Читать книгу By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal онлайн

27 страница из 66

The Camp is busy enough at any time of the day, and the Army Service Corps which supplies it is almost as busy as any unit on active service. The difference is that it is not feverishly busy, and that it has a convenient and resourceful base from which to work—the city of Cairo, as well and variously stocked as the most fastidious army could wish. And an army which is merely sitting in occupation is in danger of growing fastidious—with shops of Parisian splendour and Turkish baths and cafés of the standard of the Francatelli within two miles, and opportunity of generous leave. In the first half of the day the camp supply depôt is animated with men of more than one race and beasts of many breeds. Long trains of camels and donkeys move in from the irrigation with their loads of green fodder and vegetables, and the high and narrow Arab carts, decorated fore and aft in quasi-hieroglyphic, bring in the chaff and grain. General service waggons, manned by Australians, are there too. The unloading and distribution is done chiefly by hired Arabs working under the superintendence of our men. The din is terrific; no Arab can work without much talk and shout. If he has no companion to be voluble with, he talks with and at his beast. But here is a crowd of a hundred of them, and it is with difficulty the superintendents make themselves audible, much less intelligible. All the heavy fatigue work is done by natives attached—splitting wood, digging drains and soakage-pits, erection of out-houses, removal of refuse of all sorts. Native labour is extremely cheap, and beside its official employment the men use it for such purposes as private washing; a native takes your week's soiled clothes and returns them next day, snow white, for a couple of piastres. During certain hours the camp swarms with Arab vendors of newspapers, fruit, sweets, cakes, post-cards, Arab-English phrase-books, rifle-covers (invaluable, almost indispensable, here to the right preservation of arms), clothing, tobacco and cigarettes. They easily become a bane if encouraged in any degree. Native police patrol the place day and night for the sole purpose of keeping them in check. This is no easy matter. They are slippery as eels, cunning as foxes, and impudent as they make 'em. They fight incessantly; bloody coxcombs are to be seen daily, and the men rarely hesitate to fan an embryonic fight into a serious combat as a relief from the lassitude of the mid-day; for the noon is as hot as the night is cold. To incite is the soldier's delight: "Go it, Snowball!"—"Well hit, Pompey!"—"Get after him!" ... until a couple of native police break in and carry off the combatants by the lug. Even then, they often break away and resume, or clear off into the desert. And a policeman in thick blue serge, with leggings and bayonet, is no match in a chase for a bare-footed Arab in his cotton skirt.