OUR FOURTH COMPANY R.M.LJ. 61 however, was soon changed, so they were supplied with camels and sent to make up our regiment as aforesaid.

Excessively smart they looked, as they came into camp and formed up correctly on their markers.

They were in the same uniform as ourselves, but their helmets were snow-white (ours had been stained coffee-colour), and their belts and pouches had been freshly pipeclayed (ours were brown leather). Their grey tunics were spotless, and so were their breeches ; in fact, they looked as if they had been turned out of a bandbox only the day before, yet their tunics dated from Suakin, and their breeches, etc. from Wady Haifa. Their movements also equalled their appearance.

All this time, reports were rife as to where we were going to : whether up the river, to punish the devils who killed poor Colonel Stewart, or across the desert to Shendy. News had come in of Gordon's still successful defence of Khartoum. Major Kitchener's spies told how the Mahdi had written to Gordon, beseeching him not to waste more lives and