That evening the Guards gave an excellent dinner to the Staff, substituting fresh gazelle and sand-grouse for bully-beef. All night the men were drawing water from the upper pool of the wells, in which was the best water, by the light of lanterns.
The next day, 13th January, all were hard at work watering the camels and preparing for the advance on the morrow. The camels were already suffering severely: some thirty had dropped dead on the way; and owing to the impossibility of obtaining enough animals to carry the requisite grain, they were growing thin. It will be observed that the whole progress of the expedition depended upon camels as the sole means of transport.
When a camel falls from exhaustion, it rolls over upon its side, and is unable to rise. But it is not going to die unless it stretches its head back; and it has still a store of latent energy; for a beast will seldom of its own accord go on to the last. It may sound cruel; but in that expedition it was a case of a man's life or a camel's suffering. When I came across a fallen camel, I had it hove upright with a gun-pole, loaded men upon it, and so got them over another thirty or forty miles. By the exercise of care and forethought, I succeeded in bringing back from the expedition more camels, in the proportion of those in my control, than others, much to the interest of my old friend Sir Redvers { 256} Buller. He asked me how it was done; and I told him that I superintended the feeding of the camels myself. If a camel was exhausted, I treated it as I would treat a tired hunter, which, after a long day, refuses its food. I gave the exhausted camels food by handfuls, putting them upon a piece of cloth or canvas, instead of throwing the whole ration upon the ground at once.
Major Kitchener (now Lord Kitchener of Khartoum), who was dwelling in a cave in the hillside, reported that Khashm-el-Mus Bey, Malik (King) of the Shagiyeh tribe, was at Shendi with three of Gordon's steamers. (He was actually at Nasri Island.) Lieutenant E. J. Montagu-Stuart-Wortley, King's Royal Rifles, joined the column for service with Sir Charles Wilson in Khartoum. Little did we anticipate in what his plucky service would consist. Colonel Burnaby came in with a supply of grain, most of which was left at Jakdul, as the camels which had brought it were needed to carry stores for the Column. There were 800 Commissariat camels, carrying provisions for 1500 men for a month, the first instalment of the depot it was intended to form at Metemmeh, as the base camp from which to advance upon Khartoum.