horities
apparently washed their hands of the whole affair and forgot all about us.
For six weeks we waited at a siding which seemed to be ashamed to look a
train in the face. Certainly we never saw one approach it, and we kept a
careful look-out for fear we should miss one.

On our arrival we did not, of course, make a camp, believing that we should
entrain in a day or two at most. But as day followed day and no train
appeared we began to think that this was a joke in deplorable taste. Why,
after working for six months like niggers are supposed to work making a
comfortable camp, should we be taken therefrom, dumped down on an
inhospitable siding and forgotten? It was not playing the game; and a
sinister rumour spread that we were not going north after all but were to
be sent down the Red Sea to the assistance of the Cherif of Mecca, who was
having a little war on his own account.

We knew what that meant. The assisting force would be sent to some
evil-smelling native town with an unpronounceable name, miles from
anywhere, left there to garrison the place and impress the inhabitants with
the might of British arms, while the Cherif and his wild horsemen charged
about the desert firing rifles in the air and emitting extraordinary yells
to frighten away the few stray, half-starved Turks in the vicinity. And the
prospect of travelling in a horse-boat down the Red Sea, even in November,
did not appeal to us in the least. However, tired of sleeping in culverts
and disused drains we pitched our camp on the top of a plateau overlooking
the Canal and prepared to await developments.

It was not unpleasant waiting, for there was the daily bathe in the Canal,
and the big ships and liners passing up and down seemed to bring us once
more in touch with civilisation. It used to be the kindly practice of the
passengers to throw tins of cigarettes and tobacco overboard whenever the
boat passed one of the numerous outposts guarding the Canal. It was quite
an ordinary occurrence for a man to dive in with all his clothes on and
swim after the coveted tins. Tobacco was so scarce that a mere wetting was
nothing; besides, our clothes were dry in an hour.

Also, we hunted the fox--or rather, jackal.

Now the Egyptian native undoubtedly looks on the British soldier as
"magnoon," afflicted of Allah, to be treated kindly, but to be relieved of
as much of his hard-earned pay as possible. And further, if the Faithful
are able to obtain something