THE WEEK BEFORE THE BATTLE — 133 is never secure from bacteria, for fresh germs ‘may enter it as it cools. Moreover, it is impossible to boil a// the water required for camp purposes; and if a servant ‘‘ washes up” the plates and cups in unboiled water, or one plunges one’s head into it, there can be no absolute guarantee against the intrusion of an evil bacillus into one’s system. The only hope is that one’s internal zeriba, so to speak, is well guarded by a valiant line of those good bacilli whose chief delight—so bacteriologists tell us— is to gather round the malignant invader and do him to death. Water taken from the middle of the stream was said to be perfectly wholesome, but even here the mud held in solution acted as an irritant. There was another little thing, too, which rather set one against any Nile water at the Atbara camp, to wit, the fact that almost every day a corpse or two of the Dervishes killed at the fight—when the Atbara was nearly empty—were caught up by the flooded stream, and carried down visibly into the Nile: Still, these bodies were almost mummified from the heat; so perhaps there was not much danger, after all, to be feared from their presence in our water supply.