hrown
out--there was no rest from the maddening motion until a merciful
unconsciousness brought relief to the tortured body.

By means of cunningly placed blankets the medical authorities did all that
was humanly possible to mitigate the terrible jolting, but with all their
care and ingenuity even the shortest journey in a cacolet was a nightmare.

The miracle was that even the uninjured men could endure so much. One
could--and did--live on bully-beef and biscuits for weeks at a time and
take no harm, provided one could get water. But the Turks had a habit of
poisoning the wells as they retreated, and the most stringent orders had
therefore to be issued, forbidding men to drink of water unexamined by a
medical officer. It was pitiful to see the horses, too, after two or three
days' hard riding, watered perhaps once in all that time; for the lightest
driver or cavalryman, with his equipment, rides at least eleven stone, a
heavy burden to carry over the sand in the heat.

Out of such troubles was the victory of Romani won. It meant that a few
more miles of railway could be built; that the wire road could go forward
once more; that the pipe-line could carry onward its precious freight; and
that the Canal was safe.

Of like nature, too, were the victories at Bir El Abd, where the Turks held
on to their positions with such extraordinary tenacity that it was
literally touch-and-go which side retreated; but those dour Scotchmen could
take a deal of hammering, and the Turks had to go in the end; at Mazar, at
Maghdaba, and at Rafa, on the border, where the Turkish dream of an Ottoman
Egypt was shattered for ever. So they retreated into Palestine, with the
shadow of yet a greater cataclysm upon them.

This, then, was the work accomplished by those early pioneers, and scarcely
the half of it has been told. Let those who sat in their arm-chairs in
England demanding querulously what we were doing in Egypt judge of their
achievement.

They marched and toiled and fought--a few scattered, solitary graves mark
the places where some of them lie buried. If they fought only in their
thousands and not in their tens of thousands, the reason is simple: in all
the peninsula between Kantara and El Arish the wells may be numbered on the
fingers, and before an army can be used, its means of procuring food and
drink must be assured. Water did not exist in sufficient quantities for a
big army, nor was there any transport available for food. Dy