On the Road to Bagdad: A Story of Townshend's Gallant Advance on the Tigris. Brereton Frederick Sadleir
their eyes on Sultan, had seen the masterly way in which he was managed, and had admired the horsemanship of this new-comer amongst junior officers.
"He's a find," declared one of the Staff Officers, "and I'll eat my hat if young Keith doesn't prove a most promising officer!"
But that was a question for the future. To make good resolutions, to register silent vows, is, after all, a very easy matter, and one to which we all of us are prone. Promises are, we know, very much like pie-crust, so easily are they broken, and good intentions and vows, made ever so solemnly and so secretly, are difficult to keep. Would Geoff, with all his youthful enthusiasm, with all his keenness, with his undoubted steadiness of character, do well? Or would he prove only an egregious failure?
"Trot!" The command rang out loudly, and in a moment the troops of horse were swinging away across the now fast-opening desert, their horses' feet kicking up clouds of sandy dust and gravel debris. Those palms were left behind in a trice it seemed, and within half an hour the landing-place was little more than a memory. It was perhaps two hours later when an officers' patrol, which had been riding well in advance, signalled the troops to halt, and one of their number came back at a gallop.
"A strong force of horsemen away on our left front, sir," he reported. "Turks, I think, but I am by no means certain."
"Halt! Mr. Keith, you will ride forward to the patrol, and if necessary beyond them. Let me have your report at the first possible moment," came the sharp order.
A second later Sultan was bounding forward, and in a little while Geoff had joined the officers' patrol at the point where they had now halted. Yes, there was a force of horsemen away in front, and to all appearances the campaign in Mesopotamia was about to open.
CHAPTER IV
The First Encounter
"There! Over there you can see a mass of horsemen, and I think there are infantry just behind them," said Daglish, one of the officers forming the patrol which had gone out in front of the two troops of Indian Horse sent out to reconnoitre. When Geoff pulled up his Arab, Sultan, he found close beside him the young officer who had just spoken, standing with his reins hooked over one arm, his feet wide apart and sunk almost to the ankles in the soft sand of the desert, and his glasses glued to his eyes, as he surveyed the ground to his left front, adjacent to the River Shatt-el-Arab.
"Hang it!" Geoff heard him say as he too dropped from his saddle and let his reins fall on Sultan's neck – for Sultan had been trained by the knowing and experienced Joe Douglas to stand as still and as steady as a rock without a rider, so long as his reins were left in that position.
"Hang it, Keith! there's a sort of a mist out there, and while just a second ago I could have sworn that there were several hundred horsemen, either Turkish or Arab, there is now nothing but shimmering water and palm-trees and houses, and a devil of a big village."
Daglish, a young, spirited, and handsome cavalry officer, dropped his glasses and let them dangle about his neck, while he turned impatiently towards Geoff.
"See!" he cried, stretching his hand out. "Look for yourself, Keith; there's the village yonder and hundreds of palm-trees round it; but it can't have sprung up in a moment, and can't have taken the place of those horsemen. What's it mean?"
The line the officers' patrol had taken had brought them to a low elevation – for though the estuary of the Tigris and the Euphrates is more or less flat, and the greater part of it but desert country, the ground rises here and there almost imperceptibly into hard gravel patches, and it was on the summit of one of these that the patrol had halted, and from which they had first sighted what was taken to be enemy horsemen, and which now, to the amazement of the officer, had developed into merely a native village. Pulling out his glasses, Geoff first of all surveyed the scene without their aid, and noticed that from the slight elevation to which they had attained he was able to look down upon the course of the river as it ran through a broad belt of green palm-trees. He could see stretches of the water flashing here and there under the brilliant rays of the sun. Elsewhere peeps of it only were obtainable, while in other parts the brilliant reflection from its surface shot through a thousand apertures between the trunks of the palms, the light almost dazzling him as it reached him. It was to a point, perhaps more than a mile away, and just outside the closest belt of palm-trees, that Daglish was pointing, and as Geoff looked in that direction he too saw a native village embowered in palms, its white houses gleaming faintly across the yellow stretches of desert.
"Well?" Daglish asked him impatiently.
Geoff smiled.
"Just a mirage," he told his companion. "They are funny things till you get used to them, and you have to come and live in this country for quite a while often before you get a chance. Before now I've seen a whole Turkish city rise up before me out of the desert, looking wonderfully realistic, with people moving about, and horses, and asses, and dogs in all directions. Then I've gone on a little way, or gone back, and the whole scene has vanished. That's a mirage. Some trick of the sun's rays playing upon the atmosphere spread out over the desert. How it's brought about beats me altogether; but it's real enough when one sees it, and equally elusive when one's moved from one's position. Let's walk our horses across here to the left; we needn't trouble to go downhill at all, for if you have seen the enemy horsemen out there in the open, they will most distinctly have seen you up here on this little bit of an eminence."
Leading their horses, they strode off some distance to their left, sinking ankle-deep into the sand at almost every stride. There were three of them by now, for Harmer, another of the Indian cavalry officers – the one who had come back to make his report – had joined them; and as they went, each one cast glances over his left shoulder, till of a sudden Daglish gave a cry of delight.
"I was beginning to doubt you, Keith," he said with energy; "but now, by James! you are right. That must have been a mirage, though I have never seen one before in all my life. The native village has gone completely; and look at those horsemen!"
They came to an abrupt halt, the three wheeling round at once and raising their glasses.
"Eh! What do you make of 'em?" Daglish said, when a minute had passed during which Geoff focused the distant horsemen carefully and watched them critically. "Turks, eh? Or Arabs?"
"A mixed force," Geoff told him promptly. "Arab horsemen, perhaps two or three hundred strong, and Turkish infantry behind them; there are no guns with them, so I take it that it's simply a reconnoitring force, or maybe it's a garrison, from some point lower down the river, retiring before us."
"Then the sooner we send back to our fellows the better," cried Daglish. "There's open ground before us, and the two troops could operate so as to drive in a blow at those fellows."
Pulling his notebook from his pocket he wrote a few hurried lines, and, having folded the "chit" up, he addressed it to his commanding officer.
"Take it back, Harmer," he ordered. "You can tell them that Keith and I will go on a little and make out those fellows a trifle more clearly."
A minute later the third of the officers was in his saddle and galloping back towards their comrades, whom they had left some distance away, halting at the bottom of this long sloping eminence. Then Geoff and Daglish climbed into their saddles and urged their horses forward, Geoff looking critically at the mount upon which his companion was riding.
"Better go easily, Daglish," he told him, "for that little horse of yours doesn't look as though he was fast, and I can tell you many of those Arab horsemen are superbly mounted. We can go on a little way, of course, and then, if it's the same to you, I'll push on still closer, for there's not a horse yonder that can even look at Sultan."
It was perhaps five minutes later when the two drew rein, for even though Daglish was full of energy and enthusiasm, and indeed was a brilliant cavalry officer, yet he was not devoid entirely of discretion. Though he was itching with eagerness to get to grips with the enemy, and to come to close quarters, he could not fail to realize the weight of the warning which Geoff had given him; nor, having seen that little exhibition which Sultan and his master had given them so close to the place of disembarkation, could he doubt that there were few who could come up to the magnificent Arab Geoff was riding.
"All