Suddenly, after lunch, as we sat under the shade and chatted, there came borne to our ears the dull booming of artillery. The gunboats which had accompanied us had advanced beyond Sururab, and were hard at work shelling the Kerreri ridge, which was occupied by a Dervish outpost. The sound of the guns was faint, and as the vessels were some eight miles ahead of us, and the intervening ground was uneven, we could not, alas, see the effect of their fire, though we afterwards learnt all about it. The space which was allotted to the correspondents at Sururab was so confined that one could scarcely walk five yards without stumbling across a camel or tripping over a tent-rope, and the donkeys brayed so loudly that sleep was difficult. It was intensely annoying to hear one ass lead off with a full-voiced bray, which died away in spasmodic gasps. Almost immediately a brother donkey would lift up his voice and utter a similar succession of notes, and then groups of donkeys would join in the music, and a species of antiphonal braying between the _decani_ and _cantoris_ donkeys ranged on either side of one's tent would continue till one became absolutely savage, and wished, like Balaam, that one had a sword in one's hand. If an ass is permitted to get well on with its braying, you cannot stop it; when in full voice it takes not the slightest notice of a good-sized stone. I sometimes heard one of my correspondent colleagues call his servant in the darkness, and say, "Hassan, take that moke away--right away into the desert--or I'll kill it." The servant would seize the offender and lead it, still braying, several hundred yards away. But just as he got back again, the banished animal, dismayed to find itself alone, would send forth an anxious bray of diabolical energy, which reached the long ears of its companions, and made matters worse than before.