Chapter XX

“I heard the deep moan of the wild storm-war.”

“The venomed snake groped deeper in his hole,

And closed his eyes and trembling hissed his fear.”

* * * * *

BACK TO OM-BADR.

A journey for water. — “What’s in a name?” — A gust of wind. — The camp blown away. — Bad water. — Snake-bites. — An efficient cure. — We meet the Khartoom party. — Om-Badr deserted.

BETWEEN fifteen and sixteen miles past Orgoodt the line reaches its highest point, sixty-nine feet above the starting point at El Fasher and two thousand four hundred and eighty-seven feet above mean sea-level. After this we had between forty and fifty miles more of hard work cutting down thorn-trees, and we made but slow progress.

During this part of the line, while we were in the scrub, distant about twenty or twenty-five miles both from Orgoodt and Abiad, an incident occurred which might have had disastrous results had it taken place when, as on some parts of the work, we were still further away from the wells. The camels which had been sent for water to Abiad failed to find us, and on one evening we were startled to learn that there were only four skins of water in the camp. The camels were loaded at once with only such _impedimenta_ as was absolutely necessary, and, leaving four soldiers behind to take care of the tents, we rode, wearied and sleepy, due north, through the forest of thorns, in order to strike, as soon as possible, the track from Abiad to Orgoodt. We reached the former town early in the morning, all of us very thirsty, but thankful that the mishap had had no worse consequences than making us all thoroughly tired, and delaying the work for two or three days.

When opposite Obah, about a hundred miles from El Fasher, I ran some levels up to the village in order to ascertain the level of the water in the wells. Abd-el-Benât, Achmet, and my usual assistants accompanied me. Round the wells (there were three about sixty feet deep) half-a-dozen women were drawing water; some old, some young, and all ugly. My work being ended I called to Abd-el-Benât, whose duty it was, on that day, to carry my level. His name—“slave of the women”— produced an immediate and magical effect upon the whole of the half-dozen women assembled at the well; they pricked up their ears, opened their eyes wide, and, with sweet smiles, simultaneously advanced to meet him; they took hold of his hands and arms, clung round his waist, and finally each gave him, one or several, hearty and affectionate kisses. All this was, of course, very pleasant for Abd-el-Benât. Neither of Mohommed Effendi, the soldiers, nor of poor Achmet, nor of my unfortunate self, did they deign to take any notice whatever; we could only look on, envious, silent, and helpless. The caresses they had so profusely lavished upon the owner of the pet name came, at length, like all things, to an end, after which the women wished to carry him off bodily to the village, to give him some “merissa”; this, however, I was not disposed to permit, as I did not wish my level to be dropped and perhaps broken upon our way home.

After all, there is something in a name; had his name been Achmet, Sulieman, or Mohommed, he would not have had all those bright smiles, soft caresses, and warm kisses bestowed so freely and lavishly upon him, and the kind offer of the—to him—delicious “merissa” would not have been made. Romeo himself, with all his romantic love and his beautiful and poetic name, would have stood no chance. O Abd el-Benât, Abd-el-Benât, wherefore art thou Abd-el-Benât?

On reaching Om-es-Seraydeh, a few miles beyond Obah, we came out into the open country, bordering the camel-track, and sped along at the rate of six or seven miles a day, making up for the slow progress we had made while cutting through the bush. After passing Boota, we turned the line up the “Khor-es-Sayal,” following the route we had traced on the sketch plan. Here the minimum radius, five hundred metres or five hundred and forty-seven yards, and one in fifty the steepest gradient allowed, was rendered, for the first time, necessary over any considerable distance.

One evening, as we sat at dinner in our tent, pitched in the valley midway between the steep and lofty rocks on either side, we were startled in our pleasant occupation by the terrible sound of a tremendous wind-storm close upon us. Before we had time to express any wonder as to what it could be, or to swallow what we had already inserted into our respective mouths for that purpose, the tent was carried clean and far away from above our dinner, the candles were blown out, and the two tables, placed side by side, were upset, and the whole of the first course was gone. It was a fearful tempest; all the tents, with the exception of one placed fortunately under the shelter of a great rock, were torn from the pegs, and whirled along the ground until stopped by the trees; a gangaloos standing very near us, after bending once or twice before the blast, was laid, with a horrid crash, low on to the earth. There were no clouds in the sky—the air all round was clear—it was simply an awful and angry rush of wind up the gorge, such as we had already experienced, in a very minor degree, in the gorge at the spring of Gebel Ain.

It has fallen within my experience to witness two such other sudden and destroying blasts of air. Once a “white squall” off the African coast, a few miles to the west of the Straits of Gibraltar. Two full-rigged ships, a mile to windward of us, did not observe the warning these squalls always give, and remained, in the calm, with all sail set; their masts were shorn from their decks, and when the squall, in three or four minutes, had passed away, they were floating in a helpless and pitiable condition upon the surface of the sea, still smooth. Our own ship, whose sails we had furled, bent low before the storm, and after resting on her beam ends until it had passed, righted, and proceeded uninjured on her course. The second occasion was off Columbo, in Ceylon. The wind was light, and blowing from all the points of the compass. Three or four ships, within a distance of a few miles, were sailing with both sheets aft—that is, with the wind dead astern, in as many different directions. Suddenly, without a warning in the sky, the terrible gust came down upon us; we all suffered; sails were scattered to the wind, and yards were blown broken away; we all, however, fortunately preserved our masts.

Neither of these two squalls equalled or approached in intensity the sudden rush up the Khor-es-Sayal; all we could do was to hold on to anything we could find, lest we should share the unhappy fate of our tents and of all the loose furniture, such as hats, blankets, sheets, carpets, &c. &c., which, a few minutes before, had rested comfortably and securely within them. I, myself, hung desperately on to the handle of my largest trunk, and lay down flat, to avail myself of the shelter it afforded. One attempt to look over the top of the trunk to windward, to see what the sky was like, resulted literally in a blow in the face, which nearly knocked my head off. To this day I am thankful that, since that storm, it retains its original and normal position; for this circumstance I am indebted to my large trunk, and am grateful accordingly.

The hurricane lasted only for five or six minutes, after which all was calm and beautiful as before. Our dinner, however, had been destroyed; the sundry pots and frying-pans on the fire were capsized, and the very coals in the grate were blown away and scattered red hot to the winds. The next hour was devoted to finding and pitching anew the tents, and to recovering such of our blankets and sheets as had been arrested by the neighbouring trees. Shortly after, we sat down to a new and welcome dinner, quite as good as that which had been so unceremoniously taken away, and, in a few minutes, were quite forgetful of our sudden, but not happy, windfall. Many articles were not recovered until the light came on the following day, many were never recovered at all—amongst the last, my half rhinoceros horn, which, it may be remembered, the Greek at El Fasher had sent to the palace for me as “backsheesh.” Severe as was the storm, I am not prepared to certify that the horn was blown away; it was heavy, and could offer but little resisting surface to the wind. I think it more probable that it may have been buried by the sand that came blowing along the valley, and so, half or quite hidden, was forgotten in the general confusion of our moving next day.

A few days later, May 23rd, we reached Karnac, one hundred and forty-one miles from El Fasher. We found the level of the water in the well about twelve feet higher than when we had measured it on March 11th. Up to this time we had had no rain, but at Karnac, and for some distance to the east, a very heavy fall had evidently taken place. All over the plain in which the well is sunk, the ground is always covered by the refuse of the numerous animals that daily come down to drink, and, the rain draining through it, the water in the well is, after the first few heavy falls of the season, necessarily rendered very impure and dangerous to drink. Several slight cases of dysentery occurred in our camp, but the use of Dover’s powders cured them in a few days. After this, we always took the precaution to mix with the water we drank a small portion of permanganate of potash, just sufficient to very slightly colour it, with the result that we never again suffered in a similar way.

Another few miles through the thorns, and we entered the camel-track to Gebel Megzaam. After passing the latter mountain we followed the Wady Seroog, or Ermil as it is also called, and the Wady Zancore, to where it debouches into the plain, and obtained a fairly good line.

One afternoon, while in the Wady Ermil, an Arab was borne upon the shoulders of two or three of his companions into the doctor’s tent. There were two little punctures in his heel; he had been bitten by a snake, and was almost insensible. The doctor pronounced the bite to be that of a cobra. The sufferer was treated with ammonia, and with whiskey, and was consequently in a state of dead drunkenness for about a week. He at length recovered, was grateful to the doctor, liked the treatment, and wished for some more. After this case, snakes of a poisonous nature began to abound in the valley. I did not see any myself, but was given to understand by the Arabs that they were hidden under every stone, lurked behind every blade of grass, and were absolutely twined in huge clusters round the branches of every tree. Many Arabs, punctured in exactly the same part of the heel as the first victim, were brought, to be treated, into the doctor’s tent. There were no fatal cases; after the use of the prescribed amount of ammonia, and the consumption of two or three bottles of whiskey, each was pronounced cured. With so many snake-bites occurring every day, the stock of ammonia ultimately gave out, and whiskey remained the only specific. Still the snakes came more numerous than before. In due course the whiskey—so necessary in treating cases of poisonous snake-bites—began to get very scarce; there were but a few bottles left, and another system of treatment became imperatively necessary. This new treatment should be made universally known; it was much more efficacious than the ammonia and whiskey. Instead of languishing in a state of insensibility for several days, the patient was cured at once. The virtues of this potent medicine were, strange to say, not limited to effecting a cure only, they absolutely acted as a preventive; after this there were no more snake-bites. An Arab, himself one of the sufferers, afterwards imparted to me confidentially that the new medicine had acted as a charm, and had driven all the snakes out of the valley into fits.

Much as I should wish to impart to the scientific world and to the general public the nature of the treatment that had such surprising results, I am not in a position to do so from my own personal knowledge. I have, however, strong reasons to believe that representations were made to the doctor, by his best friend, that if he gave all the whiskey away there would, as a natural consequence, be none left, and that he himself would be a sufferer; he was advised to adopt another system—to put on a good thick pair of boots, and, when the next victim presented himself, to swiftly and vigorously apply the right foot to that part of his body where the bite would, in all probability, be, had it been the patient’s unhappy fortune to sit suddenly down upon an angry and venomous snake. This medicine is not to be found in the London pharmacopœia; if, as I was told, it was really used, I am in a position to testify that its therapeutic properties are vastly superior to those either of whiskey or ammonia or of the two combined, the method usually adopted in treating cases of snake-bites.

On June 13th, two of the Khartoom party rode into our camp; we were delighted to see them. They were looking well, although, perhaps, a trifle ragged like ourselves. They had levelled over and surveyed on the main line and branch to Khartoom, a total distance of five hundred and thirty-four miles, and had completed their work to opposite Om-Badr the day before. In coming to pay us their visit, they had not been unmindful to bring with them such creature comforts as they thought it possible we might require, viz. three bottles of brandy and a dozen of claret. This kind forethought made them doubly, perhaps trebly, welcome; we had, owing to having left a large stock of wines, &c. at New Dongola, exhausted our own supply about a week before, and the snakes had drunk up all our whiskey. Three hours later, while we were sitting in our tent recounting adventures, and sympathising with each others’ joys and troubles, a messenger rode into camp full speed from Om-Badr; one of the engineers was taken suddenly and seriously ill. The doctor, after packing up such medicines as he was likely to want, departed on his errand of mercy. The case proved, fortunately, to be not so serious as we had all supposed. The patient had, from his early boyhood, lavished all the love in his soul upon boiled potatoes; the potatoes were, however, at length all eaten up, and the barren desert could provide no others. He languished for his love. Fickle by nature, in the absence of the old love he courted a new one—strawberry jam. The affection was, however, not mutual, and he grew sick, and pined slowly away. On that day he had lunched “not wisely but too well.” The doctor soon put him to rights, and left for his future guidance only one prescription—“Do not eat more than one pot of strawberry jam per day.”

On the morning of June 15th, we effected the junction of our work in the Wady Milkh, near the foot of Gebel Shay Kaab, about seven miles east of Om-Badr. We had levelled over two hundred and twenty-one miles, and had made a map of the country from Sotaire to El Fasher, a length of more than five hundred miles, varying from twenty to fifty miles in width. In a few hours our tents were pitched on the old site in the plain of Om- Badr, near to those of our friends. The place was otherwise deserted; not a human being, nor a camel from which to obtain delicious milk, was anywhere near; not a sheep, nor a goat, nor a fowl was to be had for love or money or rags. The old shiekh of the tribes, Shiekh Biddeh, to whose safe-keeping the Hakeem had confided his hard-earned farm, had departed with the rest, and, what was worse, had absconded with all the sheep and goats and fowls. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth; all the doctor’s little ones were gone, and he refused to be comforted.

Beyond having to fill up the water-skins there was nothing to detain us at Om-Badr, and we started on 19th June for Bagghareeyeh. Our work was done.

[Decoration]