s present sang them with him. During the second hymn a train load
of natives came up, and, the signal being against it, came to a halt in
close proximity. The Egyptian is a kindly soul, and judging that the
white men were making a very poor effort in their rejoicings, the whole
lot of them broke into one of their insane chants, stamping their feet
and clapping their hands in time to the music and smiling encouragement
on the indignant Padre the while. Hastily breaking off the hymn, the
latter commenced an eloquent address, but the engine driver, a godless
man, whose small mind was fixed on getting home to his tent, suddenly
opened out his whistle and kept it going as a hint to the forgetful
signal-man who was holding him up, and the sorely tried Padre, losing
his nerve at this final outrage, "washed out" the Parade, and retired
defeated.

Only too often Sunday was chosen for some form of frightfulness, which
could not logically be called a fatigue, but which was really far worse.
It was on a Sunday that the whole Battalion, bearing on their backs
every stitch of their kit, repaired to the E.S.R. station, and
surrendered their belongings to be placed in waggons and subjected to
superheated steam. Not only were successive volunteers almost boiled
alive in premature efforts to enter the waggons after the doors were
reopened; not only was everyone's kit mixed up with everyone else's and
the garments, when recovered, found to be creased and mangled in
incredible ways; not only was the whole Battalion left standing at ease,
dressed solely in boots and sun helmets, while the Port Said express
moved slowly past them; but, when all was over, it was found that our
little friends had considered the steriliser merely as a new form of
incubator to help their offspring to hatch out.

The weather on the whole was passable. In March there were days of
strong west wind which were really chilly. In April it began to warm up,
and the thermometer in the tents--and a tent with flaps gave us the best
shade temperature we could find--reached 100 deg. before the end of the
month. The "khamseen," a south wind, hot as the blast of a furnace,
bringing with it clouds of dust and flying sand darkening the sun, and
making a fog in which we could not see half across the parade ground,
smote us at irregular intervals in April and May. No words are bad
enough for the "khamseen." People who live in Cairo in good stone houses
with blinds and lots of ice