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The Green Flag
THE GREEN FLAG.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
CONTENTS.
THE GREEN FLAG.
CAPTAIN SHARKEY.
THE CROXLEY MASTER.
THE LORD OF CHATEAU NOIR.
THE STRIPED CHEST.
A SHADOW BEFORE.
THE KING OF THE FOXES.
THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS.
THE NEW CATACOMB.
THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE.
A FOREIGN OFFICE ROMANCE.
THE GREEN FLAG
When Jack Conolly, of the Irish Shotgun Brigade, the Rory of the Hills
Inner Circle, and the extreme left wing of the Land League, was
incontinently shot by Sergeant Murdoch of the constabulary, in a
little moonlight frolic near Kanturk, his twin-brother Dennis joined
the British Army. The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as
the seventy-five shillings were wanting which might have carried him
to America, he took the only way handy of getting himself out of the
way. Seldom has Her Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot
Celtic blood seethed with hatred against Britain and all things
British. The sergeant, however, smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of
brawn and his 44 in. chest, whisked him off with a dozen other of the
boys to the depot at Fermoy, whence in a few weeks they were sent on,
with the spade-work kinks taken out of their backs, to the first
battalion of the Royal Mallows, at the top of the roster for foreign
service.
The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the
darkest hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with
crow-bar and battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with
shot-gun by night. Men driven from their homes and potato-patches
found their way even into the service of the Government, to which it
seemed to them that they owed their troubles, and now and then they
did wild things before they came. There were recruits in the Irish
regiments who would forget to answer to their own names, so short had
been their acquaintance with them. Of these the Royal Mallows had
their full share; and, while they still retained their fame as being
one of the smartest corps in the army, no one knew better than their
officers that they were dry-rotted with treason and with bitter hatred
of the flag under which they served.
And the centre of all the disaffection was C Company, in which Dennis
Conolly found himself enrolled. They were Celts, Catholics, and men
of the tenant class to a man; and their whole experience of the
British Government had been an inexorable landlord, and a constabulary
who seemed to them to be always on the side of the rent-collector.
Dennis was not the only moonlighter in the ranks, nor was he alone in
having an intolerable family blood-feud to harden his heart. Savagery
had begotten savagery in that veiled civil war. A landlord with an
iron mortgage weighing down upon him had small bowels for his
tenantry. He did but take what the law allowed, and yet, with men like
Jim Holan, or Patrick McQuire, or Peter Flynn, who had seen the roofs
torn from their cottages and their folk huddled among their pitiable
furniture upon the roadside, it was ill to argue about abstract law.
What matter that in that long and bitter struggle there was many
another outrage on the part of the tenant, and many another grievance
on the side of the landowner! A stricken man can only feel his own
wound, and the rank and file of the C Company of the Royal Mallows
were sore and savage to the soul. There were low whisperings in
barrack-rooms and canteens, stealthy meetings in public-house
parlours, bandying of passwords from mouth to mouth, and many other
signs which made their officers right glad when the order came which
sent them to foreign, and better still, to active service.
For Irish regiments have before now been disaffected, and have at a
distance looked upon the foe as though he might, in truth, be the
friend; but when they have been put face on to him, and when their
officers have dashed to the front with a wave and halloo, those rebel
hearts have softened and their gallant Celtic blood has boiled with
the mad Joy of the fight, until the slower Britons have marvelled that
they ever could have doubted the loyalty of their Irish comrades. So
it would be again, according to the officers, and so it would not be
if Dennis Conolly and a few others could have their way.
It was a March morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert.
The sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as
the cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon
across the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary
sand-plains, dotted over with thick clumps at mimosa scrub and mottled
patches of thorny bush. No tree broke the monotony of that vast
desert. The dull, dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of
the sand, were the only colours, save at one point, where, from a
distance, it seemed that a land-slip of snow-white stones had shot
itself across a low foot-hill. But as the traveller approached he saw,
with a thrill, that these were no stones, but the bleaching bones of a
slaughtered army. With its dull tints, its gnarled, viprous bushes,
its arid, barren soil, and this death streak trailed across it, it was
indeed a nightmare country.
Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March
morning three Arab chieftains--the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas,
Moussa Wad Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad
Hussein, who had come northward with his fighting men from the land of
the Baggaras. They had all three just risen from their
praying-carpets, and were peering out, with fierce, high-nosed faces
thrust forwards, at the stretch of country revealed by the spreading
dawn.
The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea,
and the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich
deep blue beyond. At one spot lay a huddle of white-walled houses, a
mere splotch in the distance; while four tiny cock-boats, which lay
beyond, marked the position of three of Her Majesty's 10,000-ton
troopers and the admiral's flagship. But it was not upon the distant
town, nor upon the great vessels, nor yet upon the sinister white
litter which gleamed in the plain beneath them, that the Arab
chieftains gazed. Two miles from where they stood, amid the
sand-hills and the mimosa scrub, a great parallelogram had been marked
by piled-up bushes. From the inside of this dozens of tiny blue
smoke-reeks curled up into the still morning air; while there rose
from it a confused deep murmur, the voices of men and the gruntings of
camels blended into the same insect buzz.
"The unbelievers have cooked their morning food," said the Baggara
chief, shading his eyes with his tawny, sinewy hand. "Truly their
sleep has been scanty; for Hamid and a hundred of his men have fired
upon them since the rising of the moon."
"So it was with these others," answered the Sheik Kadra, pointing with
his sheathed sword towards the old battle-field. "They also had a day
of little water and a night of little rest, and the heart was gone out
of them ere ever the sons of the Prophet had looked them in the eyes.
This blade drank deep that day, and will again before the sun has
travelled from the sea to the hill."
"And yet these are other men," remarked the Berber dervish. "Well, I
know that Allah has placed them in the clutch of our fingers, yet it
may be that they with the big hats will stand firmer than the cursed
men of Egypt."
"Pray Allah that it may be so," cried the fierce Baggara, with a flash
of his black eyes. "It was not to chase women that I brought 700 men
from the river to the coast. See, my brother, already they are
forming their array."
A fanfare of bugle-calls burst from the distant camp. At the same
time the bank of bushes at one side had been thrown or trampled down,
and the little army within began to move slowly out on to the plain.
Once clear of the camp they halted, and the slant rays of the sun
struck flashes from bayonet and from gun-barrel as the ranks closed up
until the big pith helmets joined into a single long white ribbon.
Two streaks of scarlet glowed on either side of the square, but
elsewhere the fringe of fighting-men was of the dull yellow khaki tint
which hardly shows against the desert sand. Inside their array was a
dense mass of camels and mules bearing stores and ambulance needs.
Outside a twinkling clump of cavalry was drawn up on each flank, and
in front a thin, scattered line of mounted infantry was already slowly
advancing over the bush-strewn plain, halting on every eminence, and
peering warily round as men might who have to pick their steps among
the bones of those who have preceded them.
The three chieftains still lingered upon the knoll, looking down with
hungry eyes and compressed lips at the dark steel-tipped patch. "They
are slower to start than the men of Egypt," the Sheik of the
Hadendowas growled in his beard.
"Slower also to go back, perchance, my brother," murmured the dervish.
"And yet they are not many--3,000 at the most."
"And we 10,000, with the Prophet's grip upon our spear-hafts and his
words upon our banner. See to their chieftain, how he rides upon the
right and looks up at us with the glass that sees from afar! It may
be that he sees this also." The Arab shook his sword at the small
clump of horsemen who had spurred out from the square.
"Lo! he beckons," cried the dervish; "and see those others at the
corner, how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought
it." As he spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the
corner of the square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic
smack just over their heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red
rocks around them.
"Bismillah!" cried the Hadendowa; "if the gun can carry thus far, then
ours can answer to it. Ride to the left, Moussa, and tell Ben Ali to
cut the skin from the Egyptians if they cannot hit yonder mark. And
you, Hamid, to the right, and see that 3,000 men lie close in the wady
that we have chosen. Let the others beat the drum and show the banner
of the Prophet, for by the black stone their spears will have drunk
deep ere they look upon the stars again."
A long, straggling, boulder-strewn plateau lay on the summit of the
red hills, sloping very precipitously to the plain, save at one point,
where a winding gully curved downwards, its mouth choked with
sand-mounds and olive-hued scrub. Along the edge of this position lay
the Arab host--a motley crew of shock-headed desert clansmen, fierce
predatory slave dealers of the interior, and wild dervishes from the
Upper Nile, all blent together by their common fearlessness and
fanaticism. Two races were there, as wide as the poles apart--the
thin-lipped, straight-haired Arab and the thick-lipped, curly
negro--yet the faith of Islam had bound them closer than a blood tie.
Squatting among the rocks, or lying thickly in the shadow, they peered
out at the slow-moving square beneath them, while women with
water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from group to group, calling
out to each other those fighting texts from the Koran which in the
hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true believer. A score of
banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and among them, upon
desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the Emirs and Sheiks
who were to lead them against the infidels.
As the Sheik Kadra sprang into his saddle and drew his sword there was
a wild whoop and a clatter of waving spears, while the one-ended
war-drums burst into a dull crash like a wave upon shingle. For a
moment 10,000 men were up on the rocks with brandished arms and
leaping figures; the next they were under cover again, waiting sternly
and silently for their chieftain's orders. The square was less than
half a mile from the ridge now, and shell after shell from the 7 lb.
guns were pitching over it. A deep roar on the right, and then a
second one showed that the Egyptian Krupps were in action. Sheik
Kadra's hawk eyes saw that the shells burst far beyond the mark, and
he spurred his horse along to where a knot of mounted chiefs were
gathered round the two guns, which were served by their captured
crews.
"How is this, Ben Ali?" he cried. "It was not thus that the dogs
fired when it was their own brothers in faith at whom they aimed!"
A chieftain reined his horse back, and thrust a blood-smeared sword
into its sheath. Beside him two Egyptian artillerymen with their
throats cut were sobbing out their lives upon the ground. "Who lays
the gun this time?" asked the fierce chief, glaring at the frightened
gunners." Here, thou black-browed child of Shaitan, aim, and aim for
thy life."
It may have been chance, or it may have been skill, but the third and
fourth shells burst over the square. Sheik Kadra smiled grimly and
galloped back to the left, where his spearmen were streaming down into
the gully. As he joined them a deep growling rose from the plain
beneath, like the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot
of tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead
from a Gardner. Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down
into the ravine. From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp
crackle of Remington fire.
The square had slowly advanced, rippling over the low sandhills, and
halting every few minutes to re-arrange its formation. Now, having
made sure that there was no force of the enemy in the scrub, it
changed its direction, and began to take a line parallel to the Arab
position. It was too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved
far enough to the right the general hoped that he might turn it. On
the top of those ruddy hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra
hundreds in his pension, and he meant having them both that day. The
Remington fire was annoying, and so were those two Krupp guns; already
there were more cacolets full than he cared to see. But on the whole
he thought it better to hold his fire until he had more to aim at than
a few hundred of fuzzy heads peeping over a razor-back ridge. He was
a bulky, red-faced man, a fine whist-player, and a soldier who knew
his work. His men believed in him, and he had good reason to believe
in them, for he had excellent stuff under him that day. Being an
ardent champion of the short-service system, he took particular care
to work with veteran first battalions, and his little force was the
compressed essence of an army corps.
The left front of the square was formed by four companies of the Royal
Wessex, and the right by four of the Royal Mallows. On either side
the other halves of the same regiments marched in quarter column of
companies. Behind them, on the right was a battalion of Guards, and
on the left one of Marines, while the rear was closed in by a Rifle
battalion. Two Royal Artillery 7 lb. screw-guns kept pace with the
square, and a dozen white-bloused sailors, under their blue-coated,
tight-waisted officers, trailed their Gardner in front, turning every
now and then to spit up at the draggled banners which waved over the
cragged ridge. Hussars and Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side,
and within moved the clump of camels, with humorous eyes and
supercilious lips, their comic faces a contrast to the blood-stained
men who already lay huddled in the cacolets on either side.
The square was now moving slowly on a line parallel with the rocks,
stopping every few minutes to pick up wounded, and to allow the
screw-guns and Gardner to make themselves felt. The men looked
serious, for that spring on to the rocks of the Arab army had given
them a vague glimpse of the number and ferocity of their foes; but
their faces were set like stone, for they knew to a man that they must
win or they must die--and die, too, in a particularly unlovely
fashion. But most serious of all was the general, for he had seen
that which brought a flush to his cheeks and a frown to his brow.
"I say, Stephen," said he to his galloper, "those Mallows seem a
trifle jumpy. The right flank company bulged a bit when the niggers
showed on the hill."
"Youngest troops in the square, sir," murmured the aide, looking at
them critically through his eye-glass.
"Tell Colonel Flanagan to see to it, Stephen," said the general; and
the galloper sped upon his way. The colonel, a fine old Celtic
warrior, was over at C Company in an instant.
"How are the men, Captain Foley?"
"Never better, sir," answered the senior captain, in the spirit that
makes a Madras officer look murder if you suggest recruiting his
regiment from the Punjab.
"Stiffen them up!" cried the colonel. As he rode away a
colour-sergeant seemed to trip, and fell forward into a mimosa bush.
He made no effort to rise, but lay in a heap among the thorns.
"Sergeant O'Rooke's gone, sorr," cried a voice. "Never mind, lads,"
said Captain Foley. "He's died like a soldier, fighting for his
Queen."
"Down with the Queen!" shouted a hoarse voice from the ranks.
But the roar of the Gardner and the typewriter-like clicking of the
hopper burst in at the tail of the words. Captain Foley heard them,
and Subalterns Grice and Murphy heard them; but there are times when
a deaf ear is a gift from the gods.
"Steady, Mallows!" cried the captain, in a pause of the grunting
machine-gun. "We have the honour of Ireland to guard this day."
"And well we know how to guard it, captin!" cried the same ominous
voice; and there was a buzz from the length of the company.
The captain and the two subs. came together behind the marching line.
"They seem a bit out of hand," murmured the captain.
"Bedad," said the Galway boy, "they mean to scoot like redshanks."
"They nearly broke when the blacks showed on the hill," said Grice.
"The first man that turns, my sword is through him," cried Foley, loud
enough to be heard by five files on either side of him. Then, in a
lower voice, "It's a bitter drop to swallow, but it's my duty to
report what you think to the chief, and have a company of Jollies put
behind us." He turned away with the safety of the square upon his
mind, and before he had reached his goal the square had ceased to
exist.
In their march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had
come opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub
and boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the
Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three
mounted infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and
an instant later they wore spurring it for their lives, crouching over
the manes of their horses, and pelting over the sandhills with thirty
or forty galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and
mimosa swarmed suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and
went in the gaps of the bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the
officers, a long quavering yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two
rolling volleys from the Royal Wessex, one crash from the screw-gun
firing shrapnel, and then before a second cartridge could be rammed
in, a living, glistening black wave, tipped with steel, had rolled
over the gun, the Royal Wessex had been dashed back among the camels,
and 1,000 fanatics were hewing and hacking in the heart of what had
been the square.
The camels and mules in the centre, jammed more and more together as
their leaders flinched from the rush of the tribesmen, shut out the
view of the other three faces, who could only tell that the Arabs had
got in by the yells upon Allah, which rose ever nearer and nearer amid
the clouds of sand-dust, the struggling animals, and the dense mass of
swaying, cursing men. Some of the Wessex fired back at the Arabs who
had passed them, as excited Tommies will, and it is whispered among
doctors that it was not always a Remington bullet which was cut from a
wound that day. Some rallied in little knots, stabbing furiously with
their bayonets at the rushing spearmen. Others turned at bay with
their backs against the camels, and others round the general and his
staff, who, revolver in hand, had flung themselves into the heart of
it. But the whole square was sidling slowly away from the gorge,
pushed back by the pressure at the shattered corner.
The officers and men at the other faces were glancing nervously to the
rear, uncertain what was going on, and unable to take help to their
comrades without breaking the formation.
"By Jove, they've got through the Wessex!" cried Grice of the Mallows.
"The divils have hurrooshed us, Ted," said his brother subaltern,
cocking his revolver.
The ranks were breaking, and crowding towards Private Conolly, all
talking together as the officers peered back through the veil of dust.
The sailors had run their Gardner out, and she was squirting death out
of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages.
"Oh, this bloody gun!" shouted a voice. "She's jammed again." The
fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and
hauling at the breech.
"This damned vertical feed!" cried an officer.
"The spanner, Wilson!--the spanner! Stand to your cutlasses, boys, or
they're into us." His voice rose into a shriek as he ended, for a
shovel-headed spear had been buried in his chest. A second wave of
dervishes lapped over the hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and
the right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an
instant, but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the
yell of the Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two
hundred of them with a single point-blank volley. The howling,
leaping crew swerved away to the right, and dashed on into the gap
which had already been made for them.
But C Company had drawn no trigger to stop that fiery rush. The men
leaned moodily upon their Martinis. Some had even thrown them upon
the ground. Conolly was talking fiercely to those about him. Captain
Foley, thrusting his way through the press, rushed up to him with a
revolver in his hand.
"This is your doing, you villain!" he cried.
"If you raise your pistol, Captin, your brains will be over your
coat," said a low voice at his side.
He saw that several rifles were turned on him. The two subs. had
pressed forward, and were by his side. "What is it, then?" he cried,
looking round from one fierce mutinous face to another. "Are you
Irishmen? Are you soldiers? What are you here for but to fight for
your country?"
"England is no country of ours," cried several.
"You are not fighting for England. You are fighting for Ireland, and
for the Empire of which it as part."
"A black curse on the Impire!" shouted Private McQuire, throwing down
his rifle. "'Twas the Impire that backed the man that druv me onto
the roadside. May me hand stiffen before I draw trigger for it.
"What's the Impire to us, Captain Foley, and what's the Widdy to us
ayther?" cried a voice.
"Let the constabulary foight for her."
"Ay, be God, they'd be better imployed than pullin' a poor man's
thatch about his ears."
"Or shootin' his brother, as they did mine."
"It was the Impire laid my groanin' mother by the wayside. Her son
will rot before he upholds it, and ye can put that in the charge-sheet
in the next coort-martial."
In vain the three officers begged, menaced, persuaded. The square was
still moving, ever moving, with the same bloody fight raging in its
entrails. Even while they had been speaking they had been shuffling
backwards, and the useless Gardner, with her slaughtered crew, was
already a good hundred yards from them. And the pace was
accelerating. The mass of men, tormented and writhing, was trying, by
a common instinct, to reach some clearer ground where they could
re-form. Three faces were still intact, but the fourth had been caved
in, and badly mauled, without its comrades being able to help it. The
Guards had met a fresh rush of the Hadendowas, and had blown back the
tribesmen with a volley, and the cavalry had ridden over another
stream of them, as they welled out of the gully. A litter of
hamstrung horses, and haggled men behind them, showed that a spearman
on his face among the bushes can show some sport to the man who
charges him. But, in spite of all, the square was still reeling
swiftly backwards, trying to shake itself clear of this torment which
clung to its heart. Would it break or would it re-form? The lives of
five regiments and the honour of the flag hung upon the answer.
Some, at least, were breaking. The C Company of the Mallows had lost
all military order, and was pushing back in spite of the haggard
officers, who cursed, and shoved, and prayed in the vain attempt to
hold them. The captain and the subs. were elbowed and jostled, while
the men crowded towards Private Conolly for their orders. The
confusion had not spread, for the other companies, in the dust and
smoke and turmoil, had lost touch with their mutinous comrades.
Captain Foley saw that even now there might be time to avert a
disaster. "Think what you are doing, man," he yelled, rushing towards
the ringleader. "There are a thousand Irish in the square, and they
are dead men if we break."
The words alone might have had little effect on the old moonlighter.
It is possible that, in his scheming brain, he had already planned how
he was to club his Irish together and lead them to the sea. But at
that moment the Arabs broke through the screen of camels which had
fended them off. There was a Struggle, a screaming, a mule rolled
over, a wounded man sprang up in a cacolet with a spear through him,
and then through the narrow gap surged a stream of naked savages, mad
with battle, drunk with slaughter, spotted and splashed with
blood--blood dripping from their spears, their arms, their faces.
Their yells, their bounds, their crouching, darting figures, the
horrid energy of their spear-thrusts, made them look like a blast of
fiends from the pit. And were these the Allies of Ireland? Were these
the men who were to strike for her against her enemies? Conolly's soul
rose up in loathing at the thought.
He was a man of firm purpose, and yet at the first sight of those
howling fiends that purpose faltered, and at the second it was blown
to the winds. He saw a huge coal-black negro seize a shrieking
camel-driver and saw at his throat with a knife. He saw a
shock-headed tribesman plunge his great spear through the back of
their own little bugler from Mill-street. He saw a dozen deeds of
blood--the murder of the wounded, the hacking of the unarmed--and
caught, too, in a glance, the good wholesome faces of the faced-about
rear rank of the Marines. The Mallows, too, had faced about, and in an
instant Conolly had thrown himself into the heart of C Company,
striving with the officers to form the men up with their comrades.
But the mischief had gone too far. The rank and file had no heart in
their work. They had broken before, and this last rush of murderous
savages was a hard thing for broken men to stand against. They
flinched from the furious faces and dripping forearms. Why should
they throw away their lives for a flag for which they cared nothing?
Why should their leader urge them to break, and now shriek to them to
re-form? They would not re-form. They wanted to get to the sea and to
safety. He flung himself among them with outstretched arms, with words
of reason, with shouts, with gaspings. It was useless; the tide was
beyond his control. They were shredding out into the desert with
their faces set for the coast.
"Bhoys, will ye stand for this?" screamed a voice. It was so ringing,
so strenuous, that the breaking Mallows glanced backwards. They were
held by what they saw. Private Conolly had planted his rifle-stock
downwards in a mimosa bush. From the fixed bayonet there fluttered a
little green flag with the crownless harp. God knows for what black
mutiny, for what signal of revolt, that flag had been treasured up
within the corporal's tunic! Now its green wisp stood amid the rush,
while three proud regimental colours were reeling slowly backwards.
"What for the flag?" yelled the private.
"My heart's blood for it! and mine! and mine!" cried a score of
voices. "God bless it! The flag, boys--the flag!"
C Company were rallying upon it. The stragglers clutched at each
other, and pointed. "Here, McQuire, Flynn, O'Hara," ran the
shoutings. "Close on the flag! Back to the flag!" The three
standards reeled backwards, and the seething square strove for a
clearer space where they could form their shattered ranks; but C
Company, grim and powder-stained, choked with enemies and falling
fast, still closed in on the little rebel ensign that flapped from the
mimosa bush.
It was a good half-hour before the square, having disentangled itself
from its difficulties and dressed its ranks, began to slowly move
forwards over the ground, across which in its labour and anguish it
had been driven. The long trail of Wessex men and Arabs showed but
too clearly the path they had come.
"How many got into us, Stephen?" asked the general, tapping his
snuff-box.
"I should put them down at a thousand or twelve hundred, sir."
"I did not see any get out again. What the devil were the Wessex
thinking about? The Guards stood well, though; so did the Mallows."
"Colonel Flanagan reports that his front flank company was cut off,
sir."
"Why, that's the company that was out of hand when we advanced!"
"Colonel Flanagan reports, sir, that the company took the whole brunt
of the attack, and gave the square time to re-form."
"Tell the Hussars to ride forward, Stephen," said the general, "and
try if they can see anything of them. There's no firing, and I fear
that the Mallows will want to do some recruiting. Let the square take
ground by the right, and then advance!"
But the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas saw from his knoll that the men
with the big hats had rallied, and that they were coming back in the
quiet business fashion of men whose work was before them. He took
counsel with Moussa the Dervish and Hussein the Baggara, and a
woestruck man was he when he learned that the third of his men were
safe in the Moslem Paradise. So, having still some signs of victory
to show, he gave the word, and the desert warriors flitted off unseen
and unheard, even as they had come.
A red rock plateau, a few hundred spears and Remingtons, and a plain
which for the second time was strewn with slaughtered men, was all
that his day's fighting gave to the English general.
It was a squadron of Hussars which came first to the spot where the
rebel flag had waved. A dense litter of Arab dead marked the place.
Within, the flag waved no longer, but the rifle stood in the mimosa
bush, and round it, with their wounds in front, lay the Fenian private
and the silent ranks of the Irishry. Sentiment is not an English
failing, but the Hussar captain raised his hilt in a salute as he rode
past the blood-soaked ring.
The British general sent home dispatches to his Government, and so did
the chief of the Hadendowas, though the style and manner differed
somewhat in each.
The Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowa people to Mohammed Ahmed, the chosen
of Allah, homage and greeting, (began the latter). Know by this that
on the fourth day of this moon we gave battle to the Kaffirs who call
themselves Inglees, having with us the Chief Hussein with ten thousand
of the faithful. By the blessing of Allah we have broken them, and
chased them for a mile, though indeed these infidels are different
from the dogs of Egypt, and have slain very many of our men. Yet we
hope to smite them again ere the new moon be come, to which end I
trust that thou wilt send us a thousand Dervishes from Omdurman. In
token of our victory I send you by this messenger a flag which we have
taken. By the colour it might well seem to have belonged to those of
the true faith, but the Kaffirs gave their blood freely to save it,
and so we think that, though small, it is very dear to them.
CAPTAIN SHARKEY.