McAuslan in the Rough. George Fraser MacDonald

Puzzled, but putting it down to his imagination, he had resumed his watch, and just before 4 a.m. he had felt—he emphasised the word—someone watching him from the same place. He had turned slowly, and caught a fleeting glimpse of a form, no more, but again the parapet had been empty when he went to look. He raised no alarm at the time, because, with Highland logic, he had decided that since there was nothing there, there was nothing to raise an alarm for, but he had told Sergeant Telfer in the morning, and Telfer told me.

      I saw him in my office, a tall, fair, steady lad from the Isles, called Macleod. “You didn’t get a good clear sight of anyone?” I said.

      “No, sir.”

      “Didn’t hear anyone drop from the parapet, either into the fort or over the wall into the desert?”

      “No, sir.”

      “No marks to show anyone had been there?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Nothing missing or been disturbed, Sergeant Telfer?”

      “Nothing, sir.”

      “Well, then,” I said to Macleod, “it looks like the four o’clock jump—we all know what can happen on stag; you think you see things that aren’t there …”

      “Yes, sir,” said Macleod, “I’ve had that. I wouldnae swear I saw anything at all, sir.” He paused. “But I felt something.”

      “You mean something touched you?”

      “Nat-at-at, sir. I mean I chust felt some-wan thair. Oh, he wass thair, right enough.”

      It was sweating hot in the office, but I suddenly felt a shiver on my spine, just in the way he said it, because I knew exactly what he meant. Everyone has a sixth sense, to some degree, and most of its warnings are purely imaginary, but when a Highlander, and a Skye man at that, tells you, in a completely matter-of-fact tone, that he has “felt” something, you do not, if you have any sense, dismiss or scoff at it as hallucination. Macleod was a good soldier, and not a nervous or sensational person; ne meant exactly what he said.

      “A real person—a man?” I said, and he shook his head.

      “I couldnae say, sir. It wasnae wan of our laads, though; I’m sure about that.”

      I didn’t ask him why he was sure; he couldn’t have told me.

      “Well, he doesn’t seem to have done any damage, whoever he was,” I said, and dismissed him. I asked Telfer, who was a crusty, tough Glaswegian with as much spiritual sensitivity as a Clyde boiler, what he thought, and he shrugged.

      “Seein’ things,” he said. “He’s a good lad, but he’s been starin’ at too much sand.”

      Which was my own opinion; I’d stood guard often enough to know what tricks the senses could play. But Macleod must have mentioned his experience among his mates, for during the morning, while I was supervising the water-drilling, there came Private Watt to say that he, too, had things to report from the previous night. While on guard above the main gate, round about midnight, he had heard odd sounds at the foot of the wall, outside the fort, and had leaned out through an embrasure, but seen nothing. (Why, as he spoke, did I remember that P.C. Wren story about a sentry in a desert fort leaning out as Watt had done, and being snared by a bolas flung by hostile hands beneath?) But Watt believed it must have been a pi-dog from the village; he wouldn’t have mentioned it, but he had heard about Macleod …

      I dismissed the thing publicly, but privately I couldn’t help wondering. Watt’s odd noises were nothing in themselves, but considered alongside Macleod’s experience they might add up to—what? One noise, one sand-happy sentry—but sand-happy after only two weeks? And yet Fort Yarhuna was a queer place; it had got to me, a little, in a mysterious way—but then I knew I was devilled with too much imagination, and being the man in charge I was probably slightly jumpier with responsibility than anyone else.

      I pushed it aside, uneasily, and could have kicked the idiot who must have mentioned the word “ghost” some time that day. That was the word that caught the primitive thought-process of McAuslan, and led him to speculate morbidly on the fate of the graveyard garrison of Fort Zinderneuf, which had held him spellbound in the camp cinema.

      “It’ll be yin o’ they fellas frae Bo Geesty,” he informed an admiring barrack-room. “He’s deid, but he cannae stay aff parade. Clump-clump, up an’ doon the stair a’ night, wi’ a bullet-hole in the middle o’ his heid. Ah’m tellin’ ye. Hey, Macleod, did your bogle hiv a hole in his heid?”

      “You’ll have wan in yours, McAuslan, if ye don’t shut upp,” Macleod informed him pleasantly. “No’ that mich will come oot of it, apart from gaass.”

      My batman, who told me about this exchange, added that the fellas had egged McAuslan on until he, perceiving himself mocked, had gone into sulky silence, warning them that the fate of Bo Geesty would overtake them, an’ then they’d see. Aye.

      And thereafter it was forgotten about—until the following morning, at about 5 a.m., when Private McLachlan, on guard above the main gate, thought he heard unauthorised movement somewhere down in the parade square and, being a practical man, challenged, and turned out the guard. There were two men fully awake in the gate-guardroom, and one of them, hurrying out in response to McLachlan’s shout, distinctly saw—or thought he distinctly saw—a shadowy figure disappearing into the gloom among the buildings across the square.

      “Bo Geesty!” was McAuslan’s triumphant verdict, for that side of the square contained the old stables, the company office, and Keith’s and my sleeping-quarters, and not a trace of anyone else was to be found. And Keith, who had been awake and reading, was positive that no one had passed by following McLachlan’s challenge (“Halt-who-goes-there! C’moot, ye b—— o’ hell, Ah see ye!”)

      It was baffling, and worrying, for no clue presented itself. The obvious explanation was that we were being burgled by some Bedouin expert from the oasis—but if so, he was an uncommon good second-storeyman, who could scale a twenty-foot wall and go back the same way, unseen by sentries (except, possibly, by Macleod), and who didn’t steal anything, for the most thorough check of stores and equipment revealed nothing missing. No, the burglar theory was out. So what remained?

      A practical joker inside? Impossible; it just wasn’t their style. So we had the inescapable conclusion that it was a coincidence, two men imagining things on successive nights. I chose that line, irascibly examined and dismissed McLachlan and his associates with instructions not to hear or see mysterious figures unless they could lay hands on them, held a square-bashing parade of both platoons to remind everyone that this was a military post and not Borley Rectory, put the crew of the drilling-truck to work again on their quest for a well, and retired to my office, a disquieted subaltern. For as I had watched the water-drill biting into the sand of the square, another thought struck me—a really lunatic idea, which no one in his right mind would entertain.

      Everything had been quiet in Fort Yarhuna until we started tearing great holes in the ground, and I remembered my hopes that we wouldn’t disturb any historic buried ruin or Mythraic temple or ancient tomb or—anything. You see the train of thought—this was a fort that had been here probably since the days when the surrounding land had been the Garden of Eden—so the Bedouin say, anyway—and ancient places have an aura of their own, especially in the old desert. You don’t disturb them lightly. So many people had been through this fort—Crusaders, barbarians, Romans, Saracens, and so on, leaving something of themselves behind forever, and if you desecrate such a place, who knows what you’ll release? Don’t misunderstand me, I wasn’t imagining that our drilling for water had released a spirit from its tomb deep in the foundations—well, not exactly, not in as many words that I’d have cared to address to anyone, like Keith, for example. That was ludicrous, as I looked out of my office and watched the earthy soldiery grunting and laughing as they refilled yet another dead hole and the truck moved on to try again. The sentry on the gate, Telfer’s voice raised in thunderous rebuke, someone singing in the cookhouse—this was a real, military world, and ghosts were