re not bad; regimental days were
tolerable at times; but brigade and divisional manoeuvres were
inventions of the devil. On these latter occasions elusive white
flags, the skeleton enemy, appeared and disappeared. Scouts reported
them here, then there. The mounted men advanced in open order, all
except the front line smothered in a fog of dust. Infantry toiled and
sweated after them. The maligned staff viewed from afar the battle
royal. Thankful men received wounds from galloping umpires, and lay
down peacefully to await rescue by the attentive ambulance.
Chastisements descended from great to lesser dignitaries. Why had not
Colonel Macpherson managed to move his flank-guard three miles in two
minutes? So a field day would pass, each rank being roundly condemned
to everlasting perdition by the rank immediately below it, until the
G.O.C., Egypt, and the British Empire, bore the brunt of the awful
damnings. Bad-tempered and dishevelled, the troops would set off on
their homeward march, the final straw being added to the annoyances of
the infantry by the passage to windward of the mounted rifles.
Shrouded in the dust, they levelled their final, terrible threats
against those who would be home two hours before them.

Times there were, too, good times, when the troopers would trek across
the Delta to the Barrage du Nil, a pleasant spot where the Nile divides
into its delta streams and canals. Here they would bivouac for the
night beneath shady plantations of lebbak trees in beautiful gardens.
In the daytime they swam their horses in the river. A jolly form of
amusement there was the blanket-tossing of intruding natives, who were
rather prone to contract those things which did not belong to them; and
no method of discouragement was so efficacious. The "Gyppies" were
fleet of foot, but so were the troopers, and to see a lanky southerner
pursuing a victim was good entertainment. Captured at length and
shrieking in abject terror, they would go flying skyward from the
tautened blanket. But, alas, the blankets were of Government
manufacture, and occasionally, upon the victim's meteoric return, would
split in two. Thus many blankets were rent in twain, and thus did many
dusky ones learn that the belongings of the troopers were sacred
property.

And so Egyptian days passed light-heartedly enough. That was before
the serious times, before they had been involved in the real fierce
thing. And now few of them ride toge