staff of General Sir Gerald Graham in the desert.

The seven months in the desert were months of waiting--monotonous,
deadening waiting. The greatest difficulty of that period of waiting
was the water supply. We were served out with a pint of water a day.
Water for washing was out of the question. Our laundry method was a
kind of optical illusion. We took our flannel shirts, rolled them up
as tightly as possible, tied them with strings, and then thumped them
laboriously with the butt end of a rifle; then they were untied,
shaken out, brushed, and they were ready for use. Most of this was a
make-believe laundry, but the brushing was real. Being attached to the
General Staff, I had a little more leeway in the comforts of life, but
it was mighty little.

Off in the hills, ten miles distant, was encamped the black horde
under Osman Digna, and every night of the seven months the Arabs kept
up small-arm firing upon us. Sometimes they were bold enough to make
an approach in a body in the darkness, but we had powerful electric
lights that could search the desert for miles. We got accustomed to
this after a while, and would simply lie prostrate while the light was
turned on them. Of course, the searching of the desert with the
electric lights was always accompanied with the levelling of our
artillery on whatever the light revealed. Not very much destruction
was accomplished on either side, however. Occasionally a stray bullet
would carry off one of our men in his sleep. Sometimes these naked
savages would stealthily creep in upon our sentries and with their
sharp knives would overpower them and mutilate them in an
indescribable manner.

To prevent this, we laid dynamite mines in front of our encampments. I
watched, late one afternoon, the young engineer officer as he
connected the wires for the night--perhaps his hand trembled as he
made connections, or perhaps some mistake was made. Anyway, there was
an explosion. Great masses of desert sand shot into the air like a
cloud, and when it fell again, the mangled body of the engineer fell
with it; but the mines were laid, connections made for the night, just
the same, by another engineer.

At other places we had broken bottles fixed in the sand, for the black
men came barefooted, and they were more seared by broken bottles in
the sand than they were by the musketry fire.

A night of great excitement was that of the capturing of some of our
mounted scouts in a sortie near the