Colonel Talbot had been continuously employed upon the difficult and arduous convoy duty since the arrival of the Desert Column at Gubat on the 21st. Two days later Talbot started to return to Jakdul to fetch supplies. Not he nor his men nor his camels had a day's rest from the 8th January, when the Desert Column left Korti, till the 27th, when the convoy was back again at Jakdul. The convoy reached Gubat on the 31st January; next day came the news of the fall of Khartoum; and the same evening the convoy marched again for Jakdul with sick and wounded. From Jakdul it returned with Sir Redvers Buller; arrived at Gubat on the 11th February; and started again on the 13th, {323} as already related, with another party of sick and wounded. On the way back to Korti, Colonel Talbot, without engineers or commissariat, constructed a camp and built forts at Megaga Wells, where the main body, including the Naval Brigade, joined his convoy on 2nd March. After Colonel Talbot's convoy had left Gubat on 13th February, I disposed of the poor old _Safieh_ and the _Tewfikiyeh_, lest upon our departure they should be taken by the enemy. The six brass guns were spiked and thrown overboard, the ammunition was destroyed, the eccentric straps were removed from the machinery, and finally the valves were opened and the vessels sunk. Then came the sad destruction of the stores for which we had no transport. The number of camels would only suffice to carry rations for three days, by the end of which the Column would have arrived at Abu Klea, where were more stores. When Colonel Talbot's convoy of supplies reached Gubat two days previously, the garrison had for ten days been living on short rations: nevertheless, more than half of what he brought must be destroyed. Count Gleichen (_With the Camel Corps up the Nile_) says that "19,000 lbs. of flour, 3000 lbs. of biscuit, 21,220 lbs. of beef, 900 lbs. of bacon, 1100 lbs. of tea, oatmeal, preserved vegetables, coffee, and all sorts of stores were pierced and thrown into the river"--an example of waste in war resulting from deficient transport. Some of the medical comforts, small bottles of champagne and port, were distributed. One among us--I think his name was Snow--took a bottle of wine and swore he would keep it till he drank it in Khartoum. _And he did_. He went into Khartoum with Kitchener thirteen years afterwards, and drank his libation in the conquered city. That incident reminds me that, when I went with the party of members of the House of Commons to Russia in 1912, a Russian farmer sent a note to the British admiral, of whom he said he had heard, together with a bottle containing mustard which he had grown, and which he sent {324} as a token that the aforesaid British admiral would give his enemies mustard when he met them; for, said the farmer, the enemies of England would certainly be the enemies of Russia. I have that bottle of mustard.