No More Learning

Dick followed Torpenhow wherever the latter's fancy chose to lead him,
and between the two they managed to accomplish some work that almost
satisfied themselves. It was not an easy life in any way, and under its
influence the two were drawn very closely together, for they ate from
the same dish, they shared the same water-bottle, and, most binding tie
of all, their mails went off together. It was Dick who managed to make
gloriously drunk a telegraph-clerk in a palm hut far beyond the Second
Cataract, and, while the man lay in bliss on the floor, possessed
himself of some laboriously acquired exclusive information, forwarded
by a confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful
duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who said
that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an excellent
descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was
Torpenhow who--but the tale of their adventures, together and apart,
from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill
many books. They had been penned into a square side by side, in deadly
fear of being shot by over-excited soldiers; they had fought with
baggage-camels in the chill dawn; they had jogged along in silence
under blinding sun on indefatigable little Egyptian horses; and they had
floundered on the shallows of the Nile when the whale-boat in which
they had found a berth chose to hit a hidden rock and rip out half her
bottom-planks.

Now they were sitting on the sand-bank, and the whale-boats were
bringing up the remainder of the column.

"Yes," said Torpenhow, as he put the last rude stitches into his
over-long-neglected gear, "it has been a beautiful business. "

"The patch or the campaign? " said Dick. "Don't think much of either,
myself. "

"You want the Euryalus brought up above the Third Cataract, don't you?
and eighty-one-ton guns at Jakdul? Now, I'm quite satisfied with my
breeches. " He turned round gravely to exhibit himself, after the manner
of a clown.

"It's very pretty.
Specially the lettering on the sack. G. B. T.
Government Bullock Train. That's a sack from India. "

"It's my initials,--Gilbert Belling Torpenhow. I stole the cloth on
purpose. What the mischief are the camel-corps doing yonder? " Torpenhow
shaded his eyes and looked across the scrub-strewn gravel.

A bugle blew furiously, and the men on the bank hurried to their arms
and accoutrements.

"'Pisan soldiery surprised while bathing,'" remarked Dick, calmly.

"D'you remember the picture? It's by Michael Angelo; all beginners copy
it. That scrub's alive with enemy. "

The camel-corps on the bank yelled to the infantry to come to them, and
a hoarse shouting down the river showed that the remainder of the
column had wind of the trouble and was hastening to take share in it.