In my youth when the whims of women got me down, 
I would seek the company of ex-sergeant Eamonn McSwilly.

He’d fought at Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus,
and would often do one of their war dances,
while drinking a pint of stout,
then sob into his glass, recalling the horror of
that misguided military campaign.

I would listen in awe, but it was myself,
a wet-behind-be-the ears young man,
who unwittingly set him upon a second,
this time bloodless, African adventure, 
which put my adolescent romantic dalliances to shame.

It happened thus: 
McSwilly was a big lad, quick to rise to an imagined slight, but he calmed when I introduced him to the game of whist,
where he met an old comrade, Colonel Cornelius Corpus,
who talked proudly of his infantry company, ‘The Fighting Micks’.

But he sobbed into his gin when talking about his son, Julius, with whom he’d fallen out.

The young chap had been courting
Miss Hornsetta Hauntingdon-Hamel,
and, though his father saw her as a suitable match, she was a tomboy, who boxed with village boys and rode to hounds.

But Julius loved that wily creature the fox,
indeed he seemed able to, with just a gentle touch, help them return to health, and would spend days nursing an ailing vixen deep in the woods.

He asked her to stop chasing foxes, but she replied, 'I want to be part of the upper class,
which is why I wish to marry you.’

However, Hornsetta’s – or ‘Horny’, as certain
crude youths called her – hopes were shattered after a lustful encounter in a prickly bush proved embarrassing for her intended, and he ran off.

She cried, ‘Oh forgive me for being forward,
but my love knows no bounds.’

His father, thinking his son should ‘man up’,
suggested joining the Territorials,
and as trouble was brewing in South Africa with the Boers, Julius didn’t fancy having his name being inscribed as a
fallen hero on village war memorials.

So he opted to join an archaeological dig in Egypt, and hadn’t been seen since.

The colonel was worried, so I suggested sending McSwilly,
who had experience of undercover work – he’d passed himself
of as a gun runner in Mozambique,
and an acrobat on an Egyptian cruise ship, 
so was fluent in Arabic.

Adopting the guise of Dandy Delacott,
a professor of archaeology at Trinity,
he arrived in Cairo, where he joined the Daedalus Club, 
an establishment favoured by the upper class,
with not a brown skin to be seen, except behind the counter.

This was Darious Dassam, a twinkle-eyed young man, who lured Eamonn to watch a display of belly dancing in Madame Fu Fu Fa’s.

He liked this exotic place, convincing himself
that it was here he’d learn what had happened to Julius.

Sure enough, a quiet word in his ear in exchange for baksheesh,
saw him being whisked to a remote oasis,
where sat a young chap with an enormous beard, dispensing herbs and words of wisdom, under a palm tree festooned with melons, drinking from a bubbling stream,
which appeared to have no source.

Realising this strange creature was the colonel’s son, he quickly explained he’d come with a tempting offer – ‘Return home and inherit his father’s county Wicklow mansion,
and marriage to a childhood love,
Miss Hornsetta Hauntingdon-Hamel,’ who still pined for him.

‘Ah, but that is not for me,’ the young man lamented, 'for I love my life here as a life-giving hermit, possessed of powers I don’t comprehend.’

McSwilly listened in sympathy, reporting by telegram to the colonel, recommending his son be left alone.

Then a cable arrived, saying, ‘Troop of men arriving incognito,
to retrieve son, if necessary by force.’

He was alarmed at this news, wondering,
‘How can we protect the hermit in his remote oasis?’

But Darious reassured him, ‘Oh, you needn’t
worry on that score, Eamonn, they’ll never find Julius.

‘He’s revered as a holy man, and no one will betray his location.’

However, greed will out and the colonel’s party
was led by an unscrupulous native into the desert on a train of camels.

His reclusive son made them welcome, and, 
as the colonel poured out his heart,
a gust of wind blew against the overhanging palm tree,
and his men were hit on the bonce by a melon.

‘You see father,’ the bearded man explained,
‘I have more powers here than I ever would enjoy at home,
for I can command the weather, as well as my followers.’

At a nod from him they picked up the unconscious invaders.
When asked, they'd no memory of their desert trip,
believing they’d been up the Nile to photograph crocodiles.

The colonel accepted he was beat, and remained in Cairo, but 
but, determined not to abandon Julius, 
established himself as a tour operator,
taking pilgrims to visit the wise hermit, 
confessing, ‘My beloved son, I should have
known young men go through awkward phases.’

But one drunken night Julius admitted that he
missed that boyish young woman, Hornsetta. 

The colonel cabled her, and she soon arrived in Cairo,
heading into the desert, shouting, ‘I now love the fox,
dear Julius, and I’ve brought you a vixen.

‘So lead me to the water, for we’re both thirsty
in this land of sand and sun,’ as she bounced
about on a camel.

Hearing her, the bemused young man was tempted to run,
but seeing the foxy animal, was soon feeding
it lovely melons, holding hands with his
one true love, Miss Hornsetta Hauntingdon-Hamel.