"SCUPPERED" IN CAMP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7341, 30 May 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

"SCUPPERED" IN CAMP.

' " Scuppered," say ß a war correspondent, is a word which I had never met with until I came to Suakim, and its horrible significance is a new experience to British troops. To be "scuppered" means here being hacked to pieces in your tent while asleep. How the Hadendowas do it nobody but they themselves can tell. Our sentries cannot see these savages. Once past our pickets, the redoubts cannot fire on them. On the sand their feet fall without a sound. The nights are of extraordinary darkness, moreover, and they are experts in all the treacheries of warfare. Silent as shadows, they are terribly swift in massacre, and the ground they travel over is murderous beyond description. Ravines so deep that horsemen can pass unseen along them ambuscade our whole front, while streaks and patches of thick bush superfluously offer continuous lines of covert in every direction to a foe that needs iao such helps to concealment. Crawling along on all fours, they traverse the space between them and their victims with all the patient caution of wild beasts stalking prey. They reach the doomed tent. For the sake of the sea-breeze the doorway is ppen, and the next instant the murderer is standing by the sleeping soldier's side. He feels a hand passing over his body and starts. A cry is rising to his lips. It is strangled in his tbroat by a groan of pain, and before the gallant fellow can even warn his comrades, the fierce spear is driven home through his body, the heavy two-handled sword has fallen across him. But the tent is alarmed : there is no time to lose ! Slashing his way and that, the murderers stab and hack with the fury of fiends, and then as the camp starts to its feet in clamour they are off. Not a sound , betrays their passing. There is no trace of blood to tell of retribution. They are gone—baok into the villainous gullies, back into the scattered brush; and next we can imagine them sitting to refresh themselves outside our line of redoubts—to listen to the storm they have raised—the bugles telling the old tale of murder completed and the murderers gone, the aimless volleys of rifles, tlio din of voices, the impotent utterance.:; ui our indignant guns roaring for an impossible vengeance. Now, should such a tragedy as this have been possible ? The authorities, when I venture to aay it should not be poseible, have but one reply—that absolute security from suoh accomplished assassir-s cannot be expected. We have had dully warning of the desperate courage and craft of these tspearmen, and yet we have nightly shown that wo will not learn by experience. If no other means civn be devised, the simple process of making half a •, at stand to its arms, Trifles unloaded, insid'- the tent, to guard the other half fir the six dangerous hours of night (taking three hours alternately) would make massacre impossible and retribution certain ? Or is not the example of the Indian contingent worth imitation ? They refused to lie in their tents and be stabbed and hacked about, so they have traced a ditch along their front, and when the Hadendowas came up last night to assassinate them they found the whole line manned, and got well-peppered for their pains, leaving, at any rate, one corpse in acknowledgment of the reception they got. "Being scuppered" is surely a very disgraceful experience for a British Army. In Afghanistan the Ghazis soon found that " running a muck" did not pay. In Zuluiand the laager was a complete and effective defence. But here, with an enemy compared to whom Afghans and Zulus are civilised soldiers, and in a country that is as murderous as the Khyber and infinitely more dangerous than the donga river plains of Zululand, we have our soldiers "scuppered" night after night. The feeling here is very bitter on the point, and naturally so. It is no question of "being "rushed," but of being "sneaked." This is quite an exceptional form of danger, and should have been met a week ago by exceptional precautions.