orse still, thirsty, for there are no more to be had.

Most of those who took part in it will remember that trek when others are
forgotten. Rations were short, forage was short, everything was short,
especially the ropes by which the horse-buckets were lowered into the
wells; which last remark perhaps needs explanation.

All journeys in the desert are regulated by the distances between wells,
which may be twenty, thirty, and sometimes more miles apart. At some of
them we found the old-fashioned "shadouf," or native pump, which, clumsy
though it was, helped matters considerably.

Usually, however, we had to rely on horse-buckets, and it was any odds that
our ropes were too short to reach the surface of the water. The experienced
driver would take a rein to the well with him, for lengthening purposes if
necessary, but often some unfortunate wight, having found his rope two or
three inches too short, would be seen struggling to hold his thirsty horses
with one hand while with the other he endeavoured to unfasten his belt to
make up the extra inches.

It was a maddening business, this watering the horses. Poor brutes! They
would come in after a long day's trek, on short rations, with often a
twenty-four hours' thirst to quench, and then have to stand round a well
and wait perhaps for hours!

Even the quietest of them began to fidget and strain at their head-ropes
the moment they scented the water.

As for the mules, there was simply no holding them. On one occasion--it was
after a forty-mile march--a mule, frantic with thirst, broke away from his
owner, and in a desperate attempt to get to the water, fell headlong down
the well! A crowd of infuriated soldiers, with drag-ropes and everything
that wit of man could devise, laboured for hours to get him out, while
their comrades, equally infuriated, held anything up to a dozen animals
apiece and made strenuous efforts to prevent them from following his
deplorable example.

[Illustration: NATIVE MARKET AT MERSA MATRUH. [_To face p. 16_.]

But, if the watering difficulty was the worst of our troubles, the shortage
of forage was almost as bad, for the meagre ration of grain was about as
satisfying to the horses and mules as Alfred Lester's famous caraway seed
was to him.

The mules were the worst; they were insatiable. They ate the head-ropes
that fastened them to the horse-lines, and the incensed picket spent half
the night chasing them and tying them up again with what