MAHSAMAH

"The ——th and ——th Divisions will move from —— to —— in flights of —— thousands daily. Two hundred and fifty camels will be allotted to each flight for baggage-transport. Mahsamah will be the end of the first stage.... You will proceed to Mahsamah, taking with you —— thousand rations, establish a depÔt, and issue rations to the flights for twenty-four hours."

So ran the order. Confound the flights! Why can't they train it? Mahsamah's out of the world. These camps in desert places are ghastly. We shall be enforced hermits. Entraining, they could get the whole thing over in four days; this way it'll take fourteen. The weather's getting midsummer. The battalions have just had a fresh boot-issue. They'll be sore-footed and sick and sun-stricken. What's the game with Headquarters—to harden the men or impress the natives?

What's that to you? You've got to go, whatever garbled motives Headquarters may have. So get your supplies aboard, and your men, and leave in the morning.

So we found ourselves sweeping over the desert at 9 a.m., with tents and camp equipment in the guard's van and half a dozen trucks laden with supplies trailing behind. The sweet-water canal tore beside us, and patches of irrigated land emerged at intervals into the field of vision, and the low sand-dunes standing away towards Ismailia grew higher; and before the canal fir-groves could become more than a blur in the east we halted and got down, and had our trucks detached, and the train moved off canal-wards, and we set about looking for a site on which to build.

And there was no time to waste. The first flight had left Tel-el-Kebir that morning, and any moment their advance-guard might loom up on the heat-hazed horizon and come in soliciting grub.

A permanent camp of Royal Engineers close at hand lent a fatigue. By three o'clock the virgin depÔt was well established.

At four, through a cloud of dust, the advance-party (mostly Staff Officers on horseback) rode in very hot and very thirsty. Brigade Majors boast a thirst at any time and in any weather. Aggravated now, it had first to be assuaged. The Battalion of Pioneers who followed us by train had mapped out the plan of camp on paper, and now proceeded to conduct battalions; for they followed close in the heels of their staffs, dusty and sweating under their packs, and dragging a weary way through the yielding sand. Lucky Majors rode, and surveyed their perspiring men from the cool and luxurious height of a horse. The battalions plumped down in the sand and the sun where they stood. The camel-trains followed, plonking along with their flat-spreading feet and aspiring noses and loads of ration, blankets, tents, tables, and general camp impedimenta. Their Indian "dravees" led them by the nose. They gurgled with the heat, and foundered on very slight provocation indeed.

By five the whole flight is established in bivouac lines. For a couple of hours there is feverish bustle at the supply depÔt. Half the issuing is carried out by lamp-light. The battalions settle down to sleep with the sun, and there is little energy left for horse-play, though there is a good deal of singing, and even concerts improvised.

But the whole camp is quiet by nine; the men are sleeping in the sand under the moon; there are no lights except in the two tents erected for Staff Officers.

You're wakened at four the next morning by the camp astir, to be off at sunrise. But they have their ration, and you don't get up, but thank Heaven you're a part of no flight.

A part of nothing—for the moment. That's the beauty of this mission. You're subject to nobody. You've brought your own supplies, built your own depÔt, and can dictate to Staff Captains and Colonels and to all the tin-hats who may approach you for ration. A supply officer is deeply respected, ex-officio. Though he be a mere Subaltern, it is known he holds the distribution of fleshly favours. The officer drawing ration who is incivil is in danger of being the worse for it; only the respectful get baksheesh.

The Fortress Company of Anglesey Engineers camped permanently, who had lent an emergency fatigue, turned out to be a boon and a blessing. It took less time than usual to penetrate the admirable English reticence surrounding their companionable qualities. The penetration began with a neighbourly invitation to their regimental sports, held conjointly with those of a detachment of Hyderabad Lancers camped at Mahsamah for patrol purposes. They united in a half-day's competition in foot-racing, football, jumping, tug-o'-war, cycle-racing, and the rest of the athletics common to Indians and Britishers. Beside, the Hyderabads gave exhibitions in horseback-wrestling, tent-pegging, cleaving the lime at the gallop, and allied exercises, in which Englishmen do not compete. The Captain of the Lancers was a young Indian aristocrat who spoke English faultlessly, and was a regular and interesting member of the Anglesey mess.

The English gentlemen who drew him and the Supply Officer were in no way roughened by a six months' campaign at Suvla Bay. Gordon was an Irishman from Trinity College, Dublin, who had preceded his course in engineering by reclining in Arts three years and browsing richly and refraining resolutely from cram—an engineer balanced ideally between the world of mere mathematical horse-sense and a gentle other-worldliness, and rich in a fitful and whimsical Irish humour that was good to live with; a man devoted to duty (when any was put in his way, which was seldom), otherwise exercising himself genially upon self-appointed surveys, geological rambling, artful shooting, photography, and banter. No tongue in the mess was a match for his; he emerged from argument with ease and credit always, and left his opponents floundering. A fearless, tender-hearted, courteous Irish gentleman, modest to the point of self-effacement and able to the point of genius. His mother was a friend of Edward Dowden and his circle, and Gordon had in store a rich fund of anecdote relating to academical Dublin.

The Medical Officer—"Doc," familiarly—was a Scotchman with a burr and a subtle uncaledonian quality of humour, and a sparkling intellectuality quite out of harmony with the traditional Scotch lumbering cerebration. Doc was lovable; and a butt through his popularity, though not a butt who took it lying down. But he was never a match for Gordon, though he usually routed the Captain—also a Scotchman—whose hobby was the facetious discussion of ways and means to getting a competent M.O. attached. The Doc's duties were purely nominal, the care of any who might fall victims amongst the Angleseys to toothache, boils, vermin, colds, gashes—any ills, in short, to which men in a desert camp might be liable. For the rest, he shot with the mess, dawdled with "films," perused his Scotch newspapers, improvised schemes in sanitation, dabbled in canal parasites and mosquito larvÆ, and forged jokes.

Seymour was a highly-intelligent animal (taking seven-and-five-eighths in hats), who argued with a kind of implacable ferocity, and when he sat down to bridge would never stop before two or three. But all his argument was for mental exercise and not from conviction, and his fiercest encounters were wont to end in a thrust of bathos at which the mess roared. He was a fine intellectual and physical animal, as keen in riding and shooting and bathing as in dialectic.

The Captain was a diminutive, ceremonious Scotchman, commanding deference out of doors, bullied to death in the mess by his Subalterns. The contrast between out- and indoors was striking. The last letter of the law in discipline and ceremony was observed outside the mess, but at table no Australian officers' mess was ever more informal. Barriers of rank were thrown down, and none but surnames tolerated by the least even unto the greatest.

That mess was as luxuriously appointed as a civilian home. Easy-chairs, writing-tables, messing-tables and their appointments, punctilious servants, matted floors, made one forget for a few hours daily that a war was in progress. For the man who makes himself at home on service you are commended to the English officer. And in a permanent camp such as this he excelled himself. Eating was delicate, glass and silver shone and prevailed. Hours for meals were late and irregular: breakfast at 8.30; lunch light, and at any time; dinner at any hour between 8 and 9.30, and long-drawn-out, so that you generally rose from table between 10 and 11, and sat back for pow-wow after.

It was a rare day there was not game in the mess. Adjoining the sweet-water canal was a lagoon, reed-fringed and with reed-islands where you could row a mile and believe yourself in Australia; no sand to be seen. Three times a week we shot. There were duck and snipe and teal. The Sheikh of the village furnished half a dozen shot-guns and as many boats and boatmen, and came himself, carrying a gun (and proud he was of his shooting—and justly so).

One man one skiff was the order. We would set out at 4.30, after tea, and return at 8. The danger was to forget the duck in the still beauty of the evening. As you watched the reddening west over the reeds, the birds coming across the ruddy ground would recall you to business. Shooting was easy, so we got a lot. The place was untrammelled. Except for an occasional General who came up for a day's sport (the Staff had got to know the Mahsamah Lagoon), there was little shooting done, and the water had not yet become a scare-area. The Sheikh did a little on his own account. The underlings he provided knew their work, and would ejaculate and advise in Arabic: Talihena! Bakaskeen kebir! (snipe—big one!)—in a hoarse, excited whisper, as the birds rose on the breeze. Aywah, you mutter, making ready. They would strip and go into the reeds waist-deep for birds fallen there. Quaiys kiteer! (fine), greeted a hit; and if you missed, a consolatory Malish! (never mind), Bukrah (perhaps to-morrow), uttered with a gentle ironical intonation. Rowing back there was always baksheesh in cigarettes or cartridges—or both; and some, with their skins wet and muddied from wading, deserved it. Some did not.

The natives fished the lagoon systematically with nets, at night. You encountered them as you pursued duck. They regularly exported crates of fish to Cairo and Zagazig. When the nets were spread they would "beat-up" the fish with tomtoms in the boats. You might hear their solitary cries and their rhythmic tattoo on the water all night.

They fished with lines, too—to order. If you gave them an order at the camp for a dozen they would have them back in half an hour, wriggling on a string. They were proud of their craft, and would throw you a triumphant glance, as who should say, "Let's see you do that!"

The Arab village lay on the banks of the canal. Comely villagers they were, with well-featured women and men with a continent, contented air, living by fishing or growing of crops. The camera they funked, and that distinguished them from the raucous, dissolute denizens of Cairo, who delight to ape attitudes for the photographer. They showed all the best qualities of the fellaheen. There was no obsequiousness in the men, as in the capital. There is no crowd more cowardly and villainous than the Cairene mob. But the men at Mahsamah, when the sojourning Australians attempted to commandeer their canal-ferry, pushed them incontinently into the stream. This was conduct unprecedented in the Egyptian. A town-and-gown fight ensued. Skulls were cracked, and the Australians had by no means the better of it. There was a dash of the old fighting Bedouin blood in these fellows. There was to be no bullying here; and there was none.

Only the station-master had forfeited his independence of spirit. He alone of the whole village was in habitual contact with "the public." It had wrought in him a fawning plausibility the more contemptible by its contrast with the sturdiness of the surrounding natives. He lied by habit; the fictitious way was more natural with him than the way of truth. In official dealings he lied first, and afterwards modified it into truth. Regardless of consistency, he said invariably what he thought would please. Railway time-tables with him varied with the estimated temper of the inquirer. This seems incredible, but it is true. He was the only village inhabitant who ever invited you to take coffee; and he (the potentially dignified station-master) alone, in all the village, was ever known to solicit baksheesh—an oily, yellow, perennially-smiling, small-bodied, altogether small-souled railway-official, in him seemed incarnated the slavish spirit of officialdom in all Egypt.

Bathing in the Canal was forbidden along its whole length. There lurked a parasite that played Old Harry with livers. It ravaged the natives in rare cases, though, having drunk and washed in the canal from infancy, a sort of immunity was claimed for them. But there were victims to the parasite to be seen amongst them—no pretty sight.

A favourite walk at sundown was the canal-bank. The reed-shot lagoon on the east, traversed by sporadic, crying duck; the gentle wind, blowing warm off the Libyan Desert, drifting the silent dhow; a solitary fellaheen on his ambling beast; an Arab doing his devotions in the tiny praying-crib on the water's brink; the west darkening behind the palm-tufts over the illimitable sand. There was a peace here little known in our other halting-places in the Delta.