flight into the meadow-land in small flocks; and long before we could see their dark forms against the brilliant steel-coloured sky we heard their queer silly laugh, while several flocks flew so low that we could distinctly see them yards away, black against the white snow. The cold seemed to have temporarily dulled the geese's keen sense of caution, or perhaps hunger made them foolhardy. At any rate, hardly any of the flocks took their usual precaution of carefully examining every inch of the ground they were going to alight on from a safe height. If we had done badly before with the geese, we now made up for it, and hardly a flock got clear of the meadow-land that night without losing a member of its mess. At first we were too eager and tried to shoot the geese coming at us, but after a warning from Brogan we waited until the birds were overhead or gave us side shots. Their breasts resist shot like a sand-bag. "Paddy was invaluable, and in the moonlight looked like a ghost dog carrying in a goose from the swampy springs. Brogan told us that on the West Coast they seldom had any very hard weather during the winter, but that when they did, every woodcock, snipe, plover, and goose in the West of Ireland would make his way to the shores of the Atlantic, and could be seen there every day turning over the seaweed in search of food, and as tame as hens. If the weather lasted any length of time, they became so weak that the country boys used to kill the snipe and woodcock with sticks by the hundred. During the long winter evenings peasants used to visit the Brogans, often from great distances, and sometimes even from the outlying islands of the Atlantic, and Brogan would often bring them into the sitting-room to entertain us with their queer stories. One story an islander told us amused us greatly. Many years ago on the island where he lived there was not a single horse, and one inhabitant, more enterprising than the rest, determined to make a journey to the mainland and bring back a "hoss baste with him. However, he found that his purse would not run to a horse, but he determined not to return empty-handed. Among many wonderful new things he saw in the little town he was visiting was an earthen jar in a shop window. He inquired what this unknown article might be, and, to his great delight, the shopkeeper told him that it was a mare's egg, which if kept beside the fire during the winter would infallibly produce in the following spring the finest foal that ever was seen. The price was moderate, and the islander determined to buy the jar. On the return journey the happy man never let the jar out of his own hands until he came within sight of his own house, when he sat down to rest, and placed the jar on a bank beside him. Unfortunately the jar rolled off the bank, struck a rock, and was broken in pieces. A hare which had been crouching beneath the rock, startled at the crash, sprang out from her form and went off at great speed. The unhappy islander, in an agony of despair, gazed after what he believed to be his emancipated foal, and exclaimed with a bitter groan, "God be with me! What a hoss he would have been. 'Arrah, if he was but a twoyear-old, the divil himself would not catch him." We had promised Mary that we would be home for Christmas, and as towards the middle of December the weather became bad and the best of the snipe-shooting was then over, we determined to leave the shooting - lodge. On a wild December morning Larry came with his "Ford" to take us on our long journey to the station, and we parted with the Brogans with mutual regrets on both sides, and after promising to return the following summer for the fishing. Charles and I both agreed that never had we had better sport or a pleasanter time in our lives. RIFLE THIEVES OF IRAQ. BY BRIGADIER-GENERAL H. H. AUSTIN, C.B., C.M.G., D.8.0. A SHORT While ago the British public were not a little perturbed by the widespread Arab revolt in Mesopotamia. This assumed such threatening proportions that strong reinforcements had to be hastily despatched from India, almost at the hottest time of the year, in order to suppress the outbreak and restore tranquillity in those disturbed regions. Since the restoration of order throughout the areas affected, the large number of rifles lately announced as surrendered by the revolting tribes has probably come rather as an eyeopener to those who had but vague ideas as to how well armed the Arabs of Mesopotamia were, at the time of the recent upheaval. For this great accession of strength in the matter of modern arms the Arabs of Iraq were largely indebted to the operations of the Great War on the Tigris and Euphrates. Nations of alien races were there struggling for supremacy for four longdrawn-out years; and though the Arab had no love for Turkish dominion, and was professedly pleased to be relieved, by degrees, of the paralysing yoke of the Sublime Porte, yet he certainly bore no deep affection for his sup I. posed saviours, the British. Nevertheless, being astute Orientals, the Arab contrived for long to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He accordingly threw in his lot, with apparently most cheerful abandon, with whichever side he thought at the moment would ultimately prove topdog in the swaying fortunes of war. All he then desired was to benefit himself to the utmost possible extent by making full use of such opportunities as came his way owing to the presence of large British and Turkish armies fighting on his beloved soil. I propose, however, in this article to confine myself merely to one aspect of how the Arab sought to derive balm in Gilead whilst his country was distraught by the clash of arms between foreign foes. As hinted above, these were by no means welcome to the ancient dwellers of Mesopotamia, whose boasted independence, for the time being at all events, was somewhat submerged by the requirements of the contending armies in their midst. Still, hundreds of thousands of breech-loading magazine-rifles, and thousands of tons of smallbore ammunition, were introduced into the country by the chief combatants on Tigris and accompanied by no small risk, Euphrates. Here, then, was as the search and stretcher a heaven-sent opportunity for parties engaged on their painthe acquisition of large numful tasks would encounter bers of these coveted posses- Arabs at almost every turn, sions by those daring and and with difficulty drive them cunning enough to risk their off from their fiendish occulives in securing them by pation. stealth. As When the day was lost and the Turks in full flight after the battle of Nasirieh on the Euphrates in 1915, their Arab levies immediately turned on them and joined in the pursuit of the beaten enemy. Thousands of Turkish rifles were probably captured by the Arabs during those days, and hundreds of the scattered Turks slaughtered by their quondam allies. What the Turkish losses in rifles and men were at the hands Arabs throughout their retreat from Kut to Baghdad, early in 1917, will probably never be known; but they must have been considerable, as the Turks taken by us were overjoyed at being made prisoners. This they far preferred to falling victims to guerilla bands of Arabs following close in their wake. Being cosmopolitan in their sympathies, the Arabs endeavoured to rob rifles indiscriminately from British and Turk alike. The largest hauls of British rifles were probably made on the bloody battlefields preceding the fall of Kut in 1916. The din of conflict never failed to attract Arab horsemen and scavengers, who, though perhaps until then unseen, gathered from the four corners of the limitless desert like evil beasts of prey. vultures waiting for their victims to breathe their last, so would these human carrion hover on the outskirts of the battle until the darkness of night temporarily stayed the strife. Then, with consummate daring would they often penetrate between the lines of the contending forces, to ap- I have suggested that scant propriate the rifles and am- mercy was likely to be shown munition of those who had to any combatant who unfallen, and had not yet been happily fell into the hands of removed to safety from the Arab marauders during or after zone of fire. Not a few wound- an engagement in Iraq; and ed, it is feared, whilst lying out though instances occur to my in the rain and mud which so mind of how British and Indian frequently followed upon an wounded sometimes fared on engagement on a large scale such occasions, I refrain from before Kut, must have suffered enlarging on this painful subgrievously at the hands of ject. But it was not only to those pitiless wretches. The the living the riverain Arab clearing-up of battlefields was frequently showed himself to VOL. CCX.-NO. MCCLXXII. T be without pity or remorse, for even the dead and buried were not allowed to rest in peace. So general in course of time became the practice of the Arabs-men, women, and children-to disinter the dead, in the hope of securing an old pair of ammunition boots, blanket, jersey, or any other bloodsaturated garment, that finally all traces of the burying-places adjacent to the battlefields had to be carefully obliterated, in order to conceal their positions from the ghoulish inhabitants of this accursed country. The Arab, as is commonly known, is a good judge and devout lover of the horse as well as of a trusty rifle; and, to give the devil his due, his courage and cunning in abstracting chargers from almost under the eyes of alert sentries stamp him as a real artist in the matter of horse-stealing. In the earlier days of the extended operations before Kut, the flank of the force distributed for miles along the right bank of the Tigris, up-stream of Shaikh Sa'ad, was exposed to incursions by Arabs from the plains to the south. On dark nights, and in inclement weather, it was not difficult for Arab thieves to penetrate outer lines of sentries, and worm their way into the precincts of various camps in this area where horses and rifles were known to be plentiful. The theft of rifles under such circumstances, though requiring great nerve and discrimina tion, might be regarded as comparatively simple to those expert thieves; but the silent removal of several valuable chargers at one fell swoop from a sleeping camp, through inner and outer lines of sentries, betokens skill of an exceptional order. And yet this feat was accomplished again and again without any one being the wiser, until daylight revealed the loss. The only explanation the sentries on duty over the horses could then give was probably to the effect that, hearing a disturbance in the mule lines near by, say, their attention had been temporarily distracted in that direction; but they had not seen nor heard any movement among the horses committed to their charge. Still, several of these were gone; and neither inner nor outer cordon of sentries had noticed anything suspicious, or challenged any one, throughout the vigils of the night. In this manner it was that the distinguished general conducting the operations during the attempt to relieve Kut in April 1916 was victimised, among many others, by Arab horse-thieves. The success of such enterprises, therefore, clearly denotes most careful previous reconnaissance and location of sentries; an amazing knowledge of, or influence over, horses, who thus untethered at night silently followed a complete stranger without demur ; and the uncanny ability of that stranger to see by night almost as well as by day; not |