Yet there was beauty in the desert. We would frequently pick up
agates, sapphires, and turquoise matrix. But its beauty was chiefly
suggestive. There were gorgeous sunsets--poetry there, but more poetry
still in the wonderful mirages. Why, here, hung above the earth, were
scenes from every age: Cleopatra's galleys, Alexander's legions, the
pomp of the Mamelukes, Ptolemy and Pompey, Napoleon and Gordon--their
times and deeds were all pictured here. Perhaps the spirit world has
its "movies," and only here in the desert mirage is the "screen" of
stuff that can be seen with mortal eyes.

But beauty is not for soldiers--the desert was our "schoolmaster." It
was the right-hand man of Kitchener, and well did it perform its task
of putting iron into our spirits and turning our muscles into steel,
and making us fit for whatever job the Maker of Armies had for us. He
knew the place to train us--where the weaklings would fall and only the
very fit survive. Any soldier who passed through his grades in the
"academy of the desert" might not shine in a _guard of honor to a
princess_; his skin would be blistered, his clothes would be stained,
but he'd be the equal in strength of any man on earth, and would have
fought the attacks of every known disease. It was Egypt and the desert
that made Gallipoli possible, and the Australian army owes much to the
astuteness of Kitchener, who knew the ideal training-ground for the
daredevil freeman from "down under."




CHAPTER X

PICKETING IN CAIRO