Part 26 (1/2)
I would also recall among the less important relics of the past the small ruined Temple of Dakkeh. It was built in Ptolemaic times by an Ethiopian monarch singularly free from superst.i.tion. It was the custom of these kings to kill themselves when ordered to do so by the priests in the name of the G.o.ds, but when his spiritual advisers ventured to send such a message to King Erzamenes, he went with his soldiers and killed the priests instead.
I do not know whether the story lingered on the banks of the Nile till our times, but the instinct of this king seems to have been reincarnated in an Arab, or Egyptian, soldier who related to an English officer his first experience of an aeroplane during the late war. This man was enlisted by the Turks during their invasion of Egypt and afterwards captured by the British. Said he, ”I saw a bird, oh, such a beautiful bird, flying in the sky. My officer told me to shoot it, but I did not want to kill that beautiful bird, so I killed my officer.” Certainly if one wished to disobey an unreasonable order it was the simplest method of escaping punishment.
At Wady Halfa we were delightfully entertained at tea and dinner by Colonel Hunter (now Sir Archibald). Dinner in his pretty garden was indeed a pleasant change from our jolting stern-wheeler. Previously he took us to see the 500 camels--riding and baggage--of the camel-corps. All were absolutely ready for action. Like the horses of Branksome Hall in the ”Lay of the Last Minstrel,” who ”ready and wight stood saddled in stable day and night,” these camels lay in rows with all their kit on or near them--nothing to be done when the order of advance should be given except to fill their water-flasks. All this with the shadow of the Sirdar pointing towards them--to fall even sooner than the officers perchance antic.i.p.ated.
While our boat waited at Wady Halfa we made a short expedition, two hours by train on a local military railway, to Sarras, which was then the Egyptian frontier. Egyptian officers showed us the Fort on a hill with two Krupp and two Maxim guns. There were one or two other little forts on heights, and below was the camp with tents, huts, camels, and horses. From the hill we looked out at the country beyond, a ma.s.s of small hills rising from a sandy desert, all barren and arid. It gave a weird impression to stand thus on the uttermost outpost of civilisation wondering what of death and terror lay beyond.
[Sidenote: THE DERVISHES]
Seven years previously, in July 1889, Sir Herbert Kitchener (as he then was) had written to my husband from the Egyptian Headquarters at a.s.souan, and thus described the Dervishes:
”I leave for the South to-morrow and shall then have an opportunity of seeing the Dervish camp. It is most extraordinary that they have been able to invade Egypt in the way they have done without any supplies or transport. I have talked to numbers of prisoners and they say they are just as fanatical as ever; their intention is to march on Cairo, killing all who do not accept their faith, and they do not care in the least how many lives they lose in the attempt, as all that die in their belief go straight to heaven. They have brought all their women and children with them, and seem to have no feeling whatever for the sufferings they make them undergo. We have rescued almost thousands and fed and clothed them; they come in the most awful state of emaciation. I expect we shall have a fight shortly with the strong men of the party who now keep all the food for themselves, leaving the women and children to die of starvation.”
There was certainly real anxiety about them even during our expedition, and it was thought better for our stern-wheelers to anchor in the middle of the stream at night, when far from barracks, for fear of attack. I think, however, that it was at a.s.souan, a well-guarded centre, that the Bradley Martins came to implore Jersey to come and rea.s.sure poor Mrs.
Sherman, Mrs. Bradley Martin's kind old mother. She had heard some firing in connection with Ramadan, and told her family that she knew that their dahabyah had been captured by dervishes and that they were keeping it from her. Why she thought that the dervishes were considerate enough to keep out of her cabin I do not know, nor why she consented to believe my husband and not her own children. However, it is not uncommon for people to attach more weight to the opinion of an outsider than to that of the relatives whom they see every day.
Before returning to Cairo we tied up near Helouan and rode there along a good road with trees on either side. Helouan itself struck us as resembling the modern part of a Riviera town pitched in the desert.
Neither trees nor verandahs mitigated the glare of the sun, unless a few clumps near the sulphur baths did duty as shade for the whole place. There were numerous hotels and boarding-houses, though I recorded the opinion, which I saw no reason to modify on a visit some years later, that there seemed no particular reason for people to go there unless preparatory to committing suicide. However, I suppose that the Races and the Baths const.i.tuted the attraction, and it may have become more adapted to a semi-tropical climate since we saw it.
Before we said farewell to the _Herodotus_ the crew gave us a ”musical and dramatic” entertainment. The comic part was largely supplied by the cook's boy, who represented a European clad in a remarkably battered suit and ordered about a luckless native workman. The great joke was repeatedly to offer him as a seat the s.h.i.+p's mallet (with which posts for tying up were driven into the bank) and to withdraw it the moment he tried to sit down.
His face, and subsequent flogging of the joker, were hailed with shrieks of laughter. Similar pranks interspersed with singing, dancing, and tambourine playing were witnessed by an appreciative audience, including eight or ten native friends of the sailors, who were supplied with coffee and cigarettes.
On March 12th we reached Cairo and, with regret, left our comfortable dahabyah for the Ghezireh Palace Hotel. On the 14th came the rumour that orders had come from England that troops should advance on Dongola. There was the more excitement as it was a.s.serted, and I believe truly, that the Government had taken this decisive step without previous consultation with either Lord Cromer or the Sirdar. However, all was ready, and the climax came when in September 1898 the Dervishes were defeated by Sir Herbert Kitchener, the Mahdi slain, and Gordon avenged.
On October 7th of that year Sir Herbert wrote from Cairo, in answer to my congratulations:
”I am indeed thankful all went off without a hitch. I see the ---- says we kill all the wounded, but when I left Omdurman there were between six and seven thousand wounded dervishes in hospital there.
The work was so hard on the Doctors that I had to call on the released Egyptian doctors from prison to help; two of them were well educated, had diplomas, and were and are very useful. We ran out of bandages and had to use our first field dressing which every man carries with him.”
[Sidenote: LORD KITCHENER]
How unjust were newspaper attacks on a man unfailingly humane! Kitchener's reception in England towards the end of the year was a wild triumph--more than he appreciated, for he complained to me of the way in which the populace mobbed him at Charing Cross Station and pulled at his clothes. I remember at Dover, either that year or on his return from South Africa, meeting the mistress of an Elementary School whom I knew who was taking her scholars to see him land ”as an object lesson,” an object lesson being permitted in school hours. The children might certainly have had many less useful lessons.
Lord Kitchener (as he had then become) spent a Sunday with us at Osterley, June 17-19th, 1899. I well recollect a conversation which I had with him on that occasion. He expressed his dissatisfaction at his military work being ended. ”I should like to begin again as a simple captain if I could have something fresh to do.” ”Why,” said I, ”you are Governor-General of the Soudan, surely there is great work to do there.” No, that was not the sort of job he wanted. ”Well,” I told him, ”you need not worry yourself, you are sure to be wanted soon for something else.”
Little did he think, still less did I, that exactly six months later, on December 18th, orders would reach him at Khartum to join Lord Roberts as Chief of the Staff, in South Africa. He started at once, and met his Commander-in-Chief at Gibraltar on 27th. Indeed a fresh and stirring act in the drama of his life opened before him. Later on, when he had succeeded Lord Roberts in the supreme command, he wrote (January 1902) thanking me for a little diary which I had sent him, and continued:
”We are all still hard at it, and I really think the end at last cannot be far off. Still in this enormous country and with the enemy we have to contend with there is no saying how long some roving bands may not continue in the field, living like robbers in the hills and making occasional raids that are difficult to meet.
”It will be a joyful day when it is over, but however long it may be in coming, we shall all stick to it.
”The Boers are simply senseless idiots to go on destroying their country.”
What would he have said of the Irish of twenty years later?
After his return from South Africa I was much amused by the account he gave us of receiving the O.M. medal from King Edward, who was ill at the time. When he arrived at Buckingham Palace he was taken to the King's bedroom, but kept waiting behind a large screen at the entrance in company with Queen Alexandra, who kept exclaiming, ”This is most extraordinary!”
At last they were admitted to the royal presence, when the King drew out the order from under his pillow. The recipient had evidently been kept waiting while somebody went to fetch it.