It is supposed to have escaped from some travelling menagerie.
"That's the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run such a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than lime-juice--at least, he hadn't before he left this part of the country, five years ago next Lady Day."
THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS
There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a blast-furnace. It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were no larger than themselves.
"Whew!" cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, "you'd pay five shillings for this at the hummums."
"Precisely," said Scott. "But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and a whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at Kew is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon the horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt until evening."
Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward. Everywhere were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand. At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through the rugged spurs which ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians. There was no other sign of man's handiwork in all that desolate scene.
"It's palm trees or nothing," said Scott.
"Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the force up. What _would_ our editors say if we were late for the action?"
"My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn't need to be told that no sane modern general would ever attack until the Press is up."
"You don't mean that?" said young Anerley. "I thought we were looked upon as an unmitigated nuisance."
"'Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe of useless drones'--being an extract from Lord Wolseley's 'Soldier's Pocket-Book,'" cried Scott. "We know all about _that_, Anerley;" and he winked behind his blue spectacles. "If there was going to be a battle we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I've been in fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a reporter's table."
"That's very well; but the enemy may be less considerate," said Mortimer.
"They are not strong enough to force a battle."
"A skirmish, then?"
"Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just where we should be."
"So we are! What a score over Reuter's man up with the advance! Well, we'll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms."
There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies. Reuter's was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears of the public--the great silent millions and millions who had paid for everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their outlay.
They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades.
This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was Mortimer, of the _Intelligence_--tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by the mosquito and the sand-fly.