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This particular young lieutenant was left on Lemnos sick. He really was very sick indeed. He recovered to some extent of the fever, and joined us one day at Suvla. This was in the Old Dry Water-course period, when Hawk and I lived in the bush-grown ditch. Officers, N.C.O.'s, and men were tired out with overwork. This young officer came up to the Kapanja Sirt to take over the next spell of duty.
A sharp frost-wind, which made itself heard and felt from time to time, removed the clouds of mist which might otherwise have slumbered till morning on the valley; and, though it could not totally disperse the clouds of vapour, yet threw them in confused and changeful masses, now hovering round the heads of the mountains, now filling, as with a dense and voluminous stream of smoke, the various deep gullies where masses of the composite rock, or breccia, tumbling in fragments from the cliffs, have rushed to the valley, leaving each behind its course a rent and torn ravine resembling a deserted water-course.
Until the general whoop is given, nothing speaks but the rifle." David nodded, as much to signify his acquiescence with the terms; and then Hawkeye, casting another observant glance over his followers made the signal to proceed. Their route lay, for the distance of a mile, along the bed of the water-course.
He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks of 'wash' or gold-bearing dirt.
"The night was fine, but still it was a very weary vigil. Of course it has the sort of excitement about it that the sportsman feels when he lies beside the water-course and waits for the big game. It was very long, though almost as long, Watson, as when you and I waited in that deadly room when we looked into the little problem of the Speckled Band.
A short distance beyond, at the end of a water-course, is an attractive hexagonal structure with niched recesses and ornamental capstones. This is Hobson's Conduit, erected in 1614 by Thomas Hobson. This benefactor of Cambridge was a carrier between London and the university, and is said to have been the originator of "Hobson's Choice."
From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly.
Anything left in that area would be exposed to the artillery fire later on. At ten o'clock the men began to ascend the water-course, creeping through pools and little waterfalls, making a continuous spludgy sound, like pigs rubbing against the sty.
In sheer excitement, a few Hadendowas obeyed his wild command. They had not far to go, but the rocky water-course barred the track and they must cross it slowly. Now, above all else, was the time for the sorely-tried little band under von Kerber to stand fast. They could have shot at their leisure Alfieri and each man of the half dozen who came with him.
For three hours, we drew nearer to the quietly browsing animals. We hid behind low hills, and crawled down a water-course, and finally dismounted behind the very mound of prairie on the other side of which they were resting, a happy, peaceful family. There were twenty does, and proudly in their midst moved the king of the harem, a powerful buck with royal horns.
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