"Can't manage it, can't you!" ejaculated the Sirdar; "here, let me come." He made his camel kneel, and dismounted, stalked over to one of the donkeys, gripped the animal by the nose, backed it till its hind feet were inside one of the rolls, turned the roll up over the donkey's back from behind, gave the beast a smack on the rump, and after one or two wriggles and kicks, the creature was trotting along, adorned with a loosely fitting girdle of telegraph-wire round its waist which it could not get rid of. The same plan was promptly adopted with the other donkeys. And in a few minutes the party were riding along again, with the donkeys, carrying the whole of the abandoned wire, in close attendance. That Lord Kitchener would cut up rough at times when things went wrong, as Hubert Hamilton had hinted at Pretoria, was brought home to me convincingly on the occasion of my first interview with him at the War Office after that visit to the Admiralty which is mentioned in Chapter I. General Hanbury Williams had been earmarked in advance for British Military Commissioner at Russian Headquarters, and he dashed off in a great hurry to take up the appointment on mobilization. I believe that he looked in to see me before starting, but I was not in my room at the moment; I am not sure, indeed, that I knew that he was going until after he had started. A few days later the Chief, when wanting to wire to his representative with the Tsar's armies, discovered that he had gone off without a cipher. It was possible, of course, to communicate through the Foreign Office and our embassy at St. Petersburg (as the capital was still called); but Lord K. naturally desired means of direct communication. He was extremely angry about it, and he gave me a most disagreeable five minutes.