elight by day or night to beat the Johnnies fair."

Towards the end of the eight miles march indeed there was less singing
and laughing, for throats were dry and legs weary. What, in eight miles
and at night-time? Well, the next time you are staying at a sea side
place, where there is plenty of sand, you try walking along it, not
where it is firm, but higher up from the sea, where you sink over your
ankles at every step; if you can borrow a rifle and a hundred rounds of
ball cartridge and carry that too, you will be able to form a still more
just opinion; but, even without that, I invite you to consider how many
more miles of it you want when you have gone four. But if they were
tired and thirsty they were full of spirit, and it would only have
required the sight of an enemy to make them as lively as crickets again.

It was midnight when they arrived, and they bivouacked outside the
zereba in the square formation, every man lying down in the place he
would occupy if the force were attacked, so that if the alarm sounded,
he had only to snatch up his rifle and rise to his feet, and he was
ready for anything.

But they were not disturbed, and rested till noon on the 12th, when
dinner was eaten, and after it, at 1 p.m., they started once more to
find the foe. As you draw cover after cover to find a fox, so in the
desert you try watering-places when you are seeking game of any kind,
quadruped or biped. And thus information was obtained that Osman Digna
had a camp where all his forces were massed at Tamai, a valley well
supplied with the precious fluid, nine miles from the zereba.

Once more was theory knocked over by experience. If there is one thing
upon which most people feel quite confident about with regard to Egypt
and the surrounding country, it is that the atmosphere is always
perfectly clear, so that objects are only hidden from the eye by
intervening high ground or the curve of the earth. For, as you probably
know, anything on a (so called) level surface like the sea may be
visible if the atmosphere allows it for ten miles, to a man on the same
plane the shore say; but beyond that distance it gets so far round the
globe we inhabit as to be hidden. Of course the taller it is the longer
the top of it can be seen, as you will often perceive a ship's top masts
after the hull and lower spars have vanished.

Or, on the other hand, the higher the ground you stand on the further
round the earth's curve you can s