116 THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES round him, quietly dismounted and relieved the camel’s load by “drinks all round.” How touching an example of humanity towards poor dumb animals! Let the traveller and explorer, then, always remember that when the whisky mule halts, it is a kindness to lighten his burden; if after some hours he jibs and refuses to proceed, fate has clearly marked out that spot for the site of the camp! The whisky mule must not be left behind!

On the occasion of one of these halts I was astonished to see a diminutive boy in very ragged clothes walking along with two halfplucked pigeons in his hand and a large bag over his shoulder. After mounting I rode beside him and found that he was a Greek.

His father and mother kept a small café in Cairo, and the boy, who was only fourteen and very small for his age, had actually traversed some twelve hundred miles by land and water in order to sell cigarettes to the army. This adventurous urchin, Anastasios by name, became a great pet with the Tommies, who bought his cigarettes and supplied him with enough fragments of bully beef and biscuit to keep him going throughout the campaign.