RAILHEAD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6500, 1 June 1899, Page 4

RAILHEAD.

(Pall Mall llaynzinc.) I, with the assistance of the British * iriny, was cur.sing heaven when James s Oollins first drew. my attention. He did ' it by- remaining silent while that British s army and I emptied our souls of the bit- ] terness blasted hope had poured therein. ] It was that morning in February,. 1885 when a broken subaltern stumbled out of « ' boat on to the Nile bank at'Metemneh and ' said, "the very worst," in .answer to d question that was not asked. Gordon was dead. . . i The words we' used the fallen anc- e i would have been angered to hear, a „d James Oollins seemed to think so. j " Shut up, you fellows !" said he Now, James/ Collins was.a sapper '■; and' as every one knows, all- sappers are either madmen o r luethqdists, so we. did not clout, but ignored him, .while we • anathematised all the statesmen and generals whd could m any way be connected with th. disaster come to pass under our view. When our vituperation had driven us! first hoarse and then silent, James Collinsspoke : It* all through doing things in a hurry," said he.. Remembering he waa^appeiy we^ were patient until he added^ Ut old Peebles of Cheltenham . had beeri running this show Gordon would, be goin-v home by train now." We would have smitten James Collin* had -we not recollected that he was the youngest fledgeling, with the force and doinol his best to be a man. We'-merely gibe^ him until his pale face reddened with rage, 1 ' though he gave no outward sign of tem^ per, saying calmly enough: "I'm ri<*ht. all the same." ° : He was a; prig, James > Collins, but I hked him, and was only amused when, bid-l ding good-bye to-me a fortnight later, he said : " You may take it from.me no. armyj should advance nowadays without a railway line behind it. Never do anythin" in a hurry. Morel haste, less speed." 1 ' ° ; "It's lucky for you you're not- a journalist," I declared. " I. wouldn't, be <• one on any aecomit,"' said he. And five years passed. When we met again he was Collins Bim-' bashi of the Egyptian army, helping to build the fort at Sarras. Wad enlJ^ejumi. most famous of the Mahdist generals, thd victor of: Kashgil, the stormer of Khais toum, the bloody and luxurious Bayard of the Dervishes, had met a fanatic's death on' the muzzles of Grenfell's Egyptians at Toski, and tliere was a feeling in the land' that the tide of war had reached . highwater mark and was ebbing south.again. = CoUins seemed in .precisely the . sanW mood as that in which we parted; company at Korti. "Grenfell knows how to take his time about a thing," said he; "hei , wouldn t punch Nejumi's nose the .moment he showed it. Not a. bit of.it; waited tiil 1 he was half-dead with . marching, . kept, Wodehouse on his track with the'gim-: boats, refused him the river, kept. him. fronv "7 the , P nce of a drink was .death sure and sudden. The, end was. inevitable. Wild-' for water, they .came on . any - way, and were wiped off the face of the earth W. did not fight soldiers at Arguin and Tosk; •' they were drivelling imbeciles frantic with! tlurst. You remember the Des^r Columns rush for the river after Gubat'l Do you remember old Payne-Wyndhami throwing himself in ; the puddle and yelpin^ 1 uke a dog ? Were we, sane.? Well, , these 1 ' Deivish : Johnnies were ten . times . thirstier' than^ we. Now, if ihey had a. railway? "If they had," said I, "they wtouldnoti Have known how to. use it,>so what!s the' good ofctaUcing?" .. . ? ! iri"T^\ ndt sme '" lle ar Sned : " you' see thel Khalifas got hold of Gordon':. ->}_5 enffineer* i You know;El Tabra ■?♦' "'! I confessed ignprance. . | "El .Tahra was a gunbo-r.x se r _.: out to' Gordon in pieces, and captuiod iv thesame: condition at the fall, of Khartoum The? Khalifa, haili put; it; together. somehow, and| it is knocking about now up, ia bove the Third i Ca^Varact,'?. Hfe paused for brenth I '/-Well J?-. I demurred. \\ "If; AbdullAh has men smart enough to' putva gunboat together he Ihas men fit tol run „ railway.." -'. 'f SeeAs to me Ife hasn't men . able to root' one^p- dfecen ; tly." '"I, pointed but into theWM; M^..anci rails, of :the old Mo- : 'SJ" a «*/.in'f.- r Hf>re there among them lay . [rag-nejjtg, of.fe-ojvp leather, Which had once' beeu^fhe^skuis^olimen. The vulture is ai pam^iki^^ixidermist, the sun a most' trustworthy' tanner. fr ZMyr.dear fellow," chatted on the sapper, ' "ypu'-wiss the point of it all. Nejumi didnH»m«hif !the"-*ailway-to .be destroyed • ' ltwas hisiidiotic followers ; ;they had the mis \ chief Ms ! 'orders:" ! '/•What .tfye, mean?" .1 ra _ked, open-' mouthed. -' • ;•' ' J "N-jumi wa,s going. to. uae the railway to : mv^e,?Egypt:": . . ; I stiw-<iuite clearly that Collins Bimbashi ! was.offvhis'heia, and "Lsought to change the' subject • bu t he ; %as ffairly wound up, and ran/op.- . . v . ■ . | .. .".fe^fryoji Jiotieed -the -odd marches 1 he made ? To avoid the guns <of ' H&lfa ? j Pish ' ! ; to put as-miich of the permanent' way behind -him as he .possibly could— above all fco 'capture- an engine; You read of the' cavalry. attack on the armoured train— he led tliat himself. : Mdyon, : who was in charge, ; §potted3Wmand dapped off the 'gun at ..him, as- he always " does— >■ woii ? t ; -^ke tiftie, yon'kdo-w?' **'« i'« : ''v ; - •oqlHnsidilatea» toil ••KH"'tK-^^^-poSsibiii'tie^ -pf a - lailwajfiiniAßawiiifatit.ihy Head biiiizedT'with ; the .torrent of vljis-gibferisli; • I dropped off to-sleepi:arfd'-to;-drfea'm 'of Ab'dullali :"d_aasba : Cflargiiig;a British square at the' Head of a regiment of locomotives. A week later I was on my way to Manipur, and thence. l found my way to Dahomey, afterwards looking in at Buluwayo. ,' Then Asia crflled me very emphatically to ' the Yalu River ; and that done with, I was on my -way to Chitral, when Madagascar claimed me, so that between one thing and another six or seven years had fled when I found myself in the Nubian Desert,, shaking hands with a grizzling man, whom men addressed as Collins 'Bey. " Well, what do you say now ? " he asked, and pointed where two black glittering parallel streaks, which began beneath our feet, stretched out across the yellow sand to end in the horizon. I don't know where we were that day, and off-hand it would be impossible to find out, but it was a populous and thriving spot with a name of its own: which. name was Railhead. Across the desert from Haifa to Abu Hamed was moving a strange procession .- first came a party of camel-mounted sapper* officers, who ogled the ground as it had never been ogled before ; behind them, at a distance of five miles, marched over a fhorsand men, who shovelled and malleted and made strange mounds ; two miles behind, and half a thousand others made their way with waggons containing short wooden »nd long metal bars, the wood they laid in one direction, the iron in another ; and passed on to give place to another • halfthousand, who, half a mile rearward, followed with spiking tools and with gravel, and who lifted and pushed and levelled what their precursors had laid. And at the back of it all puffed a locomotive, which asked for no turn-table nearer than Khartoum. "We are in earnest this time," Collins, declared. " We're taking time. The trai-s . . will do everything. . . . It's lovely, in the desert all the same. Listen to the trains : 'puff; pu ff, puff ! " The loneliness of the desert was his great topic now. He spoke of it as often as he spoke of the trains ; which meant that he divided his conversation between the two to the exclusion of everything else. " In the old days I loved the desert," he told me : "but Tm tired of it at last. Do

■ou know, I have not been out. of" Africa for hirteen years.". I reflected that within that' 'time' I ihad . jeen eight times, round the world, and had seen five of the Powers of Europe making * war: Britain in Burmah, Russia in Turke- - .tan, France ia Madagascar,: Germany .and Italy in East Africq.; ..but^l did. not express surprise, as be was a sapper. " Not only have I not>beenout> of Africa,'* he continued,'"but. I've-.inot. been, out of the Soudan." ". ; i , Now, thisswas nonsense,: for I had read that he wasdying in the Citadel Hospital at Cairo with brain fever when I wa's.iri Corea ;' but I listened to him quietly. ' " Yes," he rambled on, " I'venot been; out of the desert for thirteen years. It's lonely in the desert. .'.Are you married? I should many if I were you. It's awful in the desert sometimes ; I don't know what I- should do if it wasn't for the railway trains. Listen to the railway trains : puff, puff, -puff '•" . The next night Railhead was a town thir-. teen furlongs nearer the Equator ; the night after, twenty ; in a week's time it had moyed twelve miles ;in a month fifty. And all the while Collins Bey grew queerer and queerer. One night, as I steered my camel through, the sleeping inhabitants of Railhead,; I found one of .the locomotives lying across the permanent way with a smashed connecting-* rod, and Collins contemplating it sadly.' "Is ickle engine b'oke?" he was saying 1 m childish tones. "Poor, ickle engine! No more puff, piiff, puff:" ! ' •' The desert's very lonely," was his ohly remark, when" I accosted him as roughly as ] could. Yet in the morning he was the m >st practical of workmen, and had the eng ne patched up and running again within twe ye hours. ' , ,-i -L.'When the General passed through he cofm'plirirented him on, his labours, "It's rtjen like you ' Who are making the ' Soudan," Jhe said prettily. ' | • ;<r lf I- were 'making it I would make it less lonely," answered Collins Bey, and the General stared and passed on. But he wr< te his subordinate a kindly letter from her d- j quarters to the effect that he heard he never availed himself- of his leave, and ventured to remind him that he had a duty to himself as well as to the Empire. Collins replied with a rambling document, full of references to the trains : he thanked the General for his kindness, but thought that 'the engines might want him. Che jeculiarity of the epistle was that anyone wfio read it without knowing Collins might thitk it was sane enough, while he, who like myself, had seen it written, knew it to be the composition of a maniac. It was not merely thiat he thought the engines might want his, care, but He firmly bdieved that they would pin-s --'or his pi"sence. Sometimes he wou'.d go out ;n toe night to-vh't them, remanding a Kn? v*inl_. away. He repeatedly referred to the enginehouse at Haifa as ' my -harem." But always the railway crept on.and oi, and always sunset showed Collins liis ".<.' d day's work we'll done. When Railhead had reached Fort Dahili.. and, the action of the Atbara fought aid. won, (reparation was made for the find advance on Khartoum. Collins shone amors; tfie' brightest af the stars. His trains ner-' 1 formed feats that were deemed, impossibje before; his engines drew loads that none mote tell : arid all with the precision >'* clockwork. There were more compliments from tlji? General. "I was afraid tne work might be too much for you," he said. r "It -isn't -the work," answered Gollini. •'lt's' the loneliness that bothers me." Ann! the General stared as once he had stare^before. Lonely in the company. of thirty thousand men ! No wonder he sta-red : Lilt Collins resented it. " You understand about not "doing things' in a hurry. but yc:i t.eedn t look at me like that," he said testily f " there are more victories in the boilers qf my engines than ever came out of yoi£ head;" , I My. mind's eye saw Collins pulverised by his superior's retort, and I was quite unprepared for the calm reply, "I'm sura you're right." This particular General, a.s Wellington before him, gave not a "tu;y penny "damn" for what was said as long as his work was done, and done properly. At last the advance began, and Collim was ojffered a staff berth at the front, mv he shook his head. " I can't leave my rails," said he ; and he stood between the lines as he spoke. The men who heard him glanced at mci and I glanced back at them, and we all shrugged our shoulders, 1 *.Fhen , we marched, on Omdurman, and ;'C'dJlii}jj vfas forgotten. He shook. my hand ii .'ivi lifting— a thing he had not .done for I'.i'jl.f.efin months, and for a moment was old Collins of '85. " Come back soon," he said, '^ncPeell Ut -all about' it.'- Remeiflber^what I said to you.fellows tJia.t;day* ( at.^etemneh. 1 Mo-ffiilwSy w i e,uise'-I;he Mai jswjard, -. his i-icejii alWed^n ixp^esgjjpn. He tpped his'tvbrea^tipock-it ■:.iAtlJs-_i fa plan aliereifor aKtrunlc.-line"t6 Lforidohrlvia' -Syria. QnV? iitotypQane •-'own 'to* GhUring s( Grbss str'^id^t , through ! It .might ,be ..done this cintm*y- Only the water bothers me, and if .the worst comes to the worst we could drain. It will be much less lonely here then, don't you think?" What I thought I did not say. I was not prepared, to argue with a man who saw the sea as dry. I went there and then as quickly as I could, and I wondered if Collins Bey's mind would last out th" campaign, or if some disaster on the railway would wreck our chance of victory after all. ' It is history that the campaign was a success ; it is history that the railway did not fail ; and when we had laid Gordon's spirit to rest under the foms'of the Union Jack and were turning homewards again, men .'found -time to think of Collins, to say that he had done well, and to conjecture that henceforth he should be Gollins Pasha. But when wo crossed the Atbara and came to Railhead we found a demented man who trotted up and down between two iron rails, and whistled and puffed and shrieked^ and waved his arms and shouted "Righ. away." Now, this was Collins the jM.^ineer, he whom I had first noticed at Metemneh ; but clearly-he was not -a fit person to be made a Pallia,. So they, pensioned him off, and he.ln-'es V-ry quietly now' in the company of an able-bodied man at Twickenham. tAißvd:iheinev6r mentions- 'the desert, fl^Jr^f. n ?'^ r tra vels farther than he can ■_?? MvX O W,- although hei does occasionally .hmfatj.. loneliness. His cpuntry ihas never .l-M,' o^ 1111 "* bufc fl e has deseed well 'of her_£jll. the same. • . -.»• , ( - '