Many august people had been at the other end of those
wires, and had communed with the moist-faced military clerk. A French
Premier had demanded a pledge, and an English marquis had passed on the
request to the General in command, with a question as to how it would
affect the situation. Cipher telegrams had nearly driven the clerk out
of his wits, for of all crazy occupations the taking of a cipher
message, when you are without the key to the cipher, is the worst.
Much high diplomacy had been going on all day in the innermost chambers
of European chancellories, and the results of it had been whispered into
this little corrugated-iron hut. About two in the morning an enormous
despatch had come at last to an end, and the weary operator had opened
the door, and was lighting his pipe in the cool, fresh air, when he saw
a camel plump down in the dust, and a man, who seemed to be in the last
stage of drunkenness, come rolling towards him.
"What's the time?" he cried, in a voice which appeared to be the only
sober thing about him.
It was on the clerk's lips to say that it was time that the questioner
was in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the
expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the
bald statement that it was after two.
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