"I do not say that; these people have shops of a sort, I believe, and a customer is a customer all the world over." The troops bivouacked outside Tokar, where nothing further occurred of any interest, and shortly afterwards they tramped back to the wells at El Teb, and so to Trinkitat, where they were re-embarked as quickly as might be, and steamed round to Suakim, which now became the base of operations. And soon Trinkitat was entirely abandoned, and since no natives lived there (how could they when they had no fresh water?) the place ceased to be a place at all in any rational sense of the word. You may have heard the old explanation of how a cannon is made: "you take a hole, and pour a lot of melted iron round it." Well, Trinkitat was a hole, and the English store-houses tents, soldiers, horses, camels were poured round it, and when they were withdrawn, nothing but the hole remained. But Suakim was a considerable place, built of coral too, and very interesting in its way to some people. And what was of more consequence, there were many good wells close by, from which water could be obtained all the year round. Suakim itself, as has been explained before, is built on an island, but the British camp was on the mainland, within the circuit of earthworks which protected the town and harbour. It was on the eighth of March that the First Blankshire were landed at this camp. The look of the houses in the town disappointed some of them now they were closer. "They don't look like coral at all," said Tom Strachan. "If I had not been told I should have thought they were the ordinary sun-dried brick affairs whitewashed." "I vote we have a regular inspection of them on the first opportunity," said Edwards, "and settle the matter once for all." "It would be kind to posterity," replied Tom. "If you have so much time to spare, which I very much doubt," said MacBean, "you will employ it better in visiting a very pretty place and a curious. There is just a gap in the earthworks which protects Suakim, a regular breach as one may say, which has to be defended by two strong works, which the sailors have given the names of ships to--Euryalus and Carysfoot they call them. And why is the gap left? And why are the two forts made to defend it instead of filling it up? Just because the rains, which some don't believe in, make a torrent in the proper season, and this is the watercourse, and everything which barred its passage would be swept into the sea." "I recant and apologise," said Green. "The rain quite convinced me of its existence at Baker's Fort, I promise you. But you know you sold me so often that I hardly knew what to believe."