Shortly after the return of the Fleet to Malta, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, who had been created Lord Alcester for his services in Egypt, returned to England, Vice-Admiral Lord John Hay having arrived to take over the Mediterranean Station as Commander-in-Chief, hoisting his flag in the Alexandra, with Captain Harry Rawson for his Flag-Captain and the Honourable Hugh Tyrrwhitt as Flag-Lieutenant. Hugh Tyrrwhitt, who had been in the Britannia during my time there, was one of my greatest friends. Alas! he died in 1907, and his death brought an untimely end to what was already a distinguished career in the Navy. Shortly before his death, when still only of the rank of Captain, he had been offered the Indian Command; ill-health compelled him to decline it, and he died shortly afterwards on board a steamer on his way to Egypt, to which country he had been ordered by his doctors. As a Captain he had held some very important posts, having been in turn Flag-Captain to Sir John Fisher, when Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean; had commanded the Renown when the present King paid a visit to India as Prince of Wales, and was subsequently Naval Private Secretary to Lord Cawdor when First Lord of the Admiralty.[119] Lord Cawdor brought his great experience of business (he had been a most successful Chairman of the Board of the Great Western Railway) to the service of his country, and was generally acknowledged, at any rate by the Navy, to have been one of the very best First Lords of his generation. He was far from being an advertising politician; but with his sound judgment and his great administrative capacity, his death was none the less a great loss to England. During his reign at the Admiralty it was several times my good fortune to meet him at little dinners given by Hugh Tyrrwhitt, at which Sir John Fisher and I were the other guests, and the amount of naval “shop” that was discussed in the course of one of these pleasant evenings is more easily imagined than described. The rest of my time in the Superb was uneventful enough, and we were all beginning to look forward to paying off and a little leave in England, when my personal plans were completely changed by the arrival of a very small craft, the Cockatrice by name, at Malta. This curious little river vessel had left her station up the Danube for a refit at Malta, and her first and only lieutenant having been invalided, the vacancy thus occurring was offered to me. I was rather curious to see something of the Balkan States, and anyhow it meant a very pleasant winter at Malta with only a tiny river craft to look after, instead of being a hard-worked watch-keeper on board an iron-clad. I was quite right about the winter at Malta; it was a very pleasant one. There happened to be some particularly nice visitors at Valetta, any work[120] connected with the repairs that were being executed by the Dockyard was easily got over in the forenoon, after which time I was as free as air, and ready to take part in anything going on that was likely to be amusing, whether ashore or afloat, for, having hired a little cutter yacht, I could take small parties round by sail to picnic at some of the interesting places outside the harbour, and, moreover, during that particular winter, the Opera Company was well above the average.
In the spring the Cockatrice had to get round to her headquarters on the Danube where she represented Great Britain on the Danube Commission. This Commission was a legacy from the Treaty of Paris, all the Signatory Powers having agreed to be represented by a stationnaire of some sort up the river, their main object being to see that the Russians did not divert the course of the stream, so that large steamers would be compelled to use the St. George’s mouths which emptied themselves into the Black Sea in Russian territory, instead of the Kilia mouths which debouched at Sulina.
A voyage from Malta to Constantinople was quite a serious undertaking for the little Cockatrice. So near the water were our scuttles (as the small windows which give light and air are called on board a man-of-war) that even up a river it was generally necessary to keep them closed, as the smallest ripple would splash water into them. This is only mentioned to give an idea of how unseaworthy a craft she was, and no blame to any one, as she was entirely designed[121] for river service. The elements were kind, and we never encountered anything more serious than a fresh breeze, and arrived at our first port of call, Constantinople, without a mishap of any kind. The Cockatrice was well known at Constantinople, as she went there regularly for a refit every year,—it was only on very rare occasions that she went to Malta. Our little ship was anchored at Kadikoi, which is over on the Asiatic side, and I was quickly introduced by my messmates to the pleasant Levantine Society that is the feature of that neighbourhood, and is so well described by Claude Farrère in L’Homme qui Assassina. We were most hospitably entertained by the occupants of the numerous villas, and the time passed very agreeably. Indeed, I found Kadikoi such a pleasant place that I believe I only once troubled to go over to Pera, and that was to attend a ball which was given at our Embassy and to which it was rather a matter of duty to go. I found diplomatic society, however exalted it might be, with “their Excellencies” and their “chers collègues” (for apparently not even the humblest member of a small Legation, is ever alluded to by a member of any other Legation, or Embassy, in any terms other than “Mon cher collègue”), very dull as compared with some of the humbler, but sometimes exceedingly attractive inhabitants of Kadikoi.
Our next move was through the Bosphorus, perhaps the most beautiful strait in the world, and up the Black Sea to Sulina, and thence up the river to Galatz, where we duly tied ourselves up, and[122] re-assumed our business as one of the line of stationnaires of the Signatory Powers.
The Danube, even as high up as Galatz, is certainly an imposing stream and is still some three or four miles in breadth. It was there that a large portion of the Russian Army crossed in the 1877-8 campaign, and a difficult operation it must have been. For the rest, it is only necessary to say that the town is, or was, thoroughly Oriental. One of the main roads ran parallel to the river bank, close to where we were secured, and to give an instance of the extreme Orientalism existing there, the following is a typical example. It used to interest us much to watch the numerous carts that passed along that thoroughfare, one and all in turn subsiding into an enormous hole in the road, day after day and month after month, for the simple reason that it never occurred to the Eastern mind to fill the hole up. The mosquitoes up the Danube have to be experienced to be realised, but their attentions were discounted by our mode of life, which consisted mainly in sleeping a considerable portion of the day and sitting up the greater part of the night. There was a small, but very hospitable, colony of English merchants there, and it became the invariable custom for a number of them to lunch on board every day. This was convenient, as the Cockatrice lay close to their places of business. After this early luncheon we used to drive up to their villas, which were situated on the further outskirts of the town, and there we settled down for the rest of the day. A prolonged siesta was the first opera[123]tion; a large, cool, dark room being infinitely preferable for that purpose than the stuffy little cabins on board the ship. After the siesta there would be a couple of hours strenuous lawn-tennis, then a very late dinner, and finally a prolonged visit to one of the music-halls of the town, which began their evening’s business about 11 p.m. and did not bring it to an end until any hour in the morning, and finally back to the ship for two or three hours’ sleep before the “labours” of the next day began.
While stationed at Galatz I took the opportunity of visiting Bucharest. I have never been there since; but in those days it was a most attractive little capital, somewhat like Brussels in appearance, with charming shady boulevards. There was an excellent hotel, and I was fortunate in being able to make the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. White, he being then our Consul-General there. I was fated to meet him later when Sir William White, British Ambassador at Constantinople. During his long tenure of office in the Turkish capital he succeeded in raising British prestige, which had woefully declined for some years, to a higher level than it probably had attained since the days of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the great Eltchi.
To spend a few months up the Danube was interesting enough, but life there soon began to get wearisome and unprofitable from a professional point of view, so I proceeded to cast about for a change. The only way that suggested itself was to apply to the Admiralty for permission to return to England, with the object of going through the long course at[124] Greenwich and Portsmouth, necessary for qualifying as a Gunnery Lieutenant. My Captain was good enough to support my application, so in the autumn of 1883 I found myself back at Greenwich again as one of a class of about a dozen lieutenants who were aspiring to become gunnery experts. I soon found out that I had mistaken my new profession. Most of my comrades were comparatively fresh from school, having only been at sea for one year, whereas I had five years’ service to my credit. I found that, after my long absence from anything in the way of school-work, high mathematics were no joke, and it seemed probable that when the examination time came, after labouring very hard at very uncongenial work, I should inevitably find myself at the bottom of my class. Consequently, I candidly admit that I was looking about for some fresh job all the time I was at Greenwich. Meanwhile, London was close by, and, feeling pretty sure that I should never get to the examination stage, I spent most of my time there, and only turned up at Greenwich for the lectures I was bound to attend.
One way and another I spent a very pleasant winter, and a good deal of it was passed at a very amusing little club that was established for a short time at 87, St. James’s Street, where whist was played for moderate points, and where, moreover, I met a number of very pleasant people. 87, St. James’s Street was then a very curious house and stood on the site of the new post-office buildings. Mr. Tom Wallace, the well-known wine merchant, occupied the basement. He was a conspicuous figure in London, especially in[125] St. James’s Street, for he was in the habit of sitting in a chair on the pavement in front of his business premises, smoking his cigar there, and exchanging courtesies with his large circle of friends, who were almost sure to pass that particular corner at some time in the morning or early afternoon.
On the ground floor there was a Starting Price Betting Office, one of the very first of its kind to be inaugurated in London, and on the first floor was the Whist Club before alluded to. I was accused of assisting the members of that institution to sit up till unconscionable hours, for when it got very late (or rather very early in the morning) the most reasonable thing for me to do, seemed to consist in sitting up until the first train could convey me to Greenwich in time for a mathematical lecture, and, naturally, I was not anxious to sit up alone, and play patience!
It was there that I first made the acquaintance of a lifelong friend of mine, Mr. Cecil Clay. He was one of the sons of the well-known Major Clay, who was for many years Radical Member for Hull, and was counted as the greatest living authority of his day on the science of whist. His son Cecil was a worthy successor to him; not only a fine player, he was, as he still is, a delightful man both as a companion and one of the wittiest of raconteurs. In those days he lived in a charming little house in Park Street, where I have certainly been to the most amusing Sunday luncheon parties that I can remember. Hostess and host were both the perfection of courtesy and kindness, and all the cleverest and most agreeable people in the[126] dramatic profession were to be met there. I will mention only two of the habitués—who, alas! have both passed away, but were then young and bubbling over with wit and gaiety—Herbert Tree and Charles Brookfield. They were both constant guests, and those of my contemporaries who were fortunate enough to have met them in their irresponsible youth, will remember what a pleasure it was to be with them, and to take a part in all the clever chaff that used to pass between them. But, somehow, this amusing life in London did not amalgamate very well with high mathematics, and it became more and more evident to me that a change would be welcome.
In February 1885 it became necessary to send a large force to Souakim. For this large force adequate sea-transport was needed, and to my great good fortune, a staunch friend of mine, Captain John Fellowes (subsequently Admiral Sir John Fellowes) was selected as head of it. The Admiralty could not possibly have chosen a better man. He was full of resource, full of the wisdom of the serpent, was a glutton for work himself, and had the knack of extracting the last ounce of work out of his subordinates. I lost no time in going to him, and he at once applied to the Admiralty asking that I should be appointed as one of the transport officers to serve under him. My relative, Lord Alcester, was back at the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, and once more I had to interview him in his stronghold. This time he really was annoyed. He pointed out that in one year I had been something like six different kinds of[127] Lieutenants, that the Admiralty had had enough of me, and I really believe (kindest of men though he was) that his principal reason for acceding to my request, and Captain Fellowes’ application, was the vague chance that, in the Red Sea, a severe sunstroke might settle me and my business for ever.
Having obtained my point, I was in the seventh heaven of delight, and before carrying out the first order I received from the Admiralty, which was to go over to Kingstown, I went to pay a farewell visit to my friends at 87, St. James’s Street. Tom Wallace, previously alluded to, assured me that he had made a close study of Egyptian warfare (I suppose from the strategic corner of St. James’s Street and Pall Mall!), and that it was absolutely essential that any officer called on to serve in that trying climate should be suitably equipped in the way of wine. So the kind man fitted me out then and there with six dozen of excellent champagne and three dozen of remarkably sound port, on the understanding that if I came back I might pay for it at my leisure, and, if anything untoward happened, it obviously would not matter to me and very little to him. Another kind friend insisted on my standing in with him in a bet he had taken on a horse which was expected to win the Grand National, so I started for Ireland feeling that anyhow my campaigning kit would compare favourably with that of any one else, consolidated as it was by nine dozen of wine and a bet on the great Steeplechase.
Another farewell visit that I paid was to the Transport Department of the Admiralty, where I tried to[128] glean some information about my duties. All I could get out of them was that, for the time being, I was appointed transport officer of the Lydian Monarch, a vessel that had been hired to convey a regiment of Lancers to Souakim or elsewhere, that I was to embark these troops at Kingstown, but when I tried to find out what authority was vested in me when on board a hired transport, nothing could I discover. In fact it was conveyed to me in a general way that my duties and responsibilities would solvitur ambulando, and with these vague directions I was obliged to be content.
To Kingstown I accordingly went in the night boat, and I must say that Ireland, which I was visiting for the first time, fully kept up its reputation for “divarsion,” for anything like the comicality of the scenes which I witnessed, when engaged next day in the embarkation of that distinguished Cavalry regiment, would need the pen of a Charles Lever to do them justice. On arriving on board the Lydian Monarch the first thing in the morning, I received a telegram from headquarters at Dublin, to the effect that a dismounted party would arrive from the barracks at 8 a.m. to make any further preparations which they might find necessary for the embarkation, and that the regiment would arrive about 11 a.m. About 9 a.m. the dismounted party arrived under the command of a very young subaltern. One of the first pieces of information of which I was in need, was whether the regiment was bringing lances or not. I had been told in London that they probably would not, but it was necessary to know, for they are very dangerous tools[129] on board a ship if not properly stowed. I well knew their propensities for getting in the way and putting people’s eyes out from my personal acquaintance with that ancient weapon, the boarding pike, which was still part of our equipment on a man-of-war. When neither the youthful subaltern in charge of the party, nor any of the men under his command, could provide me with this very elementary piece of information, I began to fear the worst, and rather expected that the embarkation would be attended with some few difficulties. About three-quarters of an hour after the appointed time the regiment arrived, and if I, and the sailors of the Lydian Monarch rocked with laughing at seeing so many drunken men, it was nothing to the rocking that the Lancers were doing in their saddles before they had been successfully dismounted. Being convinced that nothing in the way of work was to be expected from the men of the regiment, I succeeded in borrowing a working party of bluejackets from the guardship to help tie up the horses, which is always rather a ticklish business. We got on famously with our work for some time, but, unfortunately, there was so much whisky about that the bluejackets were, very soon, all more or less drunk too. By this time the day was closing in, we were anxious to sail before dark, and the situation was not particularly promising. The Military Authorities in Dublin had meanwhile been told how things were not progressing, and presently the Commander-in-Chief in Dublin and his Staff arrived on the scene. Fortunately the horses were at last all on board (poor brutes! some of them had been standing[130] with their saddles off in the snow for hours, for, in addition to our other difficulties, there was some inches of snow on the ground), and the next thing was to discover where the men of the regiment were. It was rumoured that a good many of them had left the immediate vicinity of the ship, and had wandered off, still being thirsty, to the numerous public-houses in the neighbourhood. Mercifully, a trumpeter, who was fairly sober, could be produced, and presently a swaying line of dismounted Lancers formed itself on the quay opposite the ship. There were a good many absentees, but the Commander-in-Chief decided to send the ship to sea, so away we went, and, in justice to a very fine regiment, I may mention that eventually the so-called absentees were all found on board the ship. One of them, I remember, did not turn up for three days, he having been buried during the whole of that time under a heap of kit bags, and when rescued was very much more dead than alive from a combination of suffocation and sea-sickness.
Unfortunately, there was a considerable clamour raised about what was described as a disgraceful scene, and the usual lurid descriptions were published of what really was a very trifling affair. The Commanding Officer had, perhaps, been a little over good-natured in letting his men out of barracks the night before they embarked, and very naturally the men had celebrated the occasion in the usual way. The rest was due to Irish hospitality, and to the sentiment that existed in those days in an Irish mob (a sentiment which, alas! owing to politicians of all[131] kinds, exists no longer)—the love of the Irish for a soldier, especially if he happened to be an Irish cavalryman.
By way of making the story of the embarkation more sensational still, some enterprising Dublin journalist calmly took upon himself to sink the Lydian Monarch with all hands a few hours afterwards in the Irish Channel, and, as it did happen to blow very heavily at the time, a good deal of pain and anxiety was caused to those who had relatives and friends on board her. However, this lie was contradicted pretty soon, and we had the pleasure, on arriving at Souakim, of hearing that the delinquent had been imprisoned for circulating a mischievous story for which there was no foundation. We, out there, thought that hanging was much too good for him; but on reflection it was probably only a sense of dramatic fitness that impelled him to start the rumour, and, moreover, people have no right to believe any sort of rumour when a war is on, not more than one in a hundred being ever well founded.
We had hardly got fairly started on our journey before we picked up a real gale in the Channel, and I very soon discovered what fine material there was in the regiment. The ship was rolling very heavily, and nearly all the officers and men were prostrated with sea-sickness, and, moreover, had not yet found their sea-legs. As far as the crew was concerned, like all merchant ships, she only carried just enough men to do the necessary duties connected with the ship, and had certainly none to spare to look after[132] the cargo, so it fell to the lot of two or three of the officers of the regiment, and perhaps half-a-dozen non-commissioned officers, who had managed to overcome their sea-sickness, and myself (because I had nothing else to do), to look after the horses. A great many had been cast in their stalls, owing to the very amateur fashion in which they had been tied up, and it was no light job to get the poor struggling animals on to their legs again and secure them properly with the ship rolling heavily. It was an all-night business; those few soldiers worked like heroes, and I, though I knew little about horses, could make myself useful, for a sailor does know how to tie a knot. It was therefore to the credit of all concerned that we never lost a horse at the time, though later on a few succumbed to violent pneumonia, brought on, I suppose, by the sudden change from severe cold to the appalling heat of the horse deck.
Two of the officers who did such good work all through that night I still occasionally meet. One was Captain Wenjy Jones, a fine horseman and a well-known owner of race-horses, and the other, then Lieutenant Sinclair, having retired from the Army and adopted a political career, after commencing as Assistant Private Secretary to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, is now Lord Pentland. He has, in his time, occupied several important posts, and has lately returned to England after serving his country for seven years as Governor of Madras.
It was not until we had nearly reached Gibraltar that the gale abated, and we were able to settle down[133] in comparative comfort and take stock of our surroundings. When the weather was fine enough our precious horses were walked up inclined platforms to the upper deck, where they could get some light and air, and where, moreover, the men had room to groom them. They certainly needed strapping, for, having left Ireland as hairy as polar bears, and been suddenly translated into a warm climate, they literally shed their coats in handfuls.
On arriving at Port Said, I was set one of the most disagreeable tasks that ever came my way. Owing to the ridiculous fuss that had been made about the embarkation at Kingstown, the War Office Authorities were seized with one of their occasional spasmodic fits of virtue, and suddenly found it necessary to hold an inquiry into the conduct of the two Lieutenant-Colonels of the regiment; one having been left behind with one wing, while the other was commanding the portion ordered on active service. I received a telegram from the Admiralty ordering me to land the Lieutenant-Colonel in command, so I found myself in the position of having to go to a man who was old enough to be my father, much my superior in rank, and who had actually served in the Crimea, and tell him that he was to leave the ship. Whatever may have been his merits or demerits, it always seemed to me that he was treated with the grossest discourtesy by the Authorities, in his position of an officer commanding the wing of a regiment ordered on active service, and on the eve of taking the Field. Naturally, I had to obey orders, and landed he was, but I have[134] always wondered whether he was not wrong to take such an order from a junior officer belonging to another service, and whether he would not have been wiser to ignore such an irregular communication altogether, and to have gone to Souakim with the troops under his orders.
A few days afterwards the Lydian Monarch arrived at Souakim and the regiment disembarked, and a very fine show they made. The officers and men were, of course, delighted to be quit of the ship, and to be on active service, and the horses, thanks to the fact that we had been able to move them about, were in wonderful condition, considering that they had been cooped up on board for the major part of three weeks.
Having now arrived safely at Souakim and delivered the goods entrusted to my charge in the shape of the regiment, it may be convenient to say something of that almost forgotten campaign, the Souakim Expedition of 1885. The more it is considered in the cold light of history, or from what remains in the memory of a spectator and humble participant, the more absolutely am I convinced that, to use a modern expression, the whole Expedition was designed to be nothing but political “eye-wash.” The fact is the public were extremely indignant at the fall of Khartoum and the death of Gordon. Their indignation was considerably, if illogically, accentuated by the harmless fact that the Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, had gone to the theatre the very night the news of Gordon’s death was received. Lord Salisbury, in the course of a debate[135] on the announcement that the Government had decided to break the power of the Mahdi, had stated, what certainly looked to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth,—namely, “that Gordon had been sacrificed to the squabbles of a Cabinet and the necessities of Party Politics.” And what probably decided the dispatch of the Expedition, more than anything else, was the fact that a few days afterwards the Government only escaped defeat on a vote of censure on the Soudan policy, moved by Sir Stafford Northcote, by the narrow margin of fourteen votes. Altogether, things were not going at all happily for the Government, and so “eye-wash” of some kind was absolutely necessary, and I believe that those of us who were left till the last, save for the troops that remained to garrison the town of Souakim, one and all realised that nothing had ever been intended, and that all our labour and hardship had been only to keep a tottering Government in power for a little while longer. It is easy to show that nothing was intended, for exactly twelve months before, in March 1884, the hot weather had compelled the withdrawal of the troops from Souakim, although the route to Berber was then open; yet the Authorities were commencing an Expedition and sending troops from England at exactly the same time of the year at which they had brought a half-finished campaign to a close, with troops on the spot, only one year before! Of course, if, in the course of the fighting that would be sure to take place round about Souakim, Osman Digna’s men could be badly beaten and Osman himself captured, then[136] they might reasonably assume that the Expedition had not been in vain, but it was pretty well known that Osman was an extremely elusive person, and anything but a likely captive. But enough has been said of the political emergencies of the moment and the sordid details connected with them. A British Army just taking the Field forms a far purer and more attractive spectacle.
As soon as the various transport officers arrived with the troops that had been put under their charge, they were employed entirely in duties connected with the port. We were about eight all told, under the orders of Captain Fellowes, Principal Naval Transport Officer, Commodore More Molyneux being the Senior Naval Officer who was in command of a squadron of small ships mainly drawn from the East Indian Station. We slept and messed on board a British India boat that had brought troops from India and had been reserved for the purpose, but except for a certain amount of sleep and extremely regular meals, we were never on board her. Captain Fellowes, and his Second in Command, Commander Morrison, who had commanded the Helicon at Alexandria and had been promoted, directed our labours. Two of the lieutenants did the work of harbour masters and brought the transports in and out of the coral reefs that formed the passage into the little harbour of Souakim. Their work was never-ending, from the time the sun was well up until shortly before nightfall. Even they, with all their skill and experience, could not take ships in and out when the sun was low, for the[137] conning of the ships had to be done entirely by eye, and when a low sun was glimmering on the water it became impossible to see the edges of the reef; and on the rare occasions when, owing to the great pressure of work, it was necessary to go on when the sun was setting, we were almost invariably faced with a ship ashore on the reef, and a long day’s work with tugs would ensue, to grind her off.
The rest of us were in charge of gangs of natives who did the work of unloading stores and of landing all sorts of transport animals, from camels to the little Indian bullocks that had been sent for the Indian transport. We toiled from sunrise to sunset under a blazing sun, and it was certainly a strenuous life. Nevertheless, I personally enjoyed my time immensely up to the moment when it began to dawn upon me that the whole Expedition was an imposture, and that the more stuff we landed the more we should have to re-embark again. The gang of which I usually had charge consisted of Egyptian prisoners, who were daily marched down to their work by an armed party of Turkish soldiers. I used to love the procedure of the armed guard. Being practical men and also remarkably lazy ones, the men of the guard invariably made the prisoners carry their rifles!
Shortly after our arrival I succeeded in annexing a stray pony which I found wandering about the beach, apparently belonging to no one in particular. At the same time I secured the services of a beach-comber in the shape of a retired soldier, also found on the beach, and him I made my groom.[138] There was any amount of forage littered about, so with a pony tethered to my tent and a man to look after him, I could always, when there was a spare moment, ride out to the lines and see what was going on.
On the 20th March, a very few days after we arrived at Souakim, General Sir Gerald Graham, who was Commander-in-Chief, ordered a reconnaissance on Hashin to be made in force, Hashin being a collection of huts about seven and a half miles from Souakim. I managed to get a day’s leave and rode out with my friends of the 5th Lancers, but as my pony was not capable of keeping up with the big English horses of the Lancers, I left them after a short time and attached myself to the Guards’ Brigade, amongst whose officers I had various friends. Inside the Guards’ square I found General Lord Abinger, who had commanded a battalion of the Scots Fusilier Guards in the Crimea; he had contrived to come out to Souakim, and had ridden out to be with his old regiment. Another friend of mine in that square, as a spectator, was Lieutenant Alfred Paget, who was serving on board a gun-vessel in the harbour. He, like myself, had got a day’s leave to go out and see the fun, and had attached himself to the Scots Guards, in which regiment his brother, now General Sir Arthur Paget, was serving. At one time it looked as if there was going to be a real action, for some 150 Soudanese, with the greatest gallantry, charged the Guards’ Brigade. Naturally, the fire with which they were received was more than they could stand, and those who were not shot down bolted and[139] fled. It seemed to the spectator that the action was somewhat futile, for though some zeriba posts were established, the works were dismantled again, the place was abandoned a few days afterwards, and, as far as the day was concerned, the force having marched some seven miles out were marched back again, and we reached our base about six in the evening.
There were a certain number of casualties from what I judged to be long-range rifle fire, and, packed as the square was with transport, it presented a wonderful target even to very inferior marksmen. As Lord Abinger remarked at the time: “he had often heard of men shooting so badly that they could not hit a haystack, but nobody could miss a farm-yard.”
Two days afterwards the action known as McNeill’s Zareba was fought. I was not able to see anything of it. At the time it became a source of much controversy, but anyhow it was not altogether without results. For though we lost an enormous number of transport animals, 900 camels alone being killed, the Soudanese lost very heavily, over 1000 bodies being left on the field.
We laboured on throughout the rest of the months of March and April, landing stores, now supplemented by the necessary materials for the much-discussed Souakim to Berber Railway. Some advance was made with that railway; at one time it reached as far as Otao, eighteen miles from the base, but when, early in May, Lord Wolseley arrived on the scene, it became apparent to us all that the end was approaching.[140] Gradually the navvies were withdrawn and sent back to England; many store ships, with railway material that, mercifully, had not been unloaded, were sent home. The Commander-in-Chief left on the 17th of May, and by the end of that month all the troops, with the exception of the Berkshire Regiment and a few Indian troops, who were left behind to garrison Souakim, had departed.
Captain Royle, in his book on the Egyptian Campaigns 1882 to 1899, mentions in a footnote that Osman wrote to the Madhi that “God struck fear into the hearts of the English and they went away.” And small wonder if Osman was able to boast in 1885, as he had previously done in 1884, that he had driven the British out of the country.
Captain Royle in another footnote gives the extra cost of the expedition as over two millions, and the cost of the Souakim-Berber Railway (including pipe and water lines), which, as mentioned before, was actually laid for eighteen miles, as over ￡865,000. This cost was incurred over and above the normal charge for the maintenance of the troops concerned. In the interests of economy it is pleasant to know that a small portion of the eighteen miles of line was picked up and re-shipped, to be used afterwards for some years as a light railway at Shorncliffe Camp, to take the men down to the sea to bathe.
Early in June the work of the Naval Transport came to an end. I remember well the last evening I spent there. I walked round the scene of our four months’ hard labour with my chief, Captain Fellowes,[141] and thought that never had the forage which had fallen into the water, and the general debris on the beach, smelt more abominably. It was not for nothing that my sense of smell was so acute, for next morning I was down with fever. It was bad luck to be knocked out just as the work was finished, but so it was, and the climate of the Red Sea in the month of June is not the best in the world for a speedy recovery. However, I was packed up in a horrible little transport that was bound for Suez, and after a very long passage managed to reach Cairo. There was an old Indian doctor on board in charge of the odds and ends of troops and invalids, who had served all his life in India, and thoroughly understood the treatment of fever. His method, if drastic, was certainly efficient. Every two hours he used to appear with a huge tumbler of champagne and quinine and insist on its being swallowed. For the whole week that I was on board I was more or less insensible from the strength of this mixture, but after a couple of days in Cairo in a decent bed I was quite well again, though much pulled down, and was able to proceed home overland by way of Venice.
Barring the natural resentment we all felt at having laboured for months in the sun in unloading stores for an Expedition that was never intended to succeed, I personally have otherwise nothing but pleasant recollections of Souakim. Some of the finest men in the world were out there. I found many old friends, and made some new ones, one of whom remained a great ally of mine until his death two years ago. I refer[142] to Lieutenant Alfred Paget, who died as Admiral Sir Alfred Paget. He also deserved the title of the bravest of the brave. When not on duty at Souakim he used to amuse himself by going into the dense bush outside our lines for the purpose of shooting sand grouse and gazelle. The bush was supposed to be crawling with Soudanese, but the old proverb of “where there is no fear there is no danger” held good in his case, and he was never interfered with. Years afterwards he was Naval Attaché at Washington during the American-Spanish War, and of course managed to see as much fighting as was possible. When the war came to an end, at a big dinner at which he was one of the guests, after the usual patriotic toasts had been honoured, the General Officer presiding at the dinner asked all present to charge their glasses to drink the health of the bravest man they had met during the campaign. No one had any idea whose name was to be coupled with this toast. The name was that of Captain Alfred Paget, Royal Navy, Naval Attaché at Washington. Surely one of the most graceful compliments that ever was paid to a British officer! and none who knew him could doubt how thoroughly it had been deserved. In the recent war he sank his rank of Admiral, and (until bad health compelled him to give up), served as a Commander of various patrol vessels and mine-sweepers. He died very suddenly at the age of sixty-seven.
Shortly after arriving in England I looked in at 87, St. James’s Street, to see my old friends. Thinking to enlist their compassion I informed them that,[143] owing to hard work and fever, I had lost twenty pounds, upon which I was told that twenty pounds could be easily lost in less than an hour there, and that, very rightly, was the only sign of sympathy that I could extract from them.