One Too Many

It was a hell of a night. Thunder enough to wake the “Jacko” dead, and raining fit to swamp old Solomon’s Pool. I was a good ten miles from camp, and it was with a dinkum bullocky’s curse that I swung into the saddle again and turned the pony’s nose for home. For about an hour we battled along, and then the supply dump at S—— hove in sight. Glad of a brief respite, I guided him toward it, and for a few minutes we rested in the shelter of a huge stack oftibbin.

The rain had eased off, and for a brief second a sickly-looking moon gazed down on things earthly. That was what started the trouble.

An Algerian guard was on duty, and, to the initiated, there is no need to say more than that. You might trick a Tommy or induce a Billjim to look the other way, but the man who beats an Algerian is going some.

But, as I was saying, it was the moon that caused the trouble. When she took that peep from behind her cloud bank she gazed fair on to four shadowy figures, each surmounted by a bag of barley and a felt hat.

Chuckling a little, she dodged behind the clouds again; but it was too late. The mischief had been done, and in a trice the “shadowy figures” found themselves surrounded by about a dozen sons of the Sahara and a like number of business-like bayonets.

The result was a confused babble of voices for ten minutes, and then a procession to the Supply Officer’s tent. From where I was standing I could see and hear everything that passed, and everybody seemed to be trying to talk at once. As the “shadowy figures” could not speak a word of Arabic, and the Algerians vice versa, the result was laughable. But with the advent of the Supply Officer things took a different turn. He had been wakened from a sound sleep, and was arrayed in the pink pyjamas the girl had sent him, and a desire to be “firm in the matter.” He had no knowledge of Arabic, and was placing the “shadowy figures” under guard pending the arrival of an interpreter in the morning.

That would have been serious for the said “shadowy figures,” so I decided to see whether I could help them at all. I had borrowed a cobber’sflash civvy raincoat in the morning, and that and the Jacko pony I rode must have made the S.O. think I was an officer. Anyhow, he greeted me very decently; and when I told him I could yabber Arabic pretty fluently, he was more than delighted at my arrival.

Well, for a good ten minutes I did the interpreter stunt, and then I got him to dismiss the guard.

Then I opened the case for the defence. I pictured to him the love of the Colonial for his horse, the long night rides, and a dozen other pitiful things, and altogether put up such a beautiful tale that even old Judge Jeffreys would have had to declare the accused “Not guilty.” So the S.O. decided to give the “shadowy figures” a stern lecture, take their names and numbers, and refer the matter to their O.C. next morning. Forth came the note-book and down went the particulars. I am pretty hard in the dial, but I was glad he was not looking my way then. For every one of the four had a number with six figures in it and belonged to the 19th Light Horse Regiment, 9th Light Horse Brigade.

Luckily, he was a new man out, or the bluff wouldn’t have worked. But it did, and that was all that mattered then. He gave them the lecture, and in it repeated often, “I’ve been one too many for you fellows this time, what!”. Then he let them go, and as they left the tent the last one winked at me, and in that wink there was a world of mystery.

Five minutes later I was in the saddle again and thinking hard. I was wondering where the “shadowy figures” had left their horses, and whether they would bump further trouble on the way home. Then I remembered a young wady that runs by the side of the dump and turned the pony’s head toward it. Half-way to it, I met them coming back. But where there had been four “shadowy figures” there were SIX, and where there should have been four horses there were ten. And the spare nags were loaded heavily, too. The chap who gave me the wink told me the rest of the yarn, and here it is.

Two of them had acted as horse-holders while the other four had carried out the raiding part of the business. Three times they had returned without mishap, and it was on the fourth trip that the moon peeped out and made a mess of things.

It started to rain again then, so we parted; they to their bivvies and I to a sharp trot home.

Two hours after the sun came up, the chap who was “one too many” rolled out of bed and prepared his report for the O.C. 19th Light Horse Regiment, 9th Light Horse Brigade.

“ANON”

[top]WADY NIMRINAlong whose banks the A.L.H. had many sharp fights[middle]ARAB AGENTS ARRIVING FROM A TRIP ACROSS THE DEAD SEA[bottom]GERMAN PRISONERS IN JERICHO

MEAL TIME

“SHE’S BOILING”

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