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The brunt of the fighting fell upon the two central squadrons. Not only were the enemy thickest where they charged, but the opposite bank of the deep nullah was composed of rough boulders, almost impassable by horses. These squadrons lost sixteen killed and nineteen wounded.
We're on his premises and the missus is sick and needs quiet. He's apt to charge, and I can see his point of view. We'll back down, son, and not obstruct the gentleman's door." They couldn't have been three seconds clambering down the rocks to the nullah bed, yet the male tiger was twenty feet nearer when they looked up.
On comparing notes, we found that two, if not three, machine-guns, had disclosed themselves in the dilapidated length of F12 between our barricade and the "shell-holed" tree a portion of the trench which we had hitherto regarded as entirely abandoned and that there were more of them in the same trench between the tree and the small nullah; the exact positions could not however be located.
No tiger having appeared, I stationed natives in trees to watch the nullah while we ascended the hill on foot, directing our course through the forest to the place from whence the shots had been fired. We had hardly advanced 80 yards before we found both the elephants on the top of the steep shoulder of the hill, where several of our men were upon the boughs of surrounding trees.
It was full of Beloochees. The gallant 22nd was again first in action, and, as they advanced under a terrific fire from the gun on the hillock, and from the matchlock-men, with whom were some of the bravest chiefs posted in the first nullah, nearly half the light company were struck down.
Striking a path through the undergrowth the subaltern climbed down the steep ravine that lay between the hill and the Political Officer's bungalow. As he struggled up the steep side of the nullah he heard their mother calling the children with a note of inquietude in her voice; and he answered her with a reassuring shout. Coming up on the level behind the low stone wall of the garden he found Mrs.
Walking fast, however, was impossible at the bottom of the nullah, for it was pitch dark between its steep banks, and there were bowlders and stones lying here and there. After half an hour's walking Ned scrambled up and looked back. "It is quite safe now," he said; "let us make as straight as we can for Nussara."
The roads of this region, and indeed of all Midian, are those of Iceland without her bogs and snows: for riding considerations we may divide them into four kinds: Wady the Fiumara or Nullah; called by travellers "winter-brook" and "dry river-bed."
Great pieces of cork, and bags of hay and corn, hung dangling from mighty hooks the latter to feed the cattle, should they be compelled to camp out on some sterile spot on the Veldt, and methinks to act as buffers, should the whole concern roll down a nullah or little precipice, no very uncommon incident in the blessed region they must pass to reach Dale's Kloof. Harness mended; fresh start.
The native drivers were of as many shades as the camels they led, from the pale brown of the town-bred Egyptian to the coal-black Nubian or Donglawi. Twenty-five thousand camels carrying water! The first relays were filing stolidly into the nullah in the early hours of the morning after the battle, as though their business were the most ordinary thing in the world!
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