So ran the order. Confound the flights! Why can't they train it? Mahsamah's out of the world. These camps in desert places are ghastly. We shall be enforced hermits. Entraining, they could get the whole thing over in four days; this way it'll take fourteen. The weather's getting midsummer. The battalions have just had a fresh boot-issue. They'll be sore-footed and sick and sun-stricken. What's the game with Headquarters--to harden the men or impress the natives? What's that to you? You've got to go, whatever garbled motives Headquarters may have. So get your supplies aboard, and your men, and leave in the morning. So we found ourselves sweeping over the desert at 9 a.m., with tents and camp equipment in the guard's van and half a dozen trucks laden with supplies trailing behind. The sweet-water canal tore beside us, and patches of irrigated land emerged at intervals into the field of vision, and the low sand-dunes standing away towards Ismailia grew higher; and before the canal fir-groves could become more than a blur in the east we halted and got down, and had our trucks detached, and the train moved off canal-wards, and we set about looking for a site on which to build. And there was no time to waste. The first flight had left Tel-el-Kebir that morning, and any moment their advance-guard might loom up on the heat-hazed horizon and come in soliciting grub. A permanent camp of Royal Engineers close at hand lent a fatigue. By three o'clock the virgin depôt was well established. At four, through a cloud of dust, the advance-party (mostly Staff Officers on horseback) rode in very hot and very thirsty. Brigade Majors boast a thirst at any time and in any weather. Aggravated now, it had first to be assuaged. The Battalion of Pioneers who followed us by train had mapped out the plan of camp on paper, and now proceeded to conduct battalions; for they followed close in the heels of their staffs, dusty and sweating under their packs, and dragging a weary way through the yielding sand. Lucky Majors rode, and surveyed their perspiring men from the cool and luxurious height of a horse. The battalions plumped down in the sand and the sun where they stood. The camel-trains followed, plonking along with their flat-spreading feet and aspiring noses and loads of ration, blankets, tents, tables, and general camp _impedimenta_. Their Indian "dravees" led them by the nose. They gurgled with the heat, and foundered on very slight provocation indeed. By five the whole flight is established in bivouac lines. For a couple of hours there is feverish bustle at the supply depôt. Half the issuing is carried out by lamp-light. The battalions settle down to sleep with the sun, and there is little energy left for horse-play, though there is a good deal of singing, and even concerts improvised. But the whole camp is quiet by nine; the men are sleeping in the sand under the moon; there are no lights except in the two tents erected for Staff Officers.