ting dark. We had gone a mile when we saw
the lamps of the assembly posts--thousands of men were to meet here
from different points, horse, foot, and guns. They would proceed in
three columns to a point south of west, where they would bifurcate and
take a new direction, Columns A and B making for the depression south
of the Dujailar Redoubt, Column C for a point facing the Turkish lines
between the Dujailar and Sinn Aftar Redoubts. There was never such a
night march. Somebody quoted Tel-el-Kebir as a precedent, but the
difficulties here were doubled. The assembly and guidance of so large
a force over ground untrodden by us previously, and featureless save
for a nullah and some scattered sand hills, demanded something like
genius in discipline and organization.

"I was with the sapper who guided the column. Our odd little party
reported themselves to the staff officer under the red lamp of Column
A. 'Who are you?' he asked, and it tickled my vanity to think that we,
the scouts, were for a moment the most vital organ of the whole
machine. If anything miscarried with us, it would mean confusion,
perhaps disaster. For in making a flank march round the enemy's
position we were disregarding, with justifiable confidence, the first
axiom of war.

"We were an odd group. There was the sapper guide. He had his steps to
count and his compass to look to when his eye was not on a bearing of
the stars. And there was the guard of the guide to protect him from
the--suggestions of doubts as to the correctness of his line.
Everything must depend on one head, and any interruption might throw
him off his course. As we were starting I heard a digression under the
lamp.

"'I make it half past five from Sirius.'

"'I make it two fingers left of that.'

"'Oh, you are going by the corps map.'

"'Two hundred and six degrees true.'

"'I was going by magnetic bearing.'

"Ominous warning of what might happen if too many guides directed the
march.

"Then there was the man with the bicycle. We had no cyclometer, but
two men checked the revolution of the wheel. And there were other
counters of steps, of whom I was one, for counting and comparison.
From these an aggregate distance was struck. But it was not until we
were well on the march that I noticed the man with the pace stick, who
staggered and reeled like an inebriated crab in his efforts to
extricate his biped from the unevennesses of the ground before he was
trampled down by the col