y, and
intelligence, he soon became a favourite. "Send the young 'un" was
often the decision come to when a matter requiring promptitude and
gumption, and which the seniors could not well leave work in hand to
attend to, had to be done. The great ambition of a subaltern in any
capacity, civil or military, should be that his superior may learn to
trust him; and Harry Forsyth succeeded in that.

He was happier now than he had been for a long time, for he was too much
occupied with his new duties to worry about Daireh and the missing will.
And if a shadow of melancholy came over him, it was when he thought of
the cottage at Sheen, and the anxiety his mother and sister would be in
on his behalf. He wrote a long letter home, giving an account of all
his proceedings and his present occupation, and sent it off the day
before the march across the desert commenced.

At length the camp was struck, and the army was on the march--7,000
infantry, 120 cuirassiers, 300 Bashi-Bazooks, and 30 guns with rocket
battery. There were some 1,000 camp followers, and 6,000 camels and
horses. At first the route of this seemingly never-ending cavalcade lay
along the Nile bank.

Then it was committed to the desert. One hundred and eighty miles of
trackless, parched waste lay between them and El Obeid. The first few
days had indeed been weary work; the ground was full of broad, deep
cracks, for it had been under water when the Nile rose, and on the river
receding the fierce sun had had this effect upon the mud. Mimosa shrub
also grew thickly in parts; and it was important that the men should not
straggle, for that was the opportunity the Arabs were on the look-out
for, and so many fearful disasters had already occurred from this very
cause. For the soldiers, if the fierce children of the desert rushed
upon them unexpectedly when they were in loose formation, were as
helpless as sheep, though, when in a compact body, and under the
immediate eyes of their English officers, they could fight steadily
enough, as was proved at the battle of Marabia in the spring of that
same year, when they inflicted very severe losses upon the Arabs, whom
they totally defeated at little cost to themselves.

But though the march had been toilsome, the river was near at hand, and
the worst enemy of the desert, _thirst_, was not to be dreaded. But now
they were to leave the Nile behind them, and depend for their water
supply entirely on the wells, which were