We reached Alexandria at last and were taken ashore. At first I thought that a peculiarity existed in the ground of Egypt, for it kept rocking and swaying under my feet like the movement of the ship; but this feeling went away in two or three days. We were taken to Gabbari, put into trucks, and rattled to Ma’adi, a pretty little suburb of Cairo. At Ma’adi we had plenty of feed, good stables which kept the sun off us during the day, and very little work while the boys were away at the Peninsula. Sometimes we went out on route marches and dummy stunts, and always on Sundays our masters used to take us out on to the desert behind the camp, to gallop us until we were tired. Those gallops were great sport. There would be horses all over the desert, some of them with riders clinging affectionately to their necks, others without riders, and all of them thoroughly enjoying the fun, and kicking their heels playfully into the air. We were at Ma’adi right up till February, 1916, and then we were pushed off to Serapeum and dumped in a camp close to the Canal. After the delights of Ma’adi, Serapeum came as a shock to me; and in a few days I was feeling very ill on account of the sand I had swallowed with my food. I could not stand, so I rolled about in agony. Up till then I had never had a day’s sickness, so this experience was quite a new one. The farrier-sergeant visited me on the evening of my collapse, administered a “ball” to me, and told Bill (my boss) that I would be all right in the morning. A lot he knew about horses! He ought never to have left that boot factory. He also told Bill to give me a bit more _berseem_. Bill stopped with me for a while, talking; then a whistle blew and he cleared out. “Good-night, Baldy” (that is the name I always got) he said as he departed, “you’ll be O.K. at reveille.” In the morning I was almost better, and by lunch time, when Bill gave me a big feed of _berseem_ that he had pinched from somewhere, I was as good as ever again. [Illustration: 5th LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE ENTERING NABLUS ] [Illustration: WATERING HORSES, ES SALT ] [Illustration: HORSES THIRSTY ] [Illustration: LIGHT HORSEMEN IN JUDEAN HILLS, JAN., 1918 ]