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A shell from the gun now burst over a number of the enemy who had collected about 800 yards in our rear. This was an unmistakable notice to quit. We set fire to the stockades, and the Baris having disappeared, I selected a position for a night's bivouac. There was a bad supply of water, and we could procure, nothing but a muddy mixture which smelt strongly of goats.
Day was just breaking, and the body of cavalry were preparing to leave their bivouac when a man emerged from the darkness on the opposite side of the camp from that where Little Darby had been felling trees, and walked up to the picket.
"It is one of the Hymenoptera," said Sumichrast; "it collects all round its eggs the food the young will eat when they are hatched; the insect is therefore full of forethought a good example for us to imitate." When the fire was ready, we started off in light marching order to explore the vicinity of our bivouac.
At night, especially when I was troubled by sleeplessness, I was always fancying that I recognized, in the distant sounds, either the crow of a cock, the barking of a dog, or the burden of some familiar song. "But if no one can discover our bivouac," remarked Lucien, casting a glance behind him, "how shall we manage to find it again?"
The cold had entered his lungs as a knife, and his breath circled in a little cloud about his mouth. Through the storm he heard the quick oaths of his companions ring out like distant shots. When night fell they halted to bivouac by the roadside, and until daybreak the pine woods were filled with the cheerful glow of the campfires.
Still I could not walk through the streets of Bivouac without observing a few physical usages, that I shall mention, because they have an evident connection with the state of society, and the historical recollections of this interesting portion of the polar region.
By two o'clock in the afternoon the 22nd Brigade got into Ain Arik and found a strong force of the enemy holding Beitunia and the hill of Muntar, a few hundred yards to the north of it, thus barring the way to Ramallah and Bireh. Rain fell copiously and the wind was chilly. After a miserable night in bivouac, the 6th Brigade was astir before daylight on the 21st.
At six miles we struck another creek with a broad and grassy bed, on the banks of which we halted, at a small and muddy pool of water. The trees on this creek were larger than usual and beautifully umbrageous. It appeared as if coming from the N.E., and falling to the N.W. There were many huts both above and below our bivouac, and well-trodden paths from one angle of the creek to the other.
That night the Indian scouts reported that they had seen the fires of an encampment on the west shore; on which the whole party advanced to the attack, an hour before dawn, filing silently under the dark arches of the forest, the Indians nearly naked, and streaked with their war-paint of vermilion and soot. When they reached the spot they found only the smouldering fires of a deserted bivouac.
At 9 p.m. a heavy fire was opened on the bivouac, and a storm of bullets swept over and around us, apparently directed from all sides except the south-west. The troops were protected by their position on the slope below the level of the plateau, so that the total loss from this fire, which lasted about twenty minutes, was very inconsiderable.
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