The Elephant was blowing off, impatient to be away. Royal Engineers who’d been attending to the engine were now flowing towards the carriage and boarding it by the veranda at the engine end. Hold on . . . It seemed they would be riding with us! I would not be alone with Shepherd, the possible traitor, and Stevens, his partner in crime as might well be. One of the R.E. men made to take my pack and haversack, saying, ‘You’re at the sharp end, aren’t you? You won’t want these if so.’ I let him have the pack, but kept hold of the haversack, for that held the soda water, cigarettes and the Webley. (The Webley was heavier than the Colts with which most men were issued. In the heat of Baghdad, it was easier to carry it and the ammo pouch in the haversack than the holster – and it was just about within regulations to do so.)
I mounted the footplate of The Elephant. Stevens and Shepherd – and Shepherd’s two brown canvas bags – were already up there.
I asked Stevens, ‘Who’s going to drive and who’s going to fire?’
‘Toss you for it, if you like.’
He took out a coin of some kind and made ready to toss it, but it was evidently foreign, perhaps one of the Turkish ones still acceptable in Baghdad. He turned it over, frowning. ‘It’s got tails on both sides,’ he said.
‘Then I’ll drive,’ I said.
‘Good man,’ Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd put in. He evidently thought little of the fact that I’d never stood on a foreign footplate before, but that was the public-school product all over. He’d have confidence in himself and confidence in others, often misplaced in both cases. The driver’s controls were all on the right-hand side, which was the wrong side, but the steam injectors looked familiar, as did the braking system: steam brake for the engine, vacuum for the train. I turned to Stevens, saying, ‘Let’s have a look at the fire, Mike,’ and he casually pushed the handle of the fire door with the blade of his shovel, which looked a very flimsy thing in his hands. The fire was thin, but the colour was right: namely a dazzling white. Its own heat, added to the heat of the day, meant I couldn’t breathe as I stood exposed to it.
Turning away from the fire, I checked the injectors. Stevens wasn’t shovelling, but holding his arms out from his body and repeatedly bracing them – here were more of his funny ‘exercises’. ‘Steam pressure,’ I said, ‘it’s low.’ He nodded, and set to with the shovel. He could pitch the coal to the back of the box – he could swing the shovel, I mean – but he was a very lackadaisical fireman. For one thing, he hadn’t thought to break up any coal. He was putting lumps on that were as big as his own head. Trying to give a hint, I booted one of the bigger specimens, but Stevens just caught it up with its shovel, and put it in.
I looked at Shepherd, and he gave a grin. Then he grabbed the pick from the tool locker, scrambled up on to the tender and started hacking up the lumps. Stevens, shovelling like an automaton, seemed hardly to notice that here was a lieutenant colonel doing hard labour on his behalf. Our joint efforts brought the needle on the pressure gauge to a hundred pounds per square inch.
‘We all set, then?’ I said.
For form’s sake, I looked back along the platform, half expecting to see the station master holding a green flag, but he was long gone. I yanked too hard on the regulator, and made the wheels slip as we started away. That was embarrassing, with all those engineers riding up behind. We came out of the station room, and into the white glare, which was like steaming into our own fire. Baghdad was to the side of us, then it was behind. When we’d got clear of the town, I saw some of our boys digging earthworks near the river. The sun would stop that game before long. A mile or so later, and civilisation had evidently run out of ideas. We moved steadily on over white rubble, through white dust. If I put my head out of the side, there was no wind at all, just a different sort of heat.
Our steam pressure kept slacking off, and I had to keep telling Stevens to put more on. Shepherd stuck up for Stevens, saying, ‘I believe our fireman’s trying to keep the smoke down, Jim.’
‘Why?’ I shouted over the engine roar.
‘Arabs!’ Shepherd said, and he gave a boyish grin. ‘Insurgents!’
He leant closer to me, saying, ‘I ought to tell you what we’re about.’
Very decent of you, I’m sure, I thought.
And he held out his packet of Turkish cigarettes towards me.
Chapter Eleven
The plan was that we were to run our carriage full of Royal Engineers up to Mushahida, where Bedouin Arabs had twice shot the water tank there full of holes, and had cut the telegraph wires fore and aft. We were to drop the blokes there, and they would form a garrison.