"SCUPPERING" AT SUAKIM.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1547, 4 June 1885, Page 2

"SCUPPERING" AT SUAKIM.

Toe spe-ial correspondent of the Daily Telegraph at Su.kim, in a letter dated March 12, and published on Tuesday, says:—“ Scuppered” is a word which I had never met with till I came to Snakim, and its horrible significance is a new ex* p rience to British troops. To be “scuppered ” means here to be hacked to pieces in your tent while a veep flow the Hadendowas do it, nobody Out they theoiae ves o s tell, l 'Ut night after they come in'<o the middle of rut camp, stab and hack a tew soldiers, and go oat ag tin a. athlea* Some limes they creep in five al reast past our sentries ; somet mes they come right up to our tents half a mile within the line of redoubts and pickets, and bring camels and horses with them. But, whatever the audacity of their entrance, the impunity of their departure is the same. Our guards tarn out; bugles sound the alarm, signals flash, rifles are let off, a gunboat fires overhead into black space—but next morning there are only our own mutilated and dead in evidence of the assassins’ {pretence. The Hacendowas have left none behind them, or had none to leave. It is horrible in the highest degree this monotony of midnight murder, and depressing beyond language to find our headquarters staff apparently so unteachable by experience The front of our camp is considerably over three miles in stretch, while the relative positions of the tents have been arranged, apparently, solely for the convenience of Osman Digna’s hysenaa. The standing order for the immediate entrenchment of all linea was not enforced, and the time and manner for defending their regiments was left to the discretion of their respective colonels, the result having proved so inadequate that if it ware not for the hideous consequences it would bo a surd- Our sleeping soldiers lie virtually at the mercy of the enemy, and in the Hadendowas’ inexplicable forbearance the country has much to bo very grateful for. They have iefrained from slaughter with a self-denial that in such foes is positively heroic. The Goldstreama slept two nights with nothing between them and the stealthy murderous spears of the Soudanese ; till the day before yesterday the headquarters staff went to bed without even an earthwork to protect them from the snake like attack of the enemy. Yet the Hadendowaa were content with an odd soldier or two here and there. With the lives of their generals and their staffs in their hand they went instead into the tents of privates. Our sentries cannot see these savages. Once past our pickets the redoubts cannot fire on them. On the sand their feet fall without a sound. Tha nights ate of extraordinary darkness; moreover, they are exports in all the treacheries of warfare. Silent aa shadows, they are terribly swift in massacre and the ground they travel over is murderous beyond description. Crawling along on all fours, they traverse the space between them and their victims with all tha patient caution of wild beasts stalking pray. They reach the doomed tent. Fu( the sake of the sea breeze the doorway is open, and the next instant the murderer is standing by the sleeping soldier’s side. Ho feels a hand passing over his body, and stans. A cry is rising to his lips, it is strangled in his throat by a groan of pain, and before the gallant fellow can even warn his comrades the fierce spear is driven home through his body, the heavy two-handed sword has fallen across him. But the tent is alarmed. There is no time to lose ! Slashing this way and thr t, the murderers stab and hack with the fury of fiends, and <heu as the camp starts to its feet in clamour they are off. It is a horrible episode, yet of nightly occurence. “Murder ! murder!” I heard the word ring out last night from the Ordnance camp and then cams a cry—the bitter cry of a man suddenly overtaken by the agony of death. A shot, and then another, and another. Then a confusion of mufflsd sounds. Then silanes. • I was only 400 yards away. A party of Hadendowas had either crept straight across the camp, or, passing along the rear, had traversed its complete length, crossing twice on their way the electric light thrown by the Dolphin, had reached without being observed the farthest batch of tents from their starting point, the nearest to the town. Behind them, only 100 yards off, was Quarantine Island, with its camp; nearer still lay our shipping, with the gunboats close inshore, commanding one line of the retreat, the whole of the British troops intercepting the other. Behind them was the sea; on their left the town; yet such is the confidence inspired by nightly success and impunity, that the assassins did act hesitate to creep even into such a desperate position as this. And their work was desperate and terribly complete. Of the whole of the occupants of the tents—24 in all—only two escaped their spears and swords, while the murderers retreated apparently unharmed. As they went back rifles were wildly emptied after them, and the Oarysfort fired volleys into the dark. Bat there was no trace of blood. Inside the tents the sight was dreadful—blood everywhere, and the men lying about in in all directions wounded and groaning. The correspondent says the Indian contingent refused to lie in their tents and be stabbed and hacked about, so they have traced a ditch along their front; and when the Hadendowas came up last night to assassinate them they found the whole line manned, and got well peppered for their pains, leaving, at any rate, one corpse in acknowledgment of the reception they got. Scuppering, says the correspondent In con slusioe, is quite an exceptional form of danger, and should have been met a week ago by exceptional pre I cautions.