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Updated: July 1, 2025
Meanwhile C Battery continued to trot through the gap, and I called Heaven to witness that the whole of our Brigade would be through and away before ten minutes passed. I ran back to urge A and B Batteries to keep up the pace. When our very last water-cart, mess-cart, and G.S. waggon had passed, I thanked the French officer with great sincerity, and felt I had done a proper job of work.
Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up revolving storms there, when the main street was at peace; and the water-cart, as if it were drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and jolting round it, making it muddy when all else was clean.
The sandy bed of the bay was all ribbed with ripples. The island was humming and ticking like a watch with insect-noises: otherwise the deadly silence held. There were red-winged grasshoppers and great green-gray locust-looking crickets which whistled and "cricked" all night. We had to fetch our water from the water-tank boats, about a mile and a half distant, and haul it up in a water-cart.
The Wells of Moses, twelve in number, were brackish and only fit for the horses. Consequently every drop had to be brought from the Quarantine Station, three miles away, on the shores of the Gulf of Suez; and twice daily did the water-cart plough a laborious way through the sand. I think it was the very worst water we ever had, all but undrinkable, in fact.
Still, there were only the early grooms with their horses, and one gentleman with a little dark speck of a dog running before him, and one water-cart coming out of the town to get water for the baths.
The Doctor grew impatient, but restrained himself until an uncoated countryman, who had just walked into town and was ready for a talk, told him that he "seed a feller, thet wuz a stranger in these parts, with a three-legged picter-gallery, chasin' a water-cart a right smart ways back in the town, ez I come in." "That's he," said the Doctor. "He is crazy after pictures.
The visitor explained. He liked variety, he said. Half the chicken might be deviled for breakfast. The two dishes, with plain boiled potatoes and French beans, would suit him admirably. He was sorry he dared not try Tomlin's excellent claret, but a dominating doctor had put him on the water-cart. In effect, Mr. Franklin impressed the landlord as a man of taste and ample means.
'You are a very good fellow, said Mr. Pickwick, much affected; 'an honest fellow. 'Come, come, interposed Sam, who had witnessed Mr. Trotter's tears with considerable impatience, 'blow this 'ere water-cart bis'ness. It won't do no good, this won't. 'Sam, said Mr. Pickwick reproachfully. 'I am sorry to find that you have so little respect for this young man's feelings.
Then there is the boy who drives the donkey and water-cart round the garden, and who has an altogether reprehensible habit of whisking round corners and slicing off bits of the lawn as he whisks. "But you can't alter these things, my good soul," I say to myself. "If you want to get rid of the hares and foxes, you must consent to have wire-netting, which is odious, right round your garden.
It was the farmer; he was driving so fast that he was evidently off to the town on the spree. So there was something gone wrong at home, and there would be crying at the farm that night. Yes, there was Father Lasse driving out with the water-cart, so it was half-past five.
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