Two young men in tarboushes were the only people who had no part in the riot.  Said one of them to the other: 

‘Hullo?’

Said the other:  ‘Hullo!’

They grunted together for a while.  Then one pleasantly: 

’Oh, I’m sorry for that!  I thought I was going to have you under me for a bit.  Then you’ll use the rest-house there?’

‘I suppose so,’ said the other.  ’Do you happen to know if the roof’s on?’

Here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan Almanack, what state that rest-house there is in.

The Soudan Administration, by the little I heard, is a queer service.  It extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand square miles.  It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no precedent.  It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own reputation.  It is said to be the only service in which a man taking leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest himself that he may return the more fit to his job.  A high standard of intelligence is required, and lapses are not overlooked.  For instance, one man on leave in London took the wrong train from Boulogne, and instead of going to Paris, which, of course, he had intended, found himself at a station called Kirk Kilissie or Adrianople West, where he stayed for some weeks.  It was a mistake that might have happened to any one on a dark night after a stormy passage, but the authorities would not believe it, and when I left Egypt were busily engaged in boiling him in hot oil.  They are grossly respectable in the Soudan now.

Long and long ago, before even the Philippines were taken, a friend of mine was reprimanded by a British Member of Parliament, first for the sin of blood-guiltiness because he was by trade a soldier, next for murder because he had fought in great battles, and lastly, and most important, because he and his fellow-braves had saddled the British taxpayer with the expense of the Soudan.  My friend explained that all the Soudan had ever cost the British taxpayer was the price of about one dozen of regulation Union Jacks—­one for each province.  ‘That,’ said the M.P. triumphantly, ‘is all it will ever be worth.’  He went on to justify himself, and the Soudan went on also.  To-day it has taken its place as one of those accepted miracles which are worked without heat or headlines by men who do the job nearest their hand and seldom fuss about their reputations.