zereba, and so with the electric battery.

"It's a sight of trouble we have taken to resave the inimy, and it will
be mighty onpolite of him if he doesn't come at all," said Grady.

"I don't believe there's any Arabs about these parts," said Macintosh;
"they air all together at Matammeh, or else before Khartoum."

"You think yourself very clever, no doubt," said Corporal Adams,
indignantly. "But do you suppose that the captain would have taken all
this trouble without good information?"

"Nay, but with all due respect to the captain, and the colonel, and the
general, and yersel', too, corporal," said Macintosh, "the reports they
have acted upon are native reports, and they may be good, and they may
be bad, they may be honest, and they _may_ want to get detachments sent
aboot to weaken the force at Gubat."

"Well, I think you are very presumpterous," said the corporal, "very
presumpterous indeed, to suppose your superior officers can be took in
by a lot of Johnnies that you can see through. They may attack us or
they may not, seeing how ready we are for them; but they are
somewhere's, you may take a haveadavy."

As everybody is generally somewhere, it was difficult to contradict this
statement. Besides it is imprudent for a private to contradict a
corporal, who has many ways of making himself disagreeable or the
reverse. So the prudent Scot acquiesced.

"Well, I am a paceable boy meself, and hate fighting," said Grady.

"But still it seems a pity to make such iligant fortifications and not
to thry them. Is there not sinse in that, now, Kavanagh?"

"I don't know about sense, but there's a lot of human nature in it,"
replied Kavanagh. "I know I learned to box when I was a lad, and was
never happy until I had a turn up to try my skill without the gloves.
And a jolly good licking I got for my pains."

"To be sure!" cried Grady. "And if ye get a new knife ye want to cut
something with it, or a new gun ye must be after shooting with it; and
so on with anything at all. And now we have got the fortifications one
is a thrifle curious to know if the Johnnies could get into them."

I don't know whether many of the company wanted to be attacked, or,
indeed, if any did, but certainly there was a restlessness about them.
They listened all day for firing in the direction of Matammeh, some
lying down with their ears to the ground to hear the farther. But all
was still as the desert only can be, and the great battle