encountered a sunken, water-logged ship which stopped the traffic. We
were there four or five days, and the life of ease and luxury, with
opportunity for reading and social intercourse with well-gowned people,
was so enjoyable that, had it not been for the fact that Gordon was in
danger in Khartoum, and I wanted to have a hand in his relief, I should
have enjoyed staying there a month. We disembarked at Suakim on the Red
Sea, and we were--the officer and myself--immediately attached to the
staff of General Sir Gerald Graham in the desert.

The seven months in the desert were months of waiting--monotonous,
deadening waiting. The greatest difficulty of that period of waiting
was the water supply. We were served out with a pint of water a day.
Water for washing was out of the question. Our laundry method was a
kind of optical illusion. We took our flannel shirts, rolled them up
as tightly as possible, tied them with strings, and then thumped them
laboriously with the butt end of a rifle; then they were untied,
shaken out, brushed, and they were ready for use. Most of this was a
make-believe laundry, but the brushing was real. Being attached to the
General Staff, I had a little more leeway in the comforts of life, but
it was mighty little.

Off in the hills, ten miles distant, was encamped the black horde
under Osman Digna, and every night of the seven months the Arabs kept
up small-arm firing upon us. Sometimes they were bold enough to make
an approach in a body in the darkness, but we had powerful electric
lights that could search the desert for miles. We got accustomed to
this after a while, and would simply lie prostrate while the light was
turned on them. Of course, the searching of the desert with the
electric lights was always accompanied with the levelling of our
artillery on whatever the light revealed. Not very much destruction