only for troops on the sea-coast.

On the 3rd of November the first heavy storm descended on us, sheets of
rain with thunder and lightning. The only protection against this new,
but henceforward all too common form of Sinaitic frightfulness, was the
blanket bivouac, and a blanket thoroughly soaked by the deluge was a
poor covering for the now chilly nights. Fortunately the storms were
usually succeeded by sunshine, and if they came in the earlier part of
the day there was a chance of things being dried again before dusk. If
they came at night you could always look forward to the day.

The Battalion remained in the Salmana area, with several changes of
camp, until November 21st, when it returned to el Abd with the 7th
H.L.I, to take over the defences of that place, by now a railway depot
of some importance. Local defences of all important points along the
railway had always to be carefully maintained. There would be plenty of
warning of a strong attack from the east as there had been in August.
But a raid by men mounted on camels might have come unheralded from the
south, and had such a raid succeeded in cutting the line, burning the
stores, and wasting the water, say at el Abd, the British advance would
have been greatly retarded. We therefore continued our nocturnal vigils
on the ridges which encircled the station. The nights were now extremely
chilly, but the flies had not yet succumbed. They swarmed everywhere,
and the discovery of a dead camel an inch or two under the sand in "A"
Company's bivouac area rejoiced their pestilential hearts. It is the
immemorial custom of the desert not to bury dead camels or horses but to
let them lie. Then you know where you are and the sun soon cooks the
carcases till they become inoffensive. This is, however, repugnant to
the tidy minds of European sanitary experts, who give orders for the
burial of the deceased. The wiser Egyptian is overruled and has to do
the burying. Now it takes a simply monstrous hole to hold a camel, and
the result of the clash of English and Egyptian ideas is a very
imperfectly buried carcase, just covered from the beneficent influence
of the sun, but filling the surrounding air with its disgusting aroma.

It was during this second stay at Bir el Abd that the Bint joined
us--rescued for fifty piastres from the unworthy hands of a Port Said
native by Lieut. Agnew. It was always a matter of surprise to the
present writer that so many failed to pierce the biz