The phrase, “Everything is fair in love and war,” covers a multitude of sins in both departments.  We had a unique way of finding out whether the wells in the desert were poisoned.  We led up to each well a small detachment of captives and made them drink.  If they drank, we could drink also; if they refused, we took it for granted the wells were poisoned, and we hanged them.  Sometimes this extreme sentence was mitigated, and we flogged them.  Whatever we touched, we destroyed.  What the bullet could not accomplish, the torch could.  It was a campaign of annihilation!

The news of Gordon’s death cast a gloom over the entire army.  This, of course, meant relief and return home, but no man wanted to return.  We were seized with a fiendish impulse to proceed at all hazards to Khartoum to his relief.  That, from the point of view of the Government was, of course, out of the question, and we were ordered home.  Transport ships were lying in Suakim harbour ready for the journey across the sea, but this could not be accomplished with dispatch.  A garrison had to be left to watch the seaboard.  The detachment of which I was a part was returned to the town of Suakim, and the officers were quartered in an unfinished building by the seaside at the edge of the water.  The officers’ servants lived in tents pitched on the roof.  We were permitted to bathe as often as we wished.  The harbour was full of sharks and rather dangerous for bathing, but the Soudanese seemed to be not over-careful as they skimmed over the water in their “dug-outs.”

The journey home on a transport was a continuation of the misery of the desert.  What the desert had left undone to weakened men, the rough voyage accomplished.  The ship was overcrowded and almost every day dead bodies lashed to planks were pitched over the side.  The sight (below decks) of scores of men crawling around in a dying condition, struck terror to the hearts of the strong.  The smells were nauseating and the food was vile.  No man knew when his turn would come.  The few doctors were utterly unable to cope with this physical collapse of so many men.

The condition of the ship and of the men furnished me with the best opportunity I had had up to that time for evangelistic work.  I spent twenty hours of each twenty-four preaching the gospel to the men.  The absence of a chaplain on board made the work comparatively easy.  My work was done so quietly and unobtrusively, that it was practically unknown save to the sick and the dying until an incident happened that brought me somewhat into the light.

We were in the Bay of Biscay, and those who were well were fighting off the atmosphere of disease.  It was toward evening and four men were playing cards for money.  I stood watching them with my hands behind my back.  I must have been there half an hour when the man directly in front of me, looking around and staring me in the face, said: 

“Get t’ell out of ’ere!  I ’aven’t won a penny since you’ve been watching us.”