The trip through the Suez Canal might be considered a new stage of development, for I travelled as a second-class passenger.  To be consulted as to what I should eat or to have any choice whatever, was not only new, but startling.  In turning a curve in the Canal, we 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 was accomplished on either side, however.  Occasionally a stray bullet would carry off one of our men in his sleep.  Sometimes these naked savages would stealthily creep in upon our sentries and with their sharp knives would overpower them and mutilate them in an indescribable manner.

To prevent this, we laid dynamite mines in front of our encampments.  I watched, late one afternoon, the young engineer officer as he connected the wires for the night—­perhaps his hand trembled as he made connections, or perhaps some mistake was made.  Anyway, there was an explosion.  Great masses of desert sand shot into the air like a cloud, and when it fell again, the mangled body of the engineer fell with it; but the mines were laid, connections made for the night, just the same, by another engineer.

At other places we had broken bottles fixed in the sand, for the black men came barefooted, and they were more seared by broken bottles in the sand than they were by the musketry fire.