gar!" cried Smith.

"And how about Richardson, your rear rank man, who got the same bullet
which spoilt your bottle into his body, and died in pain that evening?
I suppose you would rather _his_ water-bottle had been hit and _your_
inwards!"

Tarrant busied himself in stuffing and lighting his pipe, and made no
reply.

"Well, for my part, I hope we shall have a cut in at Matammeh to-
morrow," said Kavanagh, "so as to get on up the river at once."

"Aye, I hope we may," echoed half a dozen voices in chorus.

"Gordon and the poor chaps with him must be pretty well sick of waiting
to be relieved, hemmed in all the time by those blood-thirsty savages."

"Eh, but it must have been bad last March, when our people won the
victory at Tamai, and they thought at Khartoum that they were coming
across to them," said Macintosh.

"And then to hear they had gone awa again, and left them without a bit
of help but themselves."

"Sure, won't they be glad when they hear our guns!" cried Grady. "And
won't they come out and tackle the naygurs that have been bothering them
on the one side, while we pitch into them on the other! We'll double
them up and destroy them entoirely."

"I doubt if we go at Matammeh before we get reinforcements," said
Macintosh.

"And what will we want with reinforcements?" asked Grady; "haven't we
bate the inimy into fiddle-strings already?"

"Yes, if they only knew it," said Kavanagh.

"But they seem to take a lot of persuading before they own themselves
beaten."

"They do, the poor ignorant creatures," said Grady, reflectively. "And
we can't kill the lot of 'em, which is what they seem to want; they are
too many."

"If there _is_ a big fight in a day or two we shan't be in it," said
Corporal Adams, who had come up in time to hear the end of the
conversation.

"The orders are out, and our company has got to go ten miles off to-
morrow."

"Only our company, corporal?"

"That's all detailed in orders."

"And does it say what for?"

"It does not; rikkernottering most like. But you will hear them read
presently."

That was done, and Corporal Adams was quite correct. This particular
company was ordered to take a certain amount of ammunition both for
mouth and rifle, and march out in a certain specified direction. If
they found water they were to make a zereba, or otherwise entrench
themselves and remain until further orders; if not, they were to return
at once. There was a little disa