y listening to the sounds of war.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

IN ACTION AT LAST.

No time was lost in sending the newly-arrived troops to their sphere of
duty.

There was something appropriate in their landing on that day of
gunpowdery memories, the 5th of November. It was four o'clock when they
disembarked. By four-thirty they were drawn up and inspected by the
General, and immediately thereafter marched off in detachments to their
respective stations--to Sphinx Redoubt, Fort Commodore, Bulimba, and
other points of defence.

The detachment in which Miles Milton found himself was led by Captain
Lacey to Sphinx Redoubt, where he was greatly pleased to find that his
new friend, private Stevenson of the marines, was also stationed with
some of his comrades.

There are probably times in the experiences of most of us when we seem
to awake out of a long dream and begin to appreciate fully that the
circumstances in which we are placed are stern realities after all.
Such a time of awakening came to our hero when he and his comrades each
received fifty rounds of ball-cartridge, and stood ready to repel
assault on the defences of Suakim.

Hitherto drill and reviews had seemed to him a good deal like playing at
soldiers. Even when the distant sound of the big guns and the rattle of
small arms touched his ear, the slumber of unbelief was only broken--not
quite dispelled. But now, weighted with the deadly missiles, with rifle
in hand, with ears alert to every sound, and eyes open to every object
that might present itself on the sandy waste beyond the redoubt, and a
general feeling of expectancy pervading his thoughts and feelings, he
became clearly convinced that the recent past was no flight of the
imagination--that he was in very truth a soldier, and that his fighting
career had in reality begun!

Now, it may not be out of place here to state that our hero was not by
nature a combative man. We think it necessary to point this out,
because the somewhat pugnacious introduction of Miles into our story may
have misled the reader on this point. His desire for a soldier's life
was founded on a notion that it would prove to be a roving, jovial,
hilarious sort of life, with plenty of sport and adventure in foreign
lands. Of course he knew that it implied fighting also, and he was
quite ready for that when it should be required of him; but it did not
occur to him to reflect very profoundly that soldiering also meant, in
some in