while the Governor dined with the Admiral. I have servants, clerks, and interpreters at my beck and call, and in short I could not be in a higher position. We are very securely entrenched here and the enemy is eighty miles off, and to-morrow the Indian troops are coming. Of course it is war time, but as I am on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief, I am not likely to get into risky places. I have seen active service though, having
been one of the first to land when Suez was taken. The Admiral is such a nice man, and I am told he never forgets his officers, but pushes them on to promotion. He told me I should get the 'Star of India'! good-bye."
This is the last pathetic entry in a very human document. The next day Palmer started with Gill and Charrington for Nakhl in the eastern desert, Gill's mission and Charrington's being to destroy the telegraph wire between Egypt and Syria, for which purpose they took with them a box of dynamite, while Palmer's mission was announced as that of "buying camels." The two officers, like Palmer, were dressed in Arab costume, but they had with them uniforms to add dignity to their proceedings when they should reach the friendly tribes. The amount of money taken with them out of Palmer's £20,000 has been variously stated at £3,000 to £8,000. Gill has recorded his dissatisfaction at the nature of the mission on which he was called to serve. It cannot have been the purchase of camels, an official euphemism which now that Palmer had become a high officer of Her Majesty he seems to have adopted, but beyond a doubt to carry out his original avowed purpose and fulfil his promises to his Bedouin friends, by paying them the large sums agreed on. He would have taken all the £20,000 for his 40,000 fighters but that the Admiral expostulated.
The party, however, was foredoomed to disaster. The Bedouin escort, men of the Haiwat and Howeytat, got scent of the gold they were carrying, and were determined to be beforehand with the Teyyaha, for whom it was intended—the Egyptian governor of Nakhl, an isolated fort