regret on that account, and the feeling was very strange to him. Ever since the Crimea he had been upon the world's half-pay list, as he had once said to General Feversham, and what with that and the recollection of a certain magical season before the Crimea, he had looked forward to old age as an approaching friend. To-night, however, he prayed that he might live just long enough to welcome back Muriel Graham's son with his honour redeemed and his great fault atoned. CHAPTER VII THE LAST RECONNAISSANCE "No one," said Durrance, and he strapped his field-glasses into the leather case at his side. "No one, sir," Captain Mather agreed. "We will move forward." The scouts went on ahead, the troops resumed their formation, the two seven-pounder mountain-guns closed up behind, and Durrance's detachment of the Camel Corps moved down from the gloomy ridge of Khor Gwob, thirty-five miles southwest of Suakin, into the plateau of Sinkat. It was the last reconnaissance in strength before the evacuation of the eastern Soudan. All through that morning the camels had jolted slowly up the gulley of shale between red precipitous rocks, and when the rocks fell back, between red mountain-heaps all crumbled into a desolation of stones. Hardly a patch of grass or the ragged branches of a mimosa had broken the monotony of ruin. And after that arid journey the green bushes of Sinkat in the valley below comforted the eye with the pleasing aspect of a park. The troopers sat their saddles with a greater alertness. They moved in a diagonal line across the plateau toward the mountains of Erkoweet, a silent company on a plain still more silent. It was eleven o'clock. The sun rose toward the centre of a colourless, cloudless sky, the shadows of the camels shortened upon the sand, and the sand itself glistened white as a beach of the Scilly Islands. There was no draught of air that morning to whisper amongst the rich foliage, and the shadows of the branches lay so distinct and motionless upon the ground that they might themselves have been branches strewn there on some past day by a storm. The only sounds that were audible were the sharp clank of weapons, the soft ceaseless padding of the camels' feet, and at times the whirr of a flight of pigeons disturbed by the approaching cavalcade. Yet there was life on the plateau, though of a noiseless kind. For as the leaders rode along the curves of sand, trim
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