Chapter 2

Then we brought the lances down, then the bugles blew,
When we went to Kandahar, ridin' two an' two,
Ridin', ridin', ridin', two an' two,
Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra,
All the way to Kandahar, ridin' two an' two.

--Barrack-Room Ballad.

'I'M NOT angry with the British public, but I wish we had a few
thousand of them scattered among these rooks. They wouldn't be in such
a hurry to get at their morning papers then. Can't you imagine the
regulation householder--Lover of Justice, Constant Reader,
Paterfamilias, and all that lot--frizzling on hot gravel?'

'With a blue veil over his head, and his clothes in strips. Has any man
here a needle? I've got a piece of sugar-sack.'

'I'll lend you a packing-needle for six square inches of it then. Both my
knees are worn through.'

'Why not six square acres, while you're about it? But lend me the needle,
and I'll see what I can do with the selvage. I don't think there's enough to
protect my royal body from the cold blast as it is. What are you doing
with that everlasting sketch-book of yours, Dick?'

'Study of our Special Correspondent repairing his wardrobe,' said Dick,
gravely, as the other man kicked off a pair of sorely worn
riding-breeches and began to fit a square of coarse canvas over the most
obvious open space. He grunted disconsolately as the vastness of the void
developed itself.

'Sugar-bags, indeed! Hi! you pilot man there! lend me all the sails for
that whale-boat.'

A fez-crowned head bobbed up in the stern-sheets, divided itself into
exact halves with one flashing grin, and bobbed down again. The man of
the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk jacket and a gray flannel
shirt, went on with his clumsy sewing, while Dick chuckled over the
sketch.

Some twenty whale-boats were nuzzling a sand-bank which was dotted
with English soldiery of half a dozen corps, bathing or washing their
clothes. A heap of boat-rollers, commissariat-boxes, sugar-bags, and
flour- and small-arm-ammunition-cases showed where one of the
whale-boats had been compelled to unload hastily; and a regimental
carpenter was swearing aloud as he tried, on a wholly insufficient
allowance of white lead, to plaster up the sun-parched gaping seams of
the boat herself.

'First the bloomin' rudder snaps,' said he to the world in general; 'then
the mast goes; an' then, s' 'help me, when she can't do nothin' else, she
opens 'erself out like a cock-eyes Chinese lotus.'

'Exactly the case with my breeches, whoever you are,' said the tailor,
without looking up. 'Dick, I wonder when I shall see a decent shop again.'

There was no answer, save the incessant angry murmur of the Nile as it
raced round a basalt-walled bend and foamed