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This was the reason that Wyndham bimbashi and his Gippies, and the Sheikh and his household, faced the fact, the morning after Hassan left, that there was scarce a goolah of water for a hundred burning throats. Wyndham understood now why the Arabs sat down and waited, that torture might be added to the oncoming death of the Englishman, his natives, and the "friendlies."
But the rifle was gone, and he had to smile as the little black boys mimicked the German's fright when he dropped the rifle and laughed in scorn at him. At Rageef, seeing he need expect no real help from the Egyptian Government, Gordon began to form an army of his own, making soldiers of the Soudanese, the "Gippies," as our own soldiers now call them.
It was like the patient fellah, when the Arabs, in pursuit of Wyndham and his Gippies, suddenly cut in between him and the house, to deliver himself over to the conqueror, with his hand upon his head in sign of obedience.
Here he was, shut up with Gippies who had no real faith in him, in the house of a Sheikh whose servants would cut his throat on no provocation at all; and not an eighth of a mile away was a horde of Arabs a circle of death through which it was impossible to break with the men in his command. They must all die here, if they were not relieved.
This was the reason that Wyndham bimbashi and his Gippies, and the Sheikh and his household, faced the fact, the morning after Hassan left, that there was scarce a goolah of water for a hundred burning throats. Wyndham understood now why the Arabs sat down and waited, that torture might be added to the oncoming death of the Englishman, his natives, and the "friendlies."
And the Gippies are as brave and soldier-like a body of troops as is to be found. "We," they say, "are like the English; we are not afraid." He enlisted men who had been slaves, and men who had been slavers. A detachment of cannibals that he came across he also enlisted, drilled, and trained, and turned into first-rate soldiers.
Cannon, Maxims, and rifles roared, and, bold as the Taaisha rode, neither horse nor man lived to get within one hundred yards of our Soudanese and Gippies. Steady as a gladiator, with what to some of us looked like inevitable disaster staring him in the face, Colonel Macdonald fought his brigade for all it was worth.
There are Englishmen in Egypt who still speak slightingly of Wyndham bimbashi, but the British officer who buried him hushed a gossiping dinner-party a few months ago in Cairo by saying: "Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him; But little he'll reek, if they let him sleep on In the grave where his Gippies have laid him."
Wyndham hesitated an instant, then, as the first trickle of water entered the garden of the house where his Gippies and the friendlies were, his voice rose in the Song of the Sakkia: "Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left: Who will take care of me, if my father dies? Who will give me water to drink, and the cucumber vine at my door Turn, O Sakkia!"
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