rightly, fresh meat and bread for one day, and the
remaining two bully-beef and biscuits; in any case we certainly did not
starve. Watering was rather more difficult, particularly just now, for the
Bedouins, who somehow manage to exist in this barren land, were very fond
of tampering with the pipe-line and then fading quietly away, with the
result that exasperated engineers were dashing up and down with white lead
and repairing tools, so that water was generally unobtainable from this
source.

The trouble was that although the main was covered up, the continual
movement of the sand left it exposed to the tender mercies of these
Bedouins. Later, the engineers gathered scrub from the surrounding desert
and replanted it in the embankment covering the pipe, thus binding the
sand, and forming a firm and permanent barrier to future depredations. To
obviate the present difficulty, large cisterns were erected at most of the
stations on the line, and were fed from two-thousand gallon tanks brought
up from Kantara on the train. Always our first business at the end of a
day's trek was to ride away and look for the railway station, with its one
solitary hut and the half-dozen tents occupied by the water-guard.

I have ventured to mention these details in order to show how very
carefully the move across the desert of even one small unit, especially a
mounted unit, had to be planned out from beginning to end, if it was to
have rations and water in the right place at the right time; the least
hitch and men had to go foodless for a day or even longer.

At Pelusium we had an exciting moment: the country hereabouts consists of a
series of hillocks from behind one of which, without the slightest warning,
reared up a monster of grotesque shape emitting unseemly noises.
Simultaneously the horses reared up and made a spirited attempt to return
to home and friends, and it was not until the turmoil had subsided a little
that we realised what this uncouth beast was.

It was a Tank.

We had been mightily intrigued by hearing of the appearance in France of
these monstrous engines of war, but as a cloud of secrecy hung over all
their movements, had never up to that moment seen one. Those used on this
front were much smaller than their French relations, and were as a matter
of fact a comparative failure in Palestine. Whether the sand was too much
for them, or the rough country over which they had to operate, I do not
know, but after the third