22 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

we really cannot accept any trains from any direction.”

“What do you mean?” was again queried back. So the corporal and his two men responded : “ Sir, there are wild beasts all around the hut and tent ; what can we do?

We dare not stir out.” ‘Light fires, you magnoons,” (fools), was the final rejoinder, and the train service went forward as usual. It appeared that the hyenas and wolves, wont to snap up a living around the men’s camp, bereft of their pickings were in a state of howling starvation, and had turned up and made an appeal, by no means mute, to the station guard, which the latter failed to understand or appreciate. In a remarkably short space of time the hyenas and pariah dogs had adopted the habit of scavengering around

all the camps and snifting along the track, after the trains, for stray scraps.

I returned to Cairo early in July, where, having paid into the Financial Military Secretary’s hands the £50

security required of war correspondents, intended to cover cost of railway fares south of Wady Halfa, and

for any forage drawn from the stores, I received the

official permit to proceed to the front. All the restric- tions as to the number of correspondents allowed up,

which were imposed during the Atbara campaign, were singularly enough removed, and the “very open door” policy substituted. In consequence, there was a large number, over sixteen in all, of so-called representatives of the press at the front. As an old correspondent aptly observed, some of them represented anything but journals or journalism, the name of a newspaper being

used merely as a cover for notoriety and medal hunting.