Fielding said that Seti's was the good old game for which V.C.'s were the
reward--to run terrible risks to save a life in the face of the enemy;
but, heretofore, it had always been the life of a man, not of a horse.
To this day the Gippies of that regiment still alive do not understand
why Seti should have stayed behind and risked his life to save a horse
and bring him wounded back to his master. But little Dicky Donovan
understood, and Fielding understood; and Fielding never afterwards
mounted Bashi-Bazouk but he remembered. It was Mahommed Seti who taught
him the cry of Mahomet:

"By the CHARGERS that pant,
And the hoofs that strike fire,
And the scourers at dawn,
Who stir up the dust with it,
And cleave through a host with it!"

And in the course of time Mahommed Seti managed to pay the price of the
grindstone and also of the drum.






THE DESERTION OF MAHOMMED SELIM

The business began during Ramadan; how it ended and where was in the
mouth of every soldier between Beni Souef and Dongola, and there was not
a mud hut or a mosque within thirty miles of Mahommed Selim's home, not a
khiassa or felucca dropping anchor for gossip and garlic below the