A night of great excitement was that of the capturing of some of our mounted scouts in a sortie near the hills.  That night we saw half a dozen immense bon-fires on the hilltops, and the impression we got was that our comrades were being burned alive.  There were half a dozen brushes or skirmishes with the natives during my stay in the desert, but I did not experience what might be called a decisive battle.  There had been decisive battles of one sort or another, but I was not present.  They were before my time.

They began the laying of a railway from Suakim to Berber, but afterward they pulled the rails up.  The soldiers cursed Gladstone for the laxity of his foreign policy.  Gordon, we knew, was in Khartoum, and hard pressed, and outside were the Mahdi and his multitude; and why the Government should hold us back, we could not understand.  The desert life was so deadening that any kind of a change would have been welcome.  Every man would have been glad of even a repetition of the charge at Balaklava, though only few men would come out.  Anything was preferable to rotting in the desert!

The sun was striking dead one out of every two men.  I thought my time had come when I had a sunstroke.  Being the only man on the General’s staff stricken, I was well looked after.  The General had ice, and I was privileged to have the luxury of it.  I was also given a glass of the finest French brandy.  I asked the attendant to put it by my side, and when he disappeared out of my tent—­my tent was so small that it barely covered my body—­I went through a fierce battle with my prejudices.  I was a fanatic on the drink question.  I had sworn eternal hostility to it, and with good reason.  The use of it was partly responsible for my lack of early schooling.  It had robbed me of a great deal of the life of my kind-hearted old mother, and I had determined to put up a tremendous fight against it.  Here the thing was in my hands, ordered by the doctor; but I tipped it into the sand and made them believe that I had drunk it.  I had seen so many stricken men with sunstroke die during the same day, that I had little hope of my own recovery; but inside of twelve hours, I was on my feet again, and, though weak, at work.

It was recorded that we lost fifty per cent. of our strength by sunstroke and enteric fever.  It was very noticeable that the men of intemperate habits were the first to go.  They dropped like sheep in the heat of the day, and by sundown they lay beneath a winding sheet of desert sand.  The actual conflict of civilized with savage forces was responsible for the loss of very few men.  The sun was our arch enemy!