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Updated: June 25, 2025
The sun burned down upon the glassy sea and the white deck till the varnish on the rails cracked and blistered, and the sweat streamed like water from the faces of the labouring seamen. Below at the ship's side half a dozen surf boats were waiting, manned by Kru boys, who alone seemed perfectly comfortable, and cheerful as usual.
Those boys who are first starting on travelling to work, and those without books, have no difficulty in getting passages on the steamers, for a captain is glad to get as many on board as he can, being sure to get their passage money and a premium for them, so great is the demand for Kru labour.
Making a détour into the desert on quitting Abu Kru, I left Colonel Martin's column, and rode on with one native servant to Wady Hamed. As a matter of fact, the camp was neither at Wad Habeshi nor Wady Hamed, but between the two. The latter, however, was the official name.
The Kru quarters are at the western base of the hill; a few hands, however, live in the two little villages upon the Tákwá rivulet. The Sierra Leone and Akra artificers occupy their own hamlet between the Kru lines and the stamps. Last year there was a garden with a small rice-field, but everything was stolen as soon as it was fit to gather. Next morning Mr. MacLennan led me to the diggings.
He felt the cold strike at his spine, he went back to the room in which he had been sitting. He sat again, but he sat shivering. The agent had left no work for him.... The Kru boys had been anxious to explain something. The humming of the flies about that shuttered window seemed to Hatteras to have more explicit language than the Kru boys' chatterings.
His stealthy call to arms had aroused them in time at least to crawl behind some shelter and grip their rifles. The war-cry of the savages was met with a death-like quiet there were no signs of confusion nor terror. A Kru boy, who called out with fright, was felled to the ground by Trent with a blow which would have staggered an ox.
At Tel-el-Kebir many thousand prisoners were made, and in other engagements our hands were always full of dervish wounded. At El Teb, Tamai, Abu Klea, Abu Kru, Gemaizeh, Atbara, and elsewhere, wounded dervishes fell into our hands, and received every attention from the medical staff. And in some of these actions our troops were themselves in sore straits.
Afterwards he knew that he must have fainted, for when he opened his eyes the sun was up and the men were strolling about looking at the dead savages who lay thick in the grass. Trent sat up and called for water. "Any one hurt?" he asked the boy who brought him some. The boy grinned, but shook his head. "Plenty savages killed," he said, "no white man or Kru boy." "Where's Mr.
He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, and talked unintelligibly to himself, hoarse, guttural murmurings without sense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw the Kru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation broke from his lips. It was something like this which he had been expecting. The Kru boy drew nearer and nearer.
He had found Oom Sam established as a sort of task-master and contractor, and had promptly dismissed him, with the result that the supply of Kru boys was instantly doubled. He had found other sources of labour and started them at once on clearing work, scornfully indifferent to the often-expressed doubts of the English surveyor as to possibility of making the road at all.
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