Chapter II: At Tel-El-Kebir

A letter from Allan Graham to Lady Aberfeldie proved, by its introduction, a very bitter one to Olive, and the source of many tears.

'Belbeis, September.

'My DEAREST MOTHER,

'But for Evan Cameron of Ours saving my life at the risk of his own in action two days ago, I had not been alive to write you this letter--the first I have had time to attempt since we landed.

'Poor Evan!

'Whatever the mysterious influence was that that scoundrel Holcroft possessed over Olive is ended now, as I saw him fall into the sea, where he was drowned like a dog. I could not help him or save him, even had I been disposed to do so. Strange it is that a blackleg, a sharper, and worse, for such he became, should have been preferred by her at Dundargue to me, the companion and playmate of her childhood--her cousin, her affianced husband under her father's will, absurd in its tenor though that document be; and now, neither verbally nor in writing, shall I ever refer to her again. My pride--if I ever had any--has indeed been humbled in the dust, and by her!

'After quitting our camp on the evening before last, we moved to the sandhills above Kassassin, where we piled arms, and the men lay upon the sand or sat in groups, all chatting gaily and hopefully of the coming conflict at Tel-el-Kebir.

'Carslogie, who was always in wild spirits, was busy spouting Shakespeare--

"Thus far into the bowels of the land
Have we marched on without impediment,--"

and so forth, and I overheard some of our men remarking that he "was surely _fey_," when word was passed to stand to our arms, unpile, and advance at one in the morning.

'Never before, perhaps, did fourteen thousand men get under arms so quietly, so softly. The orders were now issued in whispers, and, noiselessly as an army of phantoms, we moved off, our footfalls muffled by the soft sand. No moon was visible, but we had a clear, starlit Egyptian sky overhead. No man was permitted to speak or smoke, and our brown helmets, red serges, and dark kilts seemed to blend with the gloom.

'If the silence of that weird, solemn, and impressive time were broken, it was by the occasional rumble of an artillery wheel or of a commissariat waggon, the clatter of a rammer or a steel scabbard against a stirrup-iron, as we advanced through the gloom, expecting every moment to hear the explosion of a musket or a shrill shout from the scattered Bedouin horsemen, who were alleged to be scouting in the vicinity--men belonging to the band of the Sheikh Zeid-el-Ourdeb.

'Dear mother, our Highland Brigade led the advance--thank God for the honour!--with the Indian contingent under Sir Hugh Macpherson, having the veteran Albany Highlanders as our support.

'Ever and anon there were brief halts to enable the regiments to maintain touch on the flanks.

'I cannot describe the order of our advance as yet, nor would you understand it if I did so.

'A silence that seemed something awful reigned over the vast plain, and none save the initiated could have imagined that, formed in a species of semi-circle, fourteen thousand men were approaching the enemy's earthworks, ready to dash at them like hounds at the deer when the leash is slipped.

'Arabi's lines consisted of solid entrenchments, bound together with wattles, four miles in extent from flank to flank, heavily armed with cannon, and having ditches about nine feet deep.

'The 74th Highlanders were next the canal, opposed to the most formidable part of these works, where many of their dead are lying on their faces shoulder to shoulder, shot down in the act of charging; next them were the Cameron, the Gordon Highlanders, and then ourselves, the Black Watch, each company with its piper in the rear, ready to strike up the onset when the time came.

'Every heart was swelling proudly and wildly then, with the grand conviction that every heart at home in Britain--and dearer still among our native hills--would exult in our triumph, for a triumph it was sure to be.

'Silently, swiftly, and noiselessly we swept forward to the attack. No word was spoken, no command given save in a whisper, and not a shot was fired, as, with fixed bayonets, we came within three hundred yards of the Egyptian batteries, and even then the soldiers of Arabi seemed unaware of our presence.

'Suddenly an alarm was given, and a terrific fire--a literal garland of flame--flashed along the bulwarks, a storm of lead went whistling over our helmets, and the air seemed laden with the pinging and whizzing of bullets, while cannon boomed hoarsely, and the roaring rockets screamed high in the air.

'The pipes struck up along the Highland line, a wild cheer burst from every man, and we advanced with a furious and headlong rush, flinging ourselves into the ditches and climbing up the scarp; all weariness after the toilsome night-march was gone; sore feet and thirst were alike forgotten.

'And now for the first time the voices of the officers were heard: "Come on, Camerons--this way, the Gordons--forward, the Black Watch!" The marines and the Irish regiments were on the right, and bravely they went at the trenches, too; but the _first_ within them were the Highlanders, and the first of these was young Donald Cameron, of the Camerons, who, as he leaped in with bayonet fixed, was shot through the head just as we carried the first line of works.

'The dim light of the early morning enabled the enemy now to direct their fire; for a minute or two we drew breath, poured in some heavy file-firing, and again dashed on, while one portion of our forces that had passed between the redoubts now opened a flank fusilade, which proved too much for the Egyptians, who--all save their wretched gunners, who were chained to the cannon--fled wildly across the open, where our fire mowed them down in hundreds, while they rent the air with cries of, "Ya Allah! ya mobarek!" (O God! O Blessed!)

'Then it was that our brigadier rode up and said to the 79th, "Well done, the Cameron men! Will not Scotland be proud of this day's work!"

'So much for our share of it.

'On the other flank of the works, the Horse Artillery were pouring in shell, till the Royal Irish carried them at the bayonet's point, after a regular hand-to-hand fight, in which Major Hart shot an Egyptian leader, who endeavoured to wrest away his revolver.

'Our troops swept over the batteries on every hand, and the enemy fled as rapidly and hopelessly as those on the other side of the Canal had fled before the Highlanders, whose costume and fury alike terrified them. Arabi, we are told, informed his people that "the Scottish soldiers were only old women;" but now they dub us demons.

'To hear our pipes send up their pæan of victory over the battered and corpse-strewn trenches of Tel-el-Kebir, was to feel for a time that exultation of the soul which is said to be worth a long life of dull and sluggish quiet.

'The Egyptians did not present the least appearance of order, but fled, a demoralised rabble, at the top of their speed, flinging away everything that might impede their flight, and pursued by our cavalry and Horse Artillery, who mowed them down like sheep.

'As one battery swept past the flank of the Black Watch, the gunners brandished their swords and shouted 'Scotland for ever!' and then we knew them to belong to the new division of Scottish Artillery.

'To hear that cry in such a time of supreme triumph was to make one feel what those must have felt, who heard it raised by the Greys at Waterloo and by the Albany Highlanders at Kotah.

'The total casualties of the Highland Brigade are two hundred and twenty of all ranks.

'One of the first we lost was poor Carslogie, the life of the mess. He was shot by a wounded Egyptian, to whom he had just given a mouthful from his water-bottle, and I blew out the miscreant's brains.

'We have also to sorrow for our noble Serjeant-Major, John M'Neill, whose tall and soldier-like figure was long a feature at the head of the column. He cut down several Egyptians with his claymore, but fell at last, pierced by three wounds. He was, we know, the sole support of a widowed mother, to whom he was tenderly attached.

'The fight was fought and won in the good old British fashion, with the cold steel; the breech-loader has not yet rendered the bayonet obsolete.

'The Guards and Highlanders made themselves at home among the tents and spoils of the Egyptians; but our soldiers, flushed with glory and fresh from conquest, no more spoke of the Gordons, the Ross-shire Buffs, or the Black Watch, but of Donald Cameron of the Camerons--the young hero from the Braes of Angus, who was the first in Tel-el-Kebir!

'Who could say what heroic blood was in his veins, for his name was old as the hills, when the Camerons were known as the children of the Follower of Ovi.

'I had some narrow escapes. A ball carried away the pommel of my dirk. I had a bayonet thrust through my kilt, and two shells exploded near me, covering me with sand; but I had a closer shave than that. In the rush as I led on my company, two powerful Egyptians in white uniforms, with scarlet tarbooshes, seemed to devote their energies to killing me, as an officer or prominent leader. Both attacked me with their fixed bayonets. By a circular parry of my claymore, I turned one of them aside, and ran the man through--or near--the heart. He screamed and grappled me by the throat, dragged me down amid the blood-soaked sand. So savage and powerful was his death-grip that had he failed to strangle me, I must have perished under the bayonet of the other, whom Cameron cut down, through tarboosh and bone to the chin, and then released me. A third who came up he pistolled, and I hope Evan will get a clasp to his V.C. for this.

'The papers will, of course, tell you all the rest--how we captured the standing camp and immense stores of provisions and plunder; how the victorious troops advanced with tremendous cheers across it to the railway station, where soon after Sir Garnet came up; and how Drury Lowe with his cavalry cut across the enemy's line of flight, killing and capturing on every hand.

'I know how my father, with his great love of the old Black Watch, will appreciate the story of our glory at Tel-el-Kebir; but the aspect of the place was awful after the firing ceased and the sun came up in his morning splendour--a sight never to forget, though I have seen some terrible work in India.

'The dead lay about in scores and hundreds, many disembowelled by shot or shell; some with brains oozing out; others with their heads literally blown off; and some were scorched to death by their clothing becoming ignited by the flame of an exploded shell. There were wounds of every kind--by the bayonet, the rifle-butt, and sword; and many of the maimed were seen to cast aside their tarboosh and bury their head in the sand for coolness, while the cries for water were simply agonising.

'I found the third Egyptian from whom Cameron's pistol had saved me. He was dying. "Turn my head towards Mecca," I heard him say faintly to a comrade who lay near him. The fellah did so, and the poor wretch passed away in peace. I saw some who died making signs of the cross, but these, of course, were Coptic Christians.

'Two ill omens, it is said, occurred before the conflict to chill the ardour of the Egyptians. In the fight of Kassassin a man was shot through the heart by a rifle ball, which pierced a copy of the Koran that he carried there as a charm, and took a part of it into his body. The other was the crescent of the new moon, which encircled a star and sank with it below the horizon just before the attack, and this, being emblematic of the crescent and star, was deemed ominous of defeat and destruction.

'Arabi has fled towards Belbeis, pursued by Drury Lowe.

'The canal is filled with dead and dying men and horses, yet our men are fain to fill their water-bottles from it.'

This letter concluded with kindest regards and wishes to everyone he knew and loved, by name--Olive Raymond alone excepted; and keenly and with tears she resented the omission.

In hot haste Lady Aberfeldie wrote to Allan, explaining the story of Hawke Holcroft's surreptitious visits, his fancied power over Olive, and the abstraction of the unlucky diamonds; but owing to various circumstances--the fortune of war included--the letter was a considerable time of reaching him to whom it was addressed, and some stirring events occurred in the meantime, before he could reply to it.