But in the days that followed Dan found few opportunities for indulging his reckless humour, for soon the army was moving forward rapidly and the boatmen were in the midst of stupendous toil. The River Column had been bidden to make haste. Gordon was shut up in Khartoum waiting his rescuers, and no one must rest. On they went, day after day, past dreary stretches of sand, broken only by an occasional and equally dreary dom palm; past barren ledges of rock, deserted mud villages and ruined temples; battling madly with a rapid, only to find when it was overcome that another lay ahead; toiling strenuously to catch up with the enemy, only to see at nightfall their spearheads disappearing over the last brown ridge of sand hills. Scotty felt himself becoming a machine, something that did the day's work mechanically. To toil all day in the bow or stern of a boat in the scorching heat of the pitiless sun, or walk over blistering rock and dazzling sand; to sleep at night inside a square of good British bayonets, chilled by the numbing wind from the north; to rise at the bugle-call and go at it again--that was the unvarying programme. Cataract and sand plain succeeded cataract and sand plain with such deadly monotony, that all sense of time, place, and progress was blotted out. They seemed stationary in an endless desert, toiling against an endless river, always moving but never advancing. He often wondered, as he watched the brown, turbid water racing down to meet him, what secret the mysterious Nile held for him. What would be its bearing upon his life? But he always ended his questionings with the assurance that whatever the outcome might be, even though he should never see it, it was controlled by a higher Power, and he was content. And through all the hardships and stress of the work, the struggle with the rapids, the hunger and privations, the new life which had been implanted in Scotty's heart was his greatest stay. Many a time in the face of temptation he blessed the saintly old woman far away in the Canadian backwoods for the godly training he had received beneath the Silver Maple. He found he needed all his strength in this new, wild life; for a more gaily-gallant, reckless, devil-may-care crew than the Canadian voyageurs, who fought and overcame the ancient Nile, surely never wielded paddles. His chief trial was his own faithful follower, for Dan Murphy strove to out-Canadian the wildest river-driver of the Ottawa valley. And had Scotty's strong hand not been often placed upon the unsteady tiller of his friend's life, there might have been a sadder wreck among the Nile voyageurs than has been set down in history. His vigilant oversight of Dan's conduct did not prevent him distinguishing himself in quite a unique way.