The Officers
Robbed The Soldiers Of Their Rations.
The sentries slumbered at their
posts.
The townspeople bewailed their misfortunes, and all ranks and
classes intrigued with the enemy in the hope of securing safety when the
town should fall. Frequent efforts were made to stir up the inhabitants
or sap their confidence. Spies of all kinds pervaded the town.
The Egyptian Pashas, despairing, meditated treason. Once an attempt was
made to fire the magazine. Once no less than eighty thousand ardebs of
grain was stolen from the arsenal. From time to time the restless and
ceaseless activity of the commander might discover some plot and arrest
the conspirators; or, checking some account, might detect some robbery;
but he was fully aware that what he found out was scarcely a tithe of
what he could not hope to know. The Egyptian officers were untrustworthy.
Yet he had to trust them. The inhabitants were thoroughly broken by war,
and many were disloyal. He had to feed and inspirit them. The town itself
was scarcely defensible. It must be defended to the end. From the flat
roof of his palace his telescope commanded a view of the forts and lines.
Here he would spend the greater part of each day, scrutinising the
defences and the surrounding country with his powerful glass. When he
observed that the sentries on the forts had left their posts, he would
send over to have them flogged and their superiors punished. When his
'penny steamers' engaged the Dervish batteries he would watch, 'on
tenter-hooks,' a combat which might be fatal to the defence, but which,
since he could not direct it, must be left to officers by turns timid and
reckless:
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