versham
had a friend to see him off, for the last thing which his eyes beheld as
the packet swung away from the pier, was the face of Lieutenant Sutch
beneath a gas-lamp. The lieutenant maintained his position after the
boat had passed into the darkness and until the throb of its paddles
could no longer be heard. Then he limped through the rain to his hotel,
aware, and regretfully aware, that he was growing old. It was long since
he had felt regret on that account, and the feeling was very strange to
him. Ever since the Crimea he had been upon the world's half-pay list,
as he had once said to General Feversham, and what with that and the
recollection of a certain magical season before the Crimea, he had
looked forward to old age as an approaching friend. To-night, however,
he prayed that he might live just long enough to welcome back Muriel
Graham's son with his honour redeemed and his great fault atoned.

CHAPTER VII

THE LAST RECONNAISSANCE

"No one," said Durrance, and he strapped his field-glasses into the
leather case at his side.

"No one, sir," Captain Mather agreed.

"We will move forward."

The scouts went on ahead, the troops resumed their formation, the two
seven-pounder mountain-guns closed up behind, and Durrance's detachment
of the Camel Corps moved down from the gloomy ridge of Khor Gwob,
thirty-five miles southwest of Suakin, into the plateau of Sinkat. It
was the last reconnaissance in strength before the evacuation of the
eastern Soudan.

All through that morning the camels had jolted slowly up the gulley of
shale between red precipitous rocks, and when the rocks fell back,
between red mountain-heaps all crumbled into a desolation of stones.
Hardly a patch of grass or the ragged branches of a mimosa had broken
the monotony of ruin. And after that arid journey the green bushes of
Sinkat in the valley below comforted the eye with the pleasing aspect of
a park. The troopers sat their saddles with a greater alertness.

They moved in a diagonal line across the plateau toward the mountains of
Erkoweet, a silent company on a plain still more silent. It was eleven
o'clock. The sun rose toward the centre of a colourless, cloudless sky,
the shadows of the camels shortened upon the sand, and the sand itself
glistened white as a beach of the Scilly Islands. There was no draught
of air that morning to whisper amongst the rich foliage, and the shadows
of the branches lay so distinct and motionless