A day or two after the receipt of the Sirdar's permit I happened to meet at dinner an old college acquaintance, Mr. Henry Cross, who had rowed five in the 'Varsity boat of 1888. When I told him of my intended visit to the Sudan, he was all eagerness to join me; but as he was utterly inexperienced in the sort of travel that would fall to our lot before Khartum was reached, I did my best to dissuade him from making any rash resolves of the sort on the spur of the moment. The daily round of a war correspondent's life amid a charming environment of scenery and climate is simply delightful, when to the joys of an open-air existence and abundant exercise there is added the pleasant excitement which springs from a risk of danger. Such delights as these I had experienced during the Cretan troubles in the spring of 1897, but from what one knew personally of tropical travel, and what one gathered from various accounts of the Sudan, one realised that the forthcoming campaign would be in the Lancer's words, already become historical, "no bloomin' picnic." Accordingly I laid before Cross graphic and horrible pictures of sandstorms and sunstroke and the other unpleasantnesses which one might expect to meet amid the torrid plains of the Sudan. Would that my advice had been acted upon and his bright young life preserved! As it was, my friend secured a permit through the editor of the _Manchester Guardian_, and rapidly made his preparations for departure. Our last meeting before we left Charing Cross was at Bletchley Junction, and over some railway tea and a couple of buns we made our final arrangements. The great difficulty which I had to surmount before leaving England arose from a gigantic heap of examination papers which went far towards filling up my college rooms. The limits of time imposed by the authorities who preside over the destinies of University and other examinations appear sometimes to the fevered imagination of the anxious _employé_ to be strongly flavoured with the ancient Egyptian spirit of "bricks without straw." Under time pressure of this kind one's ethical system becomes quite distorted. How heartily one gets to hate the good little boys and girls who write four or five pages of cram! With what satisfaction one surveys the work of the stripling whose indifference or ignorance has curtailed the product of his mental training within the more reasonable limits of a few lines, to be marked after a single synoptic glance! However, with the aid of several hirelings, whose unskilled labour sufficed to execute the merely clerical portion of my task, I contrived to break the back of this obstacle to my happiness. The penultimate batch was finished at the Charing Cross Hotel, the final lot completed just before our train steamed into Folkestone.