262 WITH KITCHENER IN THE SOHDAN overflowed could not get near enough to land them. !Next morning they got news that the Khalifa was twenty-five miles ahead, and had just obtained fresh camels, so they were ordered to return to the town. They had picked up a good many of the fugitives, among them the Khalifa’s favourite wife, who, doubtless, with other women had slipped away at one of his halting-places, feeling unable to bear the constant fatigues and hardships of the flight in the desert. The cavalry have since been out again, but beyond the fact that the Khalifa had been joined by many of the fugitives from the battle and was making for Kordofan, no certain news has been obtained.

“ At present nothing can be done in that direction. That horse you bought is all right.”

“ I really did not like taking him, for I already had one, and it looked almost like robbery giving him two pounds for it and the saddle.”

“ Others have done as well,” the officer laughed ; one of the brigade staff bought a horse for a pound from Burleigh, who had given forty for it at Cairo. There was no help for it, they could not take horses down. Besides, it is not their loss after all ; the newspapers can afford to pay for them, they must have been coining money of late.”

“ That reconciles me,” Gregory laughed ; “ I did not think of the correspondents’ expenses being paid by the papers.”

I don’t know anything about their arrangements, but it stands to reason that it must be so in a campaign like this. In an ordinary war a man can calculate what his outlay might be, but on an expedition of this kind no one could foretell what expenses he might have to incur. Besides, the Sirdar has saved the newspapers an enormous expenditure. The correspondents have been rigidly kept down to messages of* a few hundred words, whereas, if they had had their own way they would have sent down columns. Of course the correspondents grumbled, but I have no doubt their employers were very well pleased, 'and the newspapers must have saved thousands of pounds by this restriction.”