Eventually a reply was sent, the messenger being a wily Oriental gentleman named Hormuzd Rassam from our Aden office who delayed six months before venturing up-country with conciliatory messages and presents which included a swing for Theodore’s children. (Gad, I’m proud to be British!) Much good it did: Rassam and his party were added to the chain gang, and at long last, after four years in which the public had heard little beyond rumours, Parliament awoke, members began to ask where Abyssinia was, and the Russell government, having stifled debate on the remarkable ground that it might irritate Theodore, fell from office, leaving the mess to the Tories who, not without agonised dithering, ordered Napier to take a force from India to Abyssinia, make a final demand for the prisoners’ release, and then ‘take such measures as he thinks expedient’, and good luck to him.
You notice that with typical parliamentary poltroonery the Derby–D’Israeli gang left it up to the soldier to make the fatal decision, but for once I could understand if not sympathise, for if ever a government was caught between Scylla and t’other thing, they were. On the one hand, they couldn’t leave the prisoners in Theodore’s clutches, for our credit’s sake – what, have a tinpot nigger king showing us his arse? Abandoning Britons, and telling the world we couldn’t defend our own? Letting India, where we’d been given an almighty fright only ten years before, see that we could be defied with impunity? ‘Never!’ cries John Bull, even if it took an army of thousands to free a handful, and cost the three and a half million of Dizzy’s estimate, and lasted months or years, still it must be done, and that was flat.
On the other hand, it was odds on that invasion would fail. Abyssinia was tropical territory incognita, our army would be cut off miles from the sea, without reserves, in country without roads or reliable water supply, where every ounce of food, gear, and ammunition would have to be carried – where? There was no certain information of where the captives were exactly, and what if Theodore cut their throats or carried them into the trackless fastnesses hundreds of miles inland? And what of the hundreds of thousands of ferocious tribesmen between the coast and Magdala – if indeed Magdala proved to be the goal? What if, as seemed very likely, Napier’s army vanished into the wilds of Prester John and never came out again?
That, I’m told, was the tenor of the warnings and prophecies that filled the press when the government’s decision became known: the expedition was doomed, but it would have to go anyway.17
But none of that was clear to me as we steamed into the dust and stink of Zoola on that fine February morning. I didn’t have the benefit of public opinion from home, and at Jedda they’d been far too taken up with pirates and pilgrims to give thought to the consequences of what was happening in the mysterious south, beyond the far-off peaks dimly seen through the haze that hung over Annesley Bay. But now you know the how and why of Napier’s expedition, and enough of the land and people for the moment. And from what I’ve told you, you may have been struck by a thought which has absolutely occurred to me only now, as I write: for perhaps the first time in her long and turbulent history Britain was going into a war which everyone believed we were going to lose. Everyone, that is, except Bughunter Bob Napier.
The expedition had been ashore for three months, but still supply ships and troopers and men-of-war were arriving daily to swell the fleet of steamships, sailing vessels, and small craft discharging cargo on to the causeway running out into the bay. It had a railway with bogies moving the goods inshore, where they were piled in mountains of bales and boxes among the tent-lines which stretched away into the distance.
It was a quartermaster’s nightmare, too much gear coming ashore too quickly and nowhere to put it, with confusion worse confounded by the milling mob of what someone called the ‘pierhead democracy’ – staff men and Madras coolies, generals and drummer-boys, dockside gangs both black and white labouring under despairing civilian overseers, work parties of soldiers ignoring the bawlings of perspiring non-coms, clerks and water-carriers and native women forage-cutters, every sort and colour of African and Asiatic, and a positive Noah’s Ark of animals. Next to our berth on the causeway, elephants were being hoisted ashore from a barge, squealing and trumpeting as they swung perilously aloft in their belly-bands, and the crane-tackles groaned and shuddered until the great beasts came to earth with a dangerous thrashing of trunks and limbs; cursing troopers were saddling and loading mules which had one leg strapped up to prevent their lashing out; water-hoys were pumping their streams into huge wheeled tanks on the railway – for every drop of drink in Zoola had to be brought ashore from the condensers of the ships in the bay – and even as I stepped ashore one of the hoses burst asunder, gushing over the pack-mules and swirling round the feet of the elephants which bellowed and reared in panic as their drivers clung to their trunks to quiet them.
Britannia’s bridgehead into Abyssinia was, in fact, a godless mess, made infinitely worse by the dust and the stink. Beyond the harbour and camp lay a wide plain with mountains far off, but you could barely see them through the fawn-coloured cloud that hung over the tents and sheds and rootiesfn1 and even the waters of the bay, covering everything in a fine powder which you had to be constantly brushing off your clothes and skin, and spitting out.
But it was nothing to the stink, a foul carrion-reek that took you by the throat and made breathing a poisonous misery.
‘If you think this is bad you should ha’ been here a month ago,’ says the transport wallah who supervised the loading of my strong-boxes into a railway bogie; he was a languid, amiable young haw-haw named Twentyman, a Hussar, complete with fly-whisk and followed by a chicofn2 with a bucket of camphorated water whose duty it was to supply his master with wet clouts to sponge away the dust. ‘What is it? Thousands o’ dead beasts rottin’, that’s what. Cavalry mounts droppin’ like flies, mules too, no one knows why, vets never saw the like.’ He dropped his wet rag into the bucket with a weary sigh. ‘Thank God for the vultures or we’d ha’ had an epidemic.’
I introduced myself, expecting to have to explain my arrival, but no such thing.
‘We know all about you, Sir Harry!’ says he blithely. ‘Mail sloop from Jedda brought word of you last week, deputation from H.Q.’s been waitin’ for three days, great excitement, what? And these are the long-awaited spondulikos, are they? Splendid, chuck ’em aboard, sarn’t, and you, dragoman, summon your stout lads to give us a shove, there’s a good chap!’
I bade a hasty farewell to Ballantyne, who was itching to get himself and his ship back into fresh air, and climbed into the bogie with Twentyman, followed by the Marines, who seated themselves on the strong-boxes.
‘Sound move, sarn’t, keep their posteriors planted just so,’ says Twentyman approvingly. ‘Can’t be too careful with the 33rd on hand, thievin’ Irish scoundrels to a man, desperate fellows. So keep an eye down on the dollars, or Paddy’ll be over the hedge with his pockets jinglin’, what? …18 I say, dragoman, jildi jao, sub admi push karo!’fn3
The dragoman bellowed and belaboured the coolies with his staff, and we were propelled towards the head of the causeway. I said it was as well they had a railway, with freight as heavy as mine, and how far did it go.
‘Five miles, so far,’ says Twentyman cheerfully. ‘It’s about a hundred and twenty to Attegrat, so it’s mules for you, I’m afraid, sir. They do twelve miles a day, supposin’ you can get ’em, for we’ve fewer than ten thousand pack animals when we’re supposed to have thirty thousand. Well, I ask you! Bombay bandobast,fn4 what?’
I thanked God privately that I wasn’t part of the expedition, and asked how quickly I could get word to Napier of my arrival.
‘Oh, couple of hours – telegraph’s only half way to Attegrat, but we’ve flag signallin’ by day, magnesium flare lamps for night messages, latest thing, bang-up-to-date, what? Ah, there’s one o’ the deputation! Hollo, Henty, he’s here at last!’
As we jumped down, a burly, beef-faced chap in a dust coat and kepi was striding up, grinning hugely, with his hand out.
‘Don’t