I will, corporal dear," replied Grady. "But sure I thought we was marching at ease."

It may be well to explain that when troops get the word _March at ease_!--which is generally given directly they step off, when they are not drilling or manoeuvring, but simply on the route--they are allowed to carry their arms as they please, open the ranks, though without losing their places or straggling, smoke their pipes, and chat or sing if they like.

At the word of command--_Attention_! They close up, slope their arms properly, put away their pipes, and tramp on in perfect silence.

But marching at ease was such a singularly inappropriate expression for men who were dragging a heavy nuggar up a cataract under a blazing sun that there was a general laugh, and even Tarrant relaxed into a grin. A general laugh, I say, not a universal one, for Macintosh, who was plodding along behind Grady, preserved his gravity.

"I don't say that silence is inc.u.mberous," explained Corporal Adams, who, since he had got his stripes, had taken to using rather fine language, "but too much talking don't go with hauling."

"Ho, ho, ho!" chuckled Macintosh, and the corporal began to think he had said something funny. But no; Macintosh had trodden on an unusually sharp flint, and that presented Grady's idea of what marching at ease was in a ridiculous form to his mind. So when the pang was over he was tickled.

"Eh, but Grady's a poor daft creature to call this marching at ease; ho, ho!"

A particularly stiff bit came just now. The rope strained as if it would snap; the bows of the nuggar were buried in foam, and the men hauling were forced to take the corporal's hint, and keep their breath for other purposes than conversation.

When they had got over the worst, however, the boat got jammed on a rock, and the work of getting her off devolved on the crew on board of her, unless she were so fast as to require the aid of the others, who for the present got a much-required rest.

"A set of duffers, those chaps," said the sergeant in charge of the party, a young fellow named Barton, of good parentage, and Kavanagh's particular friend off duty. "A regular Nile reis, with his crew of four natives, would never have stuck the nuggar _there_."

"I wish we had them Canadian vogajaws, sergeant," said Corporal Adams.

"Ay, they are first-rate," replied the sergeant.

"A good many boats have them, haven't they?"

"Oh, yes! Most I suppose, or we should not get on at all. But we have not had the luck to get them for our craft. There are only a few of these who know how to work a boat up rapids at all, and I fancy they are only apprentices at it. As for the others, one of them owned to me that he had never been on any river before the Nile but the Thames at Putney, and his idea of a rapid was the tide rushing under the bridge."

"But sure, sergeant, he can sing 'Row, brothers, row,' iligantly, he can," said Grady.

"Ay, but he can't do it," replied the sergeant. "He ought to be in the water now. There's Captain Reece overboard and shoving; I must try and get to him. Stand by the rope, men, and haul away like blazes when she shifts."

What with poling, and shoving, and pulling at the rope, the nuggar was floated once more at last, and on they went again, and by-and-by the river widened, and the current was not so strong, and so long as they kept the rope pretty taut the boat came along without any very great exertion.

"Have a pipe out of my baccy-box, just to show there's no malice?" said Grady to Tarrant.

"Thankee, I will," replied Tarrant, "for mine is so wet it won't burn.

I went up to my neck in shoving off the first time we stuck, before we took to towing."

"Eh, but that was a chance for the crocodiles!" cried Macintosh. "I saw ye go souse under, Tarrant, and thought one of them had got ye by the leg. Ye might have grumbled a bit then, and folks would have said you had reason."

"It is all very fine," said Tarrant, "and if you chaps are pleased, you are welcome; but I don't call this riding on a camel. I had as soon have stopped with my own regiment, amongst sensible and pleasant lads, and taken my chance, as have volunteered to join this corps, if I had known I was to march all the same, and lug a beast of a boat after me too. I expected to have a camel to ride on."

"Thank you for putting me in mind that I'm mounted," said Grady; "I had almost forgotten it."

"Make your minds easy," said Sergeant Barton. "You will have plenty of camel riding in a day or two, quite as much as you like perhaps."