150 WITH THE CAMEL CORPS UP THE NILE.

halted on a bare gravelly space in the scrub, where the ground rose into a low knoll. In the far distance was just to be seen a broad green belt of cultivation, where presumably the river ran, and on the left front a large straggling town, which could only be Metemmeh. Now came the order to unload all the stores and build them up round the knoll. It was very tantalising having thus to halt and make another zeriba when so close to the river, and many growls were heard. " Why can't we go right ahead to the Nile ? We can do without breakfast for another five or six hours." However, the British soldier is never happy without his grumble, and very soon the camels were jammed up and tightly knee-lashed, and a wall of biscuit-boxes and saddles built up round them. Bullets kept spattering in on us from invisible marksmen in the long grass all the time, and many was the " Fft, fft !

" into the mass of camels. A company was therefore extended along a low ridge fifty yards in front of the zeriba to try to keep down the fire, but it was hard work ; the only objects to aim at were the puffs of smoke in the scrub, seven or eight hundred yards off, or