a
firm grasp on the essentials. We felt justified in relaxing somewhat our
usual vigilance and spent a peaceful night. Long before dawn, however,
the cavalry had moved off with uncanny speed and quietness, and
surrounded el Arish before daylight, after a brilliant ride over
unknown, unmapped, and very difficult country in the dark. Within the
next few days they attacked the Turks at Maghdaba and Rafa--each thirty
miles from el Arish--inflicting heavy defeats and capturing many
prisoners in each case. The story of all this has been well told by Mr.
Massy in _The Desert Campaigns_. But the unhappy infantry had of
necessity to be left out.

One great service the cavalry invasion did render us. The Australian
light horseman has the bump of acquisitiveness even better developed
than the Lowland infantryman, and having a horse on which he can hang
his trophies he can give this penchant greater scope. But when he is
going into action--or believes himself to be--he unhesitatingly
sacrifices all that will incommode him in the serious business of war.
In consequence the ground recently vacated appeared at dawn to our
astonished eyes covered with a litter of discarded possessions. When
_we_ moved camp it was our honourable custom to pick up and burn or bury
every tin, every fragment of paper and every match and cigarette end and
to leave the desert swept and garnished as we found it--or better. So
our first thought was one of scandalised amazement at the extreme
untidiness of the business. Our next was less disinterested. We were on
mobile rations, bully, biscuit, milk and jam. Vegetables and the "wee
piece ham" had disappeared. Surely Australians did not live like that.
Nor were we disappointed. Foraging parties returned laden with sides of
bacon, cheese, bread, Maconochies, sacks of onions and dessicated
vegetables, enough to make us quite certain of a full meal on Christmas
Day, so long as we did not move in the interval. Nor was this all.
Folding benches and tables, matting and bivouac poles, frying pans and
canvas buckets, books and tobacco, a watch and even a real live horse
were discovered--all the things which stand for wealth among such a
primitive tribe as we then were. It is rumoured that hot and blasphemous
Australian Quartermaster-Sergeants rode back that evening to retrieve
some of their property. Well, they did not find it all. People who like
bacon shouldn't leave it lying in deserts in front of hungry Scotchmen.