The 3rd of January saw the Staffordshire reach the Bivouac of Handab, in a wild and rocky spot, and in a position of peril between two great bodies of the enemy; but cheerily the soldiers joined in the queer chorus of a doggerel Canadian boat song adapted to the occasion by the Indians, who, whilom, had made the poplar groves of the Red River and Lake Winnipeg echo to it-- 'Pulley up the boat, boys, rolley up the sleeve, Khartoum am a long way to trabbel! Pulley up the boat, boys, rolley up the sleeve, Khartoum am a long way to trabbel, I believe!' CHAPTER LI. THE MARCH IN THE DESERT. We have stated that Roland and his comrades were left stationed at a point where they were menaced by two forces of the enemy. 'These were,' says Colonel Eyre, of the Staffordshire, in his 'Diary,' 'the tribes whose people murdered poor Colonel Stewart. They are entrenched twenty-three miles in front of us up the river, and sent word that they were to fight. They have a large force on the Berber Road, forty miles on our flank; they were here two days ago, and took all the camels in the district. We are encamped on a wild desert, with ridges of rocky hills about two miles inland. We have pitched our tents.' There we shall leave them for a time, and look back to Korti, where some boats of troops arrived from Hannek, twenty-three miles lower down the Nile, and in one of these, tugging manfully at an oar, came the rescued Malcolm Skene! His disappearance many weeks before--nearly three months now--was well known to the troops; hence--though in that fierce warfare, a human life, more or less lost or saved, mattered little--his sudden appearance in camp, when he reported himself at the headquarter tent, did make a little stir for a time; and thus he was the hero of the hour; but great and forward movements were in progress now, and there was not much time to waste on anyone or anything else. Though he had missed his corps, the Staffordshire, by about twenty-four hours, it was with a source of intense satisfaction that he found himself among his own countrymen again--once more with the troops and ready for active service of any kind. One thought was fully prominent in his mind, never again would he be taken alive by the Soudanese. A horse, harness, and arms, belonging to some of the killed or drowned, were speedily provided for him, and, by order of the General commanding, he was attached to the personal staff--_pro tem._--of Sir Herbert Stewart, as his great knowledge of the country and of Arabic might prove of good service. Considering the treachery of Hassan Abdullah, his long detention in the zereba of the Sheikh Moussa, and what his too probable end would have been after the deportation of Zebehr Pasha, with the recent close and deadly struggle he had for life in the grasp of Girolamo, and how nearly he escaped recapture and slaughter, Malcolm Skene had now a personal and somewhat rancorous animosity to the Soudanese.