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32X

•

WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM

BY Tin: SAMi: a urn on.

EGYPT IN 1898. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo.

"Set forth in a style that providea plenty of entcrtainnieut.
Bright and readable." — Times.

THE LAND

Crown «vo.

OF THE DOLLAR. Third Edition.

"One of the smart:<\st books of travel wliich has appeared for a

long time past Brings the ^,'ent'ral apptJiruneeof Tniiisatlantic

urban and nual life so clearly lief^re the mind s eye of tlie reader,
that a perusal of his work almost answei*s the purpose of a ptusonal
inspection. New York has pn)bal>ly never been more lightly and
cleverly sketched."— Dciiiy Tdtgraplt.

WITH THE CONQUERING TURK: Confkssionh

OF A Bash:-Ba2ouk. With Four Maps. Hmall demy Svo.

"The most entertaining of the volumes we have had about the

Ten Weeks Campaign in the spring It gives brightly, and

without any desperate striving after realisjii, a vivid idea of what
a correspondent with the Turkish forces in Thessaly went through."
—Timei.

WITH

KITClfKNKIt TO KHARTUM

G. W. 8TEEVENS

AUTIIOH Oe>

■EOVPT IN 18<H' 'THK IMNU OF THE DOLLAR,' ' M'lTU TMB

CONQfERIWG TURK,' ETC.

W/Tff MAPS AND PLANS

TORONTO
COPP, CLARK COMPANY LIMITED

1898

. T;T I 02

231880

Citpyrinht, J89S,
By Doi>i), 3Ik.\I) & CoMi'ANi

INTRODL7CTORY KOTE.

Mr. Steevens' earlier work, '^ With tlie Conquering
Turk," was received witli sucli cordial recognition that
it is periiaps unnecessary to refer to his qualities as a
war correspondent or to his literary £?ifts. The Ano-lo-
Egyptian expedition is a greater theme, and the writei
of these pages has the advantage of a wider experi-
ence, lie has a broader comparative basis for his ob-
servation, and his criticism, wliicli he always offers
modestly and as an " amateur," has a higher value. At
the same time the power of vivid narration and keen
characterization is quite as striking. As one of the most
remarkable campaigns of liistory the Sirdar's move-
ment on Khartum would be an interesting topic at
any time, but just now it lias a special claim to atten-
tion in this country. A fresh experience of war, with
the criticism of its management now ringino* in our,
ears, naturally gives an incentive to a comparison
which, ds a whole, defies the criticism even of non-
combatants. How far such a comparison is justified
will appear from these pages. The marvelous, ma^
chine-like precision of the Sirdar's movements is

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

described by Mr. Stcevens witli accuracy and graphic
presentation of detail, but lie shows with the buiiic
clearness the dark background of delays and bhinders
and futilities in the years that preceded. It was not
an affair of one summer. In being at tlu^ right place
at the right time, and in missing nothing of importance',
Mr. Steevens shared in tlie Ir.ck which lie attril)ures
to the Sirdar's star ; but he had to work for it. lie
joined the expedition early in 1S1>T, and he toiled along
with it to the end. lie went througli tlic battles of
the Atbara and Omdurman. He entered Khartum
with the coiKpierors, and he saw the raising of the
Union Jack on the spot where Gordon felL

graphic

) bUlllC

unders
'as not
t place
rtaiice,
rll)ures
^ lie
1 al(Hi":
:tles of
lartum
of the

CONTEXTS.

I. ITALFA TKLLS ITS STOUY.

The rnmnnpe of tlio ^n>\^\) in bn'of — The rise of the 'MKhdi— The
second act of f.ln' dtMina — 'I'he fir-<t AnL,'Ii) I''i^V|'t ian stratcgi-
val victory — The (Icfcat of Npjtuni — The tuniinu-|ioint of
the (h-aina— Convict laU.mr—The tauiinj^ of the Suilun — The
cemetery

PAOK

IT. THE EnVPTIAN ARMY.

The prowfli of -n'xlpon yoars — The smallest ind hest paid of
conscrijilive arriii'>s — Tiie Sudaiio.-ve l)attah'oiis — A pei'niniial
Bcliodllxiy — liicnii-tant \vaiii(»i's — rolyganiy — rnifurni and
et|ni|Mncnt — Cavalry and aitilhM-y — Ihiti-h ofhrcfs and
native t(o(>|(s — The inorilM of " .S('ix'»'aia What-isniiiie " — A
daily horiiisin — r>fy and I'linlMshj -I!ii|ii(] proaiutiun — Une
of the inghuat aciiicvenicuLft of our race • • • •

III. THK .S.M.R.

The deadliest weafwrn apainst Mahdisni — An inipoasiliillty real-
ised — A ht'jivy h.indiiMii — Tlie railw.iy l»altali<nis — Arab
views on nu'clianicH — Ko'^itit's of fhrt'ds and |iatthes —
Bind)aKlii Oirouard — An engiiieerinjjf triuiijph— A 8ul>altern
with £'2000 a-year — Saloon j>a.>sengcr!j — A journey tliruugh
the desert — A desert railway statiou . . , , .

viu

COMTKNTS.

IV. THE CORUESrONDENTS PIIOGUESS.

An outoagt in the Sudan — The Bipnificiince of a "line of com-
Uiunicalii»n8 " — 'I'lie <»l(l and the youn^^ cjxnipaigner— A varied
e<|iii|iiti(M»t — The 1)11} iiit; t)f caiiiel.s-- An enciKt'tic hfi^'l — A
di>ul*Lful te.'-tiniDniiil — A waiting game — A liunied depar-
ture—A happy thought 81

V. I MAIICH TO LEIir.ER.

The hiring of donkeys — Aiah delihoration — A v »nderful hor«e
— The processidn etaru — Tlie luxury of angarelw — A dia-
reputiihle caravan — Four miles an hour — The desert tread-
mill — A camel riilu to Berber 89

VI. THE SIRDAR.

Irrelevant det-ails — The Sudan Machine — The harvest of fifteen
years — A stroke of genius — An unsuccessful enterprise— A
diplomatic skirmish with the Khedive — Swift, certain, and
relentlesH — A stern regime — A well-trusted general — A legi-
timate ambition — The Anglo-Egyptiau Mahdi • • • 45

VII. ARMS AND MEN.

Major-Ceneral ITunter — The sword-arm of the Egyptian Army
— A nineteenth-century crusader — An ofhcer renowned for
bravery — A possible new natit»nal hero — I.ieut.-Col. Hector
Macdonald — Lieut. -Col. Maxwell — Lieut.-Col. Lewis —
Lieut. -Col. Broadwood — Li"Ut.-Col. Long — General Catacre
— The soldier's general — Arab notions about ligurea — Osman
Digua — Colonel Wiugate 63

VIII. IN THE BRITISH CAMP.

A great march under difTiculties — A gunner's adventure— Tlie
boot scandal— Ollicial exi)lanations and admissions — Making
the men hard — The geneial's morning i-ide — The camp iu a
dust storm — A badly chosen site ..... 66

CONTEl^TS.

IX. FORT ATBARA.

Dinnj^r in the Egyptian camp— Untler a roof again — A sand-
BU)rm — The Fort— A rovelation of Kgyptian industry — The
Egyptian sohliors on fatigue duty — A Ureck caf«5 — The gun-
boat fleet — Crossing the Fourth Cataract— The value of the
guuboata — War, blockade-ruuuiug, and pouching combined .

X. THE MARCH OUT.

The beginning and end of the Berber season — A palatial house
— IJerl'er, old and new — The value of angarebs — Tiie appre-
hensions of tlie Greek merchants — A splendid black battalion
— The crossing of the luck token— "Like the English, we
are not afraid " — A flattering belief

XI. THE CONCENTRATION.

The restrictions laid on correspondents — Loading the camels —
Arab ideas of time— Impartial stupidity of the camel — Peri-
patetic Christmas trees — The brigade on the march — The
result of General Gatacre's methods — Zariba building —
Counting the dervishes from a watch tower — A daring feat
of a gunboat • • •

XII. AT KENUR.

An ideal residence for correspondents — Arrival of the Seaforths
— Daily manoeuvres — A stately spectacle — Native ideas of
distance and number • 100

Xin. ON THE ATBARA.

A veritable paradise— Sambo and the dora-nuts — A land without
life — A cavalry skirmish — A strong reconnaissance — A faka
alarm— The real enemy — The want of transport begins to be
felt — What oflBcers had to put up with— Dervish deserters —
A bold stroke 106

CONTENTS.

XIV. THE RAID ON SIIENDI.

The virtues of bottled fruits — A liquor famine — The Sudan
Greek's commercial instincts— A Nansen of trade — Inter-
rupteil festivities at Sliendi — A speedy victory — The Jaalin's
revenge — The viciassitudcs of married life iu the Sudau — The
cook's grievance . . . . • • • •

116

XV. REST AND RECONNAISSANCES.

Mahmud stale-mated — The Egyptian cavalry — Dispiriting work
— General Hunter's reconnaissance — Malimud marked rl vvn
— liuiuours and aurmiaes — Ueasous for storming the zariba 124

XVI. CAMEL-CORPS AND CAVALRY.

Camel-corps luck — Distant firing — The hall-mark of the Sudan
— The second and third class passengers of the desert —
Traces of a dervish raid — A cavalry fight — The vindication of
the Egyptian trooper — A cheerful camp .... 131

XVn. THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA.

A march by moonlight — Twelve thousand men move forward —
The first gun — An hour and twenty minutes' botnbaid.nent
— The Camerons' advance — A rain of fire — The zariba de-
molished — A wild confusion of Higlilanders — "A very good
fight" — Uow our blacks fought— A masterpiece of a battle

140

XVin. LOSSES AND GAINS.

From boys to men— Mahmud and the Sirdar— The Cameroni*
losses — Crossing the tienclies — General On'Acre's bugler —
Hairbreadth escapes — A cheap victory — This Klialifa's losses
— The Raggara cavalry — Ferocious heroism — Counting the
dead — Perfect strategy , ,

152

CONTENTS.

116

XIX. THE TRIUMPH.

The blacks returning from battle — A song of thanksgiving—
"They're h)vely ; they're rippers " — (JcMieral Hunter con-
voying the wounded — How the injured t(jok their fate —
Church-parade— The return to T.erber -The captive Mahmud
— Tlie tiuest sight of the wliole triumph . , , .

161

XX. EGYPT OUT OF SEASON.

Port Said in summer— Cairo, a desf)hitioii— Tlie Aral) overcome
- The Contiiieutal ilulel— Nileless Egypt — The keys uf the
^'ile 1^3

XXI. GOING UP.

On the Cairo platform— The worst seventeen hours in Egypt—
Tiie line at Luxor — The price of victory over the man-eating
Sudan— 'J'he Nile-flood — Haifa — Dervish recruits — Tin ee
months' progress at Atbara — The master - toast of the
Egyptian aruiy

173

140

XXII. THE FIRST STEPS FORWARD.

The force for Orndurman — The Egypn m (Hvision — The

Waiwitk.s — CavHh-y and artillery — 'I'ltc new j^uidionts

Slatin l'a>ha— What the Kh.dila's refusal to ligliL w.xdd.
iJieau

1^0

152

XXIII. IN SUMMER QUAKTl-RS.

The one important qtiest ion— Sport on the Atliara— A pessiu)-
istio senior captain— The Atln.ra Derlty — A varied coineisu-
tiou— The recruit and the mirage— Facetious 'i "uinuiie* 187

xii

CONTENTS.

XXIV. DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS.

How the blacks went up the river — The most business-like
business in the world — The Rifles' first experience — Two
favoured regiments — Amateur aii J professional transport —
The perfection of method . 192

XXV. THE PATHOLOGY OF THIRST.

Tlie Sudan thirst — Some fine distinctions — The diversions of a
correspondent — The Sirdar at work — How to conquer the
thirbt — A sweet revenge — The momeut of the day . . 198

XXVI. BY ROAD, RIVER, AND RAIL.

Fort Atbara becomes a British camp — A record for marching—
The gyassas fight the wind — Shipping the 40-pounders — The
Irith Fusiliers — The effect of lyddite — The arrival of the
Guards — British subalterus — One more iuca -nation . . 205

Til

XXVIL THE LAST OP FORT ATBARA.

The restrictions of the modem war-correspondent — Scenery
finer than Switzerland — Two limp battalions — The Sirdar's
lightning movements — A dress -rehearsal of camels — Tardy
vengeance for a great humiliatioa 212

XXVIII, THE DESERT MARCH TO OMDURMAN.

A young regiment — First impressions of cavalry in the field—
A piiiuant contrast— A masterpiece of understatement — A
military circus — Camping on an old cotton-field — The
vagaries of the Nile — A pleasant camp — The traces of
M^hdiifTi ..........

218

-u-^

CONTENTS.

XIU

XXIX. METEMMEH.

A sip^-post in tlie wilderness — The massacre of the Jaalin

Mahmuds foils— iluhmud'a camp— The ceuoLuph of a tribe 226

192

198

XXX. A COIIIIESPONDENT'S DIARY.

little world full of life— The best storm of the season—
"In the sLiaiglit" — A standing miracle— A disiisLer to a
gunboat— Not a white man's country — The Intelligence
Department •....••,, 233

XXXI. THE RECONNAISSANCES.

With the 21st Lancers — Dervishes at last I — The lines of
Kerreri— The first shot— Kerreri abandoned— Omdurman
in sight — The Khalifa's army — A perfect reconnaissance . 249

205

XXXII. THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

Tlie position— The first attack — " Bearer party there I "—On to
Omdurman— The second attack — Bi-oadwood in difficulties
— The Lancers' charge— Three against three thousand— The
third attack — Macdouald and his blacka— The last Derviah

259

, 212

XXXIII. ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

An appalling slaughter— Our losses— Casualties among corres-
pondents — The Khalifa's blunders and probable fate— The
battle of Gedaref — Our mistakes and our merits , , 284

218

XXXIV. OMDURMAN.

The destruction of the forts— The white flag — A squalid capital
— A huge harem — Through the breach— In the Khalifa's
citadel — Imposing on the savage — Cone! — Testing the
Khalifa's corn — Dog-tired — Flotsam of civilisation — Filth,
lust, and blood 297

XIV

CONTENTS.

XXXV. TEE FUNERAL OF GORDON.

The Avengers— The seal on Klmrtum— The service— In Gordon's
garden— We leave him with the flag

810

XXXVI. AFTER THE CONQUEST.

A tragedy played out — The vindication of our national self-
respect— Tlie trade of the Sudan— Fat Egypt and the lean
Sudan — Beggarly, empty, miserable— Egyptian officials—
What Egypt has gained by the conquest — The future of
the Egyptian army— An empty limbo of torment— Naked
nature ••••.....

317

Si
Ti
K

LIST OF MAPS.

317

General Map — Egypt to Uganda . At the heginning
Sketch Map of the Nile and Atbara, to illustrate

the operations against Mahmoud . . To/ace p. 78
Sketch Plan op the Battle of Atbara .
The Nile— :Metemmeh to Khartum . .
Khartum and Omdurman . . . •
Battle of Omdurman, Phase One, 7 a.m. .

II ft It Two, 9.40 a.m.

w Three, 10.10 A.M. h

144

220

246

260

266

278

THE CHIEF EVENTS IN THE ATBARA AND
OMDURMAN CAMPAIGNS.

Sirdar asks for reiuforcemeuts of British

troops .......

British brigade starts for front from Abu Dis
II M reaches Dibeika, beyuud Berber

Sirdar leases Berber
Concentration at Kenur
Army moves up the Atbara .
First contact with Dervish cavalry
Shendi raided and destroyed .
General Hunter reconnoitres Mahmud's zariba
Second reconnaissance : cavalry action before

Mahmud's zariba .
Battle of the Atbara
Sirdar's triumphal entry into Berber
Railhead reaches Abeiditli : construction of

new gunboats begun
Railhead reaches Fort Atbara
Lewis's Brigade leaves Atbara for south
Second British brigade arrives at Atbara
Sirdar leaves Atbara for front
Last troops leave Atbara
Final concentration at Gebel Royan
March from Gebel Royan to Wady Abid (eight

miles) .......

March from AVady Abid to Sayal (ten miiC?i)

It Sayal to Wady Suetne (eight miles )

Kerreri reconnoitred and shelled .
March from Wady Suetne to Agaiga (six miles);

Omdurman reconnoitred and furta silenced
Battle and capture of Omdurman .
Funeral of Gordon . . .

Sirdar starts for Fashoda . •
Battle of Gedaref ....
Sirdar returns from Fashoda .

Dec. 31,
Feb. 26,
March 3,

15.

16.

20,

21,
27.
30,

1897
1898

•t

H
It
II
II
II

April 4,
II 8,
II 11,

II 29,

II 30,

n 31,

Sept. 1,

.. 2,

« 4,

n 9,

N 22,

M 24,

II
II
II

H
N

N
N

II 18, n

June (middle) ii

July (early) ii

Aug. 3-17, II

II 13, N

II 18, N

•I 28, N

•I

n
II

N
N
M
M
It
M

1897
1898

N
N
H

m
«

le) .,

N
II

N
N
N

N
II
N

N
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- 1

WITH KITCHENEK TO KHAETUM.

HALFA TELLS ITS STORY.

A'
iff

}

To walk round Wady Haifa is to read the whole
romance of the Sudan. This is the look-out whence
Egypt has strained her vision up-Nile to the vast,
silent, torrid, murderous desert land, which has been
in turn her neighbour, her victim, all but her undoing,
and is now to be her triumph again. On us English,
too, the Sudan has played its fatal witchery, and half
the tale of Haifa is our own as well as Egypt's. On
its buildings and up and down its sandy, windy streets
we may trace all the stages of the first conquest, the
loss, the bitter failures to recover, the slow recom-
mencement, the presage of final victory.

You can get the whole tale into a walk of ten
minutes. First look at that big white building : it is

GENERAL MAP EGY]

M E D I T E R II A NS^ A If S t; A .^ju.

leb. td^anxfibcvcd

hebeb^_

~ "^ Oiufllmiu.ui'j
-, Jbdn2la Wa.ra\

SertFr ^

elj.rett'na]

K O R, D G F A >{'
I Hara'

D A R^- F t3, lO

Bu-h;wea "''.

>^ J

OaiftH

/jjiAn /jr bntA'.:

V% sS^

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el-Bixket

.^flu-fa.,..,--'

S'loiguik^-^' DarTagali) ^

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7 -'^'"^'^°

.! t'

( >.-ij)^;<

^RAL MAP EGYPT TO UGANDA

Sy r I. a re V*" D f a e.r t

Hal' V, >7

',> '!'-»"itf>ATn<-»"n.R"¥ '' 1^, 'TBS, 11

Ifi'/inrra Jj .. v. -^

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yeVud Desert

ilia' '"''/'W
Das^R <if Jiharga

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Dunqun. i^an.Ltsi 1 " ''^

- J> Ditniiut

SatabA hit

rhebh

JhUika -I
'L'''/""'^'it*»^fi'n.,.. w*

JiirJlb*ai^.f-^!^fiif^ ; BirKeiei ,'

JEiulMEr

'(fforf. -Desert

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HALFA TELLS ITS STORY.

the Egyptian military hospital, and one of the largest,
soliilest structures of Haifa. In shape and style, you
will notice, it is not unlike a rail way -station — and
that is just what it was meant to be. That was tlie
northern terminus of Ismail Pasha's great railway to
Khartum, which was to have run up-river to Don^ola
aiul l)L'l)h('li, and thence across the linyuda, by Jakdul
and Aim Xlea to Metemmeh. The scheme fell short,
like all Ismail's grandiose ambitions; (Jordon stopped
it, and j»aid for his unforcsight with his life. The
railway never reached the Third Cataract. Tiie upper
part of it was torn to pieces by the Dervislies, who
chopped the sleepers into firewood, and twisted the
telegrnph -wires to spear-heads ; the part nearer Haifa
lay half-derelict for many years, till it was aroused at
length to play its part in the later act of the tragedy
of the Sudan.

Now, twenty yards along the line — in this central
part of !' Ifa every street is also a railway — you see
a l»attered, broken -winded engine. It was here in
1884. That is one of the properties of the second act
— the nerveless efforts to hold the Sudan when the
^laluli began to rip it loose. For in the year 1881,
before we came to Egypt at all, there had arisen a re-
ligious teacher, a native of Dongola, named Mohammed
Ahmed. The Sudan is the home of fanaticism : it
has always been called " the Land of the Dervishes,"
and no rising saint was more ascetic than the young
DongolawL He was a disciple of a holy man named

THE BKCill^NlNG OF THE MA111>1.

largest,
yle, you
)n — and
was the
ilway to
Don^ola
' Jakdul
11 short,
stopped
fc. The
le upper
hes, who
sted the
ir Haifa
oused at
tragedy

central

you see

lere in

;ond act

len the

ar 1881,

en a re-

lammed

ism : it

vishes,"

e young

named

Mohammed Slierif, and one day the master gave a feuNi
at which there was dancing and sinj^ing. Sueli friv-
olity, said jMohammed Ahmed, Wiis displeasing to
Allah; whereat the Sherif was angry, cursed him,
and cast him out. The disciple sprinkled ashes
on his head, put a yoke on his neck, and fell at his
master's feet, imploring forgiveness. Again Moham-
med Sherif cursed him and cast him out.

Angered now himself, Mohammed Ahmed joined a
new teacher and became a straiter ascetic than ever.
The fame of his sanctity spread, and adherents flocked
to him. He saw that the people of the Sudan, smart-
ing under extortion and oppression, could but too easily
be roused against the Egyptian Government : he risked
all, and proclaimed himself El Mahdi el Muntazer,
the Expected Guide, the Mussulman Messiah. The
Governor - General at Khartum sent two comi)anies
to arrest him : the Mahdi's followers fell on them
unawares and destroyed them. More troops were
sent ; the Mahdists destroyed them : next came a
small army, and again the Mahdists destroyed it. The
barbarous tribesmen flocked to the Mahdi's standard,
and in September 1882 he laid siege to Ei Obeid, the
chief city of Kordofan. His assault was beaten back
with great slau^^hter, but after tive months' siege the
town surrendered ; sack and massacre taught doubters
what they had to expect.

The Sudan doubted no longer : of a truth this was
the Mahdi. Hicks Pasha's army came down from the

HALFA TELLS ITS STORY.

North only to swell the Mahdi's triumph to immensity.
Unorganised, unwieldy, afraid, the Egyptians crawled
on towards El Obeid, harassed by an enemy they
never saw. They saw them at last on November 4,
1883, at Shekan : the fight lasted a minute, and the
massacre spared only hundreds out of ten thousand.
The rest you know — Gordon's mission, the loss of
Berber, the siege of Khartum, the massacre of Baker's
levies at El Teb, Graham's expedition to Suakim, and
the hard-fought figlits of the second Teb and Tamai,
Wolseley's expedition up the Nile, with Abu Klea and
the Gubar and Kirbekan, the second Suakim cam-
paign and M'Neill's zariba. Everybody knows these
stories, so gallant, so futile. I remember thirteen
and fourteen years ago being enormously proud and
joyful about Tamai and Abu Klea. I was very young.
Read over the tale again now — the faltering and the
folly and the failure — and you will feel that if Egypt
has Baker's Teb and Hicks's ruin to wipe out, Eng-
land was not so very far from suffering precisely the
same humiliations. And in the end we failed, with
what loss we still remember, and gave the Sudan
aw y. The second act is not a merry one.

The third was less tragic, but it was perhaps even
harder to play. We pass by a mud-walled quad-
rangle, which was once the artillery barracks ; through
the gateway you look across sand to the mud ram-
parts of Haifa. That is the stamp of the days of
reorganisation, of retrenchment, of difficulties and

imensity.
3 crawled
my they
member 4,
1, and the
thousand,
e loss of
)f Baker's
ikim, and
id Tamai,
Klea and
kim cam-
Dws these
thirteen
)roud and
!ry young.
f and the
if Egypt
out, Eng-
isely the
led, with
e Sudan

|aps even

id quad-
through

lud ram-
days of

[ties and

THE FIRST ANGLO-EGYPTIAN VICTORY.

discouragements, and unconquernble, undisnppointed
work. Tliose were the days wlien the Egyptian
army was in the making, when Haifa was tlie fron-
tier fortress. There are old barracks all over it,
where the young fiuhting force of Egypt used to sleep
half awake. The brown Hanks of tliose hills beyond
the rifle-range, just a couple of miles or so desert-
wards, have seen Dervishes stealing up in broad day
and insolently slasliing and stal)bing in the main
Streets of the bazaar. Yet this time was not all un-
avenged insult: the long years between 1885 aid
1896 saw Egypt defended and its assailtints smashed
to pieces. Little by little Egypt — British Egypt now
— gained strength and new resolution.

Four battles mark the stages from weakness and
abandonment to confidence and the resoluticm to re-
conquer. At Ginnis, on tlie last day but one of 1885,
came the first Anglo - Plgyptian strategical victory.
The Mahdists had been tactically beaten before — well
beaten; but the result had always been that we fell
back and they came on. After Ginnis, fouglit by the
British army of occupation, aided by a small number
of the new Egyptian army, we stood firm, and the
Dervishes were washed back. There were men of
the Cameron Highlanders on the Atbara, who had
fought in that battle : it was not perhaps a very
great one, but it was the first time the enemy had
been brought to a standstill. He retired behind the
Third Cataract.

G HALFA TELLS ITS STORY.

i 1

■; 1

(

;: i TIioii followed three years of raid and counter-raid.

.i Cherniside cut up their advance-guard at Sarras; they

1^ captured the fort of Khor Musa, and Machell Bey of

j the 13th Sudanese drove them out within twelve

ji hours. On the Suakim side the present Sirdar made

\ head against Osman Digna with what irregulars and

friendlies he could get together. Then in 1888 Osman

waxed insolent and threw up trenches against Suakim.

1 It became a regular siege, and Dervish shells fell into

tl]

the town. But on December 20 Sir Francis Grenfell,

the Sirdar, came down and attacked the trenches at

the battle of Gemaizeh, and Osman fell back shat-

ail

tered : never again did he come so near his soul's

ambition.

Meanwhile Wad-en-Nejumi — the great Emir, the

lei

conqueror of Hicks and the captor of Khartum — had

all

hung on the southern frontier, gathering strength for

W£

his attack on Egypt. He came in 1889, skirting

gl^

Haifa in the western desert, striking for a point in

Egypt proper above Assuan. His Emirs got out of

fo]

hand nnd tried to get to the Nile; in a hard day's

tussle at Argin, Colonel Wodehouse and the Haifa

• garrison threw him back into the desert again. Ne-

junii pushed on southward, certain of death, certain of

Paradise. At Toski Grenfell brouglit him to battle

tr^

•i

with the flower of the Egyptian army. At the end of

the day Nejunii was dead and his army was beginning

to die of thirst in the desert. Egypt has never been

attacked since.

THE TUR^'ING- POINT OF THE DRAMA.

mter-raid.
Tas; they
2ll Bey of
in twelve
dar made
ulars and
88 Osman
t Suakim.
s fell into
; Grenfell,
enches at
ack shat-
his soul's

Emir, the

;um — had

ength for

skirting

point in

Dt out of

ard day's

he Haifa

hm. Ne-

ertain of

to battle

le end of

)eginning

ver been

Finally, in 1891 Colonel Holled - Smith marched
against Osman Digna's base outside Suakim, the oasis
of Tokat. The Dervishes sprang upon him at Afafil,
but the days of surprise and panic were over. They
were rolled back and shattered to pieces ; their base
was occupied ; and Suakim as well as Haifa had i)eace.
Now all ground was finally maintained, and all was
ripe for attack again. England heard little of this
third act ; but for all that, unadvertised, hard-work-
ing, it was the turning-point of the whole drama.

And now we have come to the locomotive-sheds
and the fitting-shops, the boiler-houses and the store-
rooms ; we are back in the present again, and the
Haifa of to-day is the Egypt of to-day. Haifa has
left off being a fortress and a garrison; to-day it is
all workshop and railway terminus. To-day it makes
war not with bayonets, but with rivets and spindlc-
glauds. Railways run along every dusty street, and
trains and trucks clank up and down till ialfa looks
for all the world like Chicago in a turban. In chains,
too, for to Haifa come all the worst villains of Egypt.
You must know that, till the other day, no ICi^ypLian
could be hanged for murder except on the evidence of
eyewitnesses — just the people whom most murderers
try to avoid. So the rails and sleepers are slung
ashore to the jingle of ankle - chains ; and after a
day in Haifa it startles you in no way to hear that
the black foreman of the en;^qne-shop did liis five
murders, and that, nevertheless, he is a most iutelli-

HAIFA TELLS ITS STORY.

i I

gent, industrious, and harmless creature. On the con-
trary, you find it admirable that Egypt's ruffians are
d.ou\<i; E^^ypt's work.

Haifa clangs from morning till night with rails
lassoed and drawn up a sloping pair of their fellows
by many convicts on to trucks; it thuds with sleepers
and boxes of bully-beef dumped on to the shore. As
you come home from dinner you stumble over strange
rails, and sudden engine-lamps flash in your face, and
warning whistles scream in your ears. As you lie
at night you hear the plug-plug of the goods engine,
nearer and nearer, till it sounds as if it must be
walking in at your tent door. From the shops of
Haifa the untamed Sudan is being tamed at last. It
is the new system, the modern system — mind and
mechanics beating muscle and shovel-head spear. It
takes up and digests all the past : the bits of Ismail's
railway came into the Dongola line ; the engine of
Wolseley's time has been rebuilt, and is running
again ; the artillery barracks are a store for all things
pertaining to engines. They came together for the
fourth act — the annihilating surprise of Eerkeh, the
masterly passage of Hafir, the occupation of Dongola
and Merawi, the swift march and sharp storm of Abu
Hamed, the swoop on Berber. They were all coming
together now for the victorious end, ready to enter
for the fifth act and the final curtain on Khartum.

But that is not all Haifa, and it is not all the
Sudan. Looking at it hence from its threshold, the

THE CEMETERY.

n the con-
ufBans are

with rails
3ir fellows
h sleepers
hore. As
er strange
■ face, and
s you lie
ds engine,
must be
shops of
last. It
nind and
pear. It
f Ismail's
ngine of
running
11 things
for the
keh, the
Bongola
of Abu
coming
'0 enter
lartum.
all the
)ld, the

Sudan seems like a strong and swift wild beast,
which many hunters have pursued, none subdued.
The Sudan is a man-eater — red -gorged, but still
insatiable. Turn your pony's head and canter out
a mile ; we are at the cemetery. No need to dis-
mount, or even to read the names — see merely how
full it is. Each white cross is an Englishman de-
voured by the Sudan. Go and hear the old inhabi-
tants talk — the men who have contrived to live year
in, year out, in the Sudan, in splitting sun and red-
hot sand. You will notice it best with the men who
are less trained to take a pull on their sentiment than
are British officers — with the engineer corporals and
the foreman mechanics, and all the other plain,
efficient Englishmen who are at work on Haifa.
Their talk is half of the chances of action, and the
other half of their friends that have died.

" Poor Bill, 'e died in the desert surveying to Ilubu
'Amed. Yes, 'e's 'ere in the cemetery. No ; there
wasn't any white man there at the time."

" Ah, yes ; he was a good fellow, and so was poor
Captain Blank; a real nice man, he was now;- no
better in all the Egyptian army, sir, and I tell you
that's saying a good deal, tluit is. Fouglit, too,
against it; he was engaged to a girl at lionie, you
know, sir, and he wouldn't give up. I nursed him
till the doctor come, and then till the end. Didn't
you see him when you was out at the cemetery ; he's
next to poor Dash ? "

HALFA TELLS ITS STORY.

1 1 ,
ill

I !|'l

" Ah, yes," says the third ; " don't you remember
that night out at Murat — poor Blank, and poor Dash,
and poor Tertius, and you, and me. Five we were,
and now there's only us two left. Dear, yes ; and I
slept in Tertius's bed the night before he took it ; he
was gone and buried forty -eight — no, thirty -six, it
was — Ihirty-six hours later. Ah, yes; he was a
good fellow, too. The way those niggers cried ! "

Yes; it is a murderous devil, the Sudan, and we
have watered it with more of our blood than it will
ever yield to pay for. The man-eater is very grim,
and he is not sated yet. Only this time he was to be
conquered at last.

II.

THE EGYPTIAN ARMY.

The Ang1o-Ep;yptian army is not quite sixteen years
old. The old Turco-EL,7ptian army was knocked to
pieces by Lord Wolseley at Tel-el- Kebir, and the
Mahdi ground the fragments to powder. Out of
the nothing which remained sixteen years of British
leadership have sufficed to build up an army capable
of fighting foot for foot with the victors of Tel-el-
Kebir, and accustomed to see the backs of the con-
querors of Hicks and Baker and Gordon.

Sixteen years of active service have seen a great
increase on the eight battalions which were Sir Evelyn
Wood's original command. To-day the Egyptian army
numbers nineteen battalions of infantry, ten squadrons
of cavalry, one horse and four field batteries, and
Maxims, a camel corps of eight companies, and the
usual non-combatant services. Lord Dufferin limited
the original army to 6000 men, with 25 white offi-
cers ; to-day it counts three times that number with
over 140.

THE EGYPTIAN AEMY.

The army is of course raised by conscription. But
probably the conscription sits less heavily on Egypt
than on any country in the world. Out of ten
millions it takes — counting the railway battalions —
under 20,00D men, — that is to say, one out of every
500 of population ; whereas Germany takes 1 in 89,
and France 1 in 66. That is only on the peace-footing,
moreover ; Egypt has been at war ever since the birth
of the new army ; no conscriptive nation ever carried
war so lightly. On the other hand, the Egyptian
soldier is called on to serve six years with the colours
and nine in the reserve or the police. The small
proportion of men taken enables the War Office to
pick and choose ; so that in point of physique also the
Egyptian army could probably give weight to any
in the world. And not only is it the smallest of con-
scriptive armies — it is .^Iso the best paid. The fellah
receives a piastre (2id.) j^.-Hny — a magn'ficent salary,
equal to wliat he would usually be making in full
work in his native village.

Even these fij^ures do not do justice to the easy con-
ditions on wliich Egypt supports her army. For of
the eighteen battalions of infantry, six — 9lh to 14th —
are Sudanese blacks. The material of these is not
drawn from Egypt proper, nor, properly speaking, by
conscription. The black is liable to be enlisted wher-
ever he is found, as such, in virtue of his race ; and he
is enlisted for life. Such a law would be a terrible
tyranny for the fellah : in the estimation of the black

V(|

OUB SUDANESE SOLDIERS.

tion. But
on Egypt
ut of ten
ttalions —
'> of every
5 1 in 89,
Je-iooting,
the birth
Jr carried
Egyptian
e colours
'he small
Office to
3 also the
^ to any
of con-
le fellah
salary,
in full

asy con-

For of

14th—

is not

:JnS. by
1 wher-
and he
ierrible
black

it only gives comfort and security in the natural
vocation of every man worth calling sucli — war. Many
o.f the black soldiers have fought against us in the
past, with the same energy and enjoyment as they
now exhibit in our service. After each victory the
more desirable of the prisoners and deserters are
enlisted, to their great content, in one black battalion
or another. Every morning I had seen them on the
range at Haifa — the British sergeant-instructor teach-
ing the ex-Dervishes to shoot. When the recruit
made a bull — which he did surprisingly often — the
white sergeant, standinp; behind him with a paper,
cried, " Quaiss kitir" — " Very good." When he made
a fool of himself, the black sergeant trod on him as he
lay flat on his belly : he accepted praise and reproof
with equal satisfaction, as part of his new game of
disciplined war. The black is a perenuial schoolboy,
without the schooling.

The blac soldier is not adapted lo garrison life.
They brought a battalion down to Cairo once ; but the
soldiers insisted on driving about all day in carriages,
and then beat the driver when he asked for his fare.
Ever since then the Sudanese battalions have been
kept on the frontier — either up the Nile or on the
Suakim side, wherever there has been fighting to do.
Having neither knowledge of civilised enjoyments
nor desire for them, they are very happy. Their pay
is, properly, higher than that of the fellahin — 14s. a-
month to begin with and Sjd. a-day allowance for the

THE EGYPTIAN ARMY.

wife and family of such as are allowed to marry. The
allowance is g'ven generously, for woman is to the
black soldier a necessary of life. On a campaijjn he
must, of course, leave his wife and children behind:
there is a large village of them just above Assuan.
But since their time, I am afraid, as the frontier has
ever advanced up-river, the inconstant warrior has
formed fresh ties ; and now at Haifa, at Dongola, at
Berber, the path of victory is milestoned with expec-
tant wives and children.

It is not so abandoned as it sounds, for the Sudan-
ese are born of polygamy, and it would be unreason-
able to expect them not to live in it. Here is a
typical case. One day a particularly smart soldier
came and desired to speak with his commanding
officer.

" I wish to marry, thou Bey," he said.

" But aren't you married ? "

" Yes ; but my wife is old and has no child, and I
desire a child. I wish therefore to marry the sister of
Sergeant Mohammed Ali, and he also is willing."

" Then you want to send away your present wife ? "

"0 no, Excellency. My wife cooks very well,
and I want her to cook my rations. She also is
willing."

So, everybody being willing, the second marriage
took place. Mohammed All's sister duly bore a son,
and the first wife cooked for the whole family, and
they all lived happy ever afterwards.

EGYPTIAN CAVALRY.

Each infantry battalion, black and Egyptian alike,
is divided into six companies, wliich parade between
100 and 120 strong ; a battalion thus counts rouglily,
with band and bearer parties, from 650 to 750 rifles.
The normal strength of a battalion is 759. The
uniform is much the same for all arms — brown
jersey, sand-coloured trousers, and dark-blue putties.
Over the tarbush the Egyptians have a cover which
hangs down behind over the nape of the neck : the
blacks need no such protection from their native
sun, and do with plaited-straw round the tarbush,
bearing a badge whose colour varies with the various
battalions. The infantry rifle is the Martini.

The cavalry are all Egyptians, recruited mostly
from the Fayum oasis : a black can never be made to
understand that a horse needs to be groomed and fed.
The horses are stout, hardy beasts of 13 hands or so:
they get through an amazing amount of work, and so
do the men, though they are a little heavy in the
saddle. The strength of a squadron is about 100 ; the
front rank, as in all civilised armies, carry lance as
well as sabre and Martini carbine. Seven of the
sqnadron leaders are J^nglishmen.

Two batteries of field-artillery are armed with new
Maxim-Nordenfeldt quick-firing 9-pounders, or 18-
pounders with a double shell — handy little creatures
which a couple oi mules draw easily. The horse-
battery has 12-pounder Krupps, the rest 9-pounders.
Each battery has a white commander: all the men

THE EGYPTIAN ARMY.

are Egyptians, and their physical strength and teach-
ableness niuke them ahnost ideal gunners.

The camel corps is some 800 strong — half black,
half fellah. They use the mounted-infantry saddle,
sitting astride, and carry Martini and bajonet. There
are five white officers.

Of the fellah battalions some are officered by
Englishmen, some not. The former are 1st to 4th
and 15th to 18th ; 5th to 8th are officered entirely
by natives. Until this campaign the normal number
of white officers has been three to an Egyptian and
four to a Sudanese battalion: the latter require more
holding, and also usually see more fighting, than the
former. Most of them were one or even two short.
But for this campaign — the final campaign, the climax
for which the Anglo-Egyptian army has existed and
drudged sixteen years — the number of British officers
had been raised to four in some battalions for the
fellahin and five for the blacks. There has been com-
plaining, both in Egypt and at home, that the propor-
tion of British to Egyptian officers seems to grow
greater, whereas in theory it ought to grow less;
but the objection is political rather than military.
Many good judges would like to see a few black bat-
talions officered ripht through by white men, like our
AVest India lieginient. There is no better regimental
officer than the Englishman ; there is no better natural
fighter than the Sudanese: there would hardly be a
likelier force in th>3 world.

BEBOEANT WHATSISNAMB.

The native officers are largely of Turkish, Circas-
sian, or Albanian race, with the qualities and defects
of their blood ; their standard of professional attain-
ment and duty is higlier than that of the Turkish
army, their courage in action no lower. Native Egyp-
tians have furnished the army with one or two con-
spicuously useful officers. There is also a certain
proportion of black captains and subalterns among
the Sudanese : they are keen, work well with the
British, and, of course, are utterly fearless ; but, as a
rule, lack of education keeps them out of the higher
grades.

Finally, we must not forget Sergeant Whatsisname,
as with grateful appreciation of fame at Mr Kipling's
hands he is proud to call himself. Each battalion has
as instructor a British non-commissioned officer: he
drills it, teaches it to shoot, makes soldiers of it.
Perhaps there is no body of men in the world who
do more unalloyed and unlimited credit to their coun-
try than the colour-sergeants and sergeants with the
Egyptian army. In many ways their position is a
very dillicult one. Technically they are sub(jiJinate
to all native officers down to the latest-joined sub-
lieutenant. The slacker sort of native officer resents
the presence of tiiese keenly military subordinates,
and does his best to make them uncomfortable. But
the white sergeant knows how not to see unpleasant-
ness till it is absolutely unavoidable ; then he knows
how to go quietly to his colonel and assert his posi-

THE EGYPTIAN ARMY.

tion without publicly humiliating his superior. When
you hear that the sergeant - instructors are highly
endowed with tact, you will guess that in the virtues
tliat come more naturally to the British sergeant they
shine exceedingly. Their passionate devotion to duty
rises to a daily heroism. Living year in, year out, in
a climate very hard upon Europeans, they are natur-
ally unable to palliate it with the comparative luxuries
of the officer; though it must be said that the con-
sideration of the officer for his non-commissioned
comrade is one of the kindliest of all the many kindly
touches with which the British-Egyptian softens pri-
vation and war. But the white officer rides and the
white sergeant marclies. "Where a nigger can go, I
can go," he says, and tramps on through the sun.
Early in the year one of them marched with the 4th
every step of the road from Suakim — the only white
man who ever did it. In action the white sergeant
has no particular place or duties, £ he charges ahead
of the first line. At Haifa, training the recruits, he
has no officer set over him, and can do pretty well
what he likes ; so he stands five hours in the sun
before breakfast wi'h his men on the range. He
must needs be a keen soldier or he would not have
volunteered for his post, and a good one, or he would
not have got it. But on the top of this he is also
essentially a fine man. StilTcned by marches and
fights and cholera camps, broadened by contact with
things new and strange, polished by a closer associa-

AN ARMY OF YOUNG MEN.

ahead

ts, he

well

sun

have

would
also
and
with

socia-

tion with his officers than the service allows at home,
elevated by responsibility cheerfully undertaken and
honourably sustained, — he is a mirror of soldierly
virtue.

The position of the British officer is as assured
as that of the sergeant is ambiguous. No British
regimental officer takes lower rank than major
(Bimbashi) ; none has any superior native officer in
his own corps. The lieutenant -colonel (KaimaJcam)
commanding each battalion is usually a captain or
major in the British army, and the Bimbashis usually
subalterns : so many of both ranks, however, have
earned brevets or been promoted, that in talking of
officers in the Egyptian army it will be simplest to
call a battalion commander Bey, which is the courtesy
title by which he is usually addressed, and his British
subordinate Bimbashi.

To take a man from the command of a company
and put him to command a battalion is a big jump ;
but with the British officers in Egypt the experiment
has richly justified itself. The Egyptian army is an
army of young men. The Sirdar is forty-eight years
old ; General Hunter was a major-general before he
was forty. The whole army has only one combatant
officer over fifty. Through the Dongola cumpaign
majors commanded brigades and captains battalions ;
at Abu Hamed, last year, a subaltern of twenty-eight
led his regiment in action. With men either rash or
timid such sudden promotion might be dangerous;

THE EGYPTIAN AKMT.

but the officers of the Egyptian army are at the
same time unafraid of res^ onsibility and equal to it.
Their professional success has been very great — some
whisper, too great. "After Tel-el-Kebir," said a
captain in the British brigade, "one of our officers
came to me and talked of joining the Egyptian army.
Eor God's sake, don't,' I said; 'don't: you'll spend
your life thrashing fellahin into action with a stick.*
Now, here am I commanding a company, and a man
who was under me in the Kandahar show is com-
manding a brigade." Certainly the Egyptian officers
may have passed over men as good as they ; but their
luck has lain solely in getting the chance to show their
merit.

For after all the fact remains, that while the British
campaigns in the Sudan are a long story of failure
brightened only by stout fighting, the Egyptian
campaigns have been a consistent record of success.
With inferior material, at a tithe of the expense, they
have worn their enemy down by sheer patience and
pluck and knowledge of their business. In the old days
campaigns were given up for want of transport ; now
rations are as certain in Kliartum as in Cairo. In the
old days we used to be surprised and to fight in square ;
now we surprise the enemy and attack in line. In
quite plain language, what Gordon and Wolseley failed
to do the Sirdar has done. The credit is not all his :
part must go to Sir Evelyn Wood and Sir Francis
Greufell, his predecessors, and to the whole body of

A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT.

officers in due proportion. They have paid for their
promotion with years on the frontier— years of sweat
and sandstorm by day, of shivering and alarms by
night, of banishment always ; above all, they have
richly earned it by success. Now that the long
struggle is crowned with victory, we may look back on
those fourteen indomitable years as one of the highest
achievements of our raca

and

IIL

THE S.M.B.

Halfa is nearly four hundred miles from the
iitbara ; yet it was the decisive point of the campaign.
For in Haifa was being forged the deadliest weapon
that Britain has ever used against Mahdism — the
Sudan Military Eailway. In the existence of the
railway lay all the difference between the extempore,
amateur scrambles of Wolseley's campaign and the
machine-like precision of Kitchener's. "When civilisa-
tion fights with barbarism it must fight with civilised
weapons ; for with his own arts on his own ground
the barbarian is almost certain to be the better man.
To go into the Sudan without complete transport and
certain communications is as near madness as to go
with spears and shields. Time has been on the
Sirdar's side, whereas it was dead against Lord
Wolseley ; and of that, as of every point in his game,
the Sirdar has known how to ensure the full advantage.
There was fine marching and fine fighting in the
campaign of the Atbara : the campaign would have

AN ENGINEEIIING FEAT.

the

Lord

^ame,

itage.

the
have

failed without them ; but without the railway there
could never have been any campaign at all. The
battle of the Atbara was won in the workshops of
Wady Haifa.

Everybody knew that a railway from Haifa across the
desert to Abu Haraed was an impossibility — until the
Sirdar turned it into a fact. It was characteristic of
the Sirdar's daring — daring based on complete know-
ledge and just confidence in himself and his instru-
ments ; but to the uninformed it sf'ems mad reckless-
ness — that he actually launched his rails and sleepers
into the waterless dt sert, while the other end of the line
was still held by the enemy. Water was bored for, and,
at the third attempt, found, which lightened the task ;
but the engineers are convinced that, water or no water,
the Sirdar's ingenuity and determination would have
carried the enterprise through. Long before the line
was due to arrive Abu Hamed had fallen : before the
end of 1897 the line touched the Nile again at that
point, 234 miles from Haifa, and the journey to Ber-
ber took a day instead of weeks.

There was no pause at Abu Hamed ; work was begun
immediately on the 149-mile stretch to the Atbara.
At the beginning of the year, when the rumours of
Mahmud's advance began to harden into credibility
and the British regiments were started up the river,
rail-head was some twenty miles south of Abu
Hamed. The object, of course, was to push it on
south of the series of rapids ending at Geneineteh,

THE S.2I.B.

some twenty-odd miles short of Berber, which are
called the Fifth Cataract. On the falling river camel
portage had to be used round the broken water, which
was a serious difficulty in the way of the transport
A second object in hurrying on the work was to get
the sections of the three new gunboats to the same
point south of the cataract, where they could be pub
together ready for the final advance.

It was a heavy strain, for the railway had not only
to carry up supplies and stores : it had also to carry
the materials for its own extension. There is no
wood for sleepers between Abu Hamed ana the
Atbara, much less any possibility of providing riils.
So that all day long you heard the wailing lilt, with-
out which no Arab can work in time ; all day at
intervals the long material train pulled out from the
beach-siding piled up with rails and sleepers, paused
awhile at the bank of sand which is the platform of
the northern terminus, and in due time puffed off
southward till it was lost among the desert sand-
hills.

It was a heavy handicap that an infant railway
should be asked for double work, but that was only
the beginning of the difficulty. The S.M.E., like every
thing else in Egypt, must be worked on the cheap.
There is no trouble about the labour — the Eailway
Battalions supply that. The Eailway Battalions are
raised by conscription, only instead of fighting with
Martini and bayonet the conscripts fight with shovel

al
oi

THK RAILWAY BATTALIONS.

and pick. I have heard it called the Corv4e in an-
other form : so, if you like, it is. But it is no more
Corvee than the work of sappers in any European
army. The fellah has to shovel for his country in-
stead of fighting for it, and he would much rather.
It is war service which happens to retain a permanent
value when war is over; so much the better for
everybody.

But if navvy labour is abundant and cheap and
efficient, everything else is scarce and cheap and
nasty. English firemen and drivers are hard to get,
and Italian mechanics are largely employed — so much
so, that the Director of Eailways has found it worth
wbile to spare a caf^ for them out of his cramped
elbow-room. As for native mechanics, there re
branches of work in which they are hopeless. As
fitters they are a direct temptation to suicide, for the
Arab mind can never be brought to see that a tenth
of an inch more or less can possibly matter to any-
body. "3Ialesh" he says, "it doesn't matter; shove
it in." And then the engine breaks down.

As for engines and rolling-stock the S.M.E. must
make the best of what it can get. Half-a-dozen new
engines of English breed there were when I got to
Haifa — fine, glossy, upstanding, clean-limbed, power-
ful creatures ; and it was a joy to watch the marvelling
black sentry looking up to one of them in adoration
and then warily round lest anybody should seek to
steal it. There were others oi veered, but — miracle of

THE S.M.R.

national lunacy! — the engineering strike intervened,
and the orders had to go to Baldwin's of Philadelphia.
For the rest the staff had to mend up anything they
found about. Old engines from Ismail's abortive rail-
way, old engines from Natal, from the Cape, broken
and derelict, had to be patched up with any kind of
possible fittings retrieved and adapted from the scrap-
heap. Odd parts wen picked up in the sand and
fitted into their places again : if they were useless
they were promptly turned into something else and
made useful. Tnere are a couple of Ismail's boilers in
use now which were found lying miles away in the
desert and rolled in by lever and hand. In the
engine-shed you see rusty embryos of engines that
are being tinkered together with bits of rubbish col-
lected from everywhere. And still they move.

Who moves them ? It is part of the Sirdar's luck
— that luck which goes with genius — that he always
gets the best conceivable subordinates. Conceive a
blend of French audacity of imagination, American
ingenuity, and British doggedness in execution, and
you will have the ideal qualities for such a work.
The Director of Railways, Bimbashi Girouard, is a
Canadian, presumably of French derivation. In early
life he built a section of the Canadian Pacific. He
came out to Egypt for the Dongola campai^^ -one of
three subalterns specially chosen from the Railway
Department of the lioyal Engineers. The Sudan
killed the other two out of hand, but Bimbashi

A CEOWNING WONDER.

Tvened,
delphia.
ig they
ve rail-
broken
kind of
J scrap-
id and
useless
!se and
tiers in
in the
[n the
!S that
3h col-
's luck
ilways
eive a
erican
1, and
work.
; is a
early
. He
)ne of
ilway
sudan
bashi

Girouard goes on building and running his railways.
The Dongola line runs as far as Kernia, above the
Third Cataract. The Desert Line must wait at the
Atbara for a bridge before it can be extended to Kliar-
tum. But already here is something over five hundred
miles of rail laid in a savage desert — a record to make
the reputation of any engineer in the world, standing
to the credit of a subaltern of sappers. The Egyptian
army is a triumph of youth on every side, but in none
is it more signal than in the case of the Director of
Ilailways. He never loses his he^d nor forgets his
own mind: he is credited with being the one man in
the Egyptian army who is unaffectedly unafraid of
the Sirdar.

Having finished the S.M.R. to the Atbara, Bimbashi
Girouard accepted the post of Director-Genera of all
the Egyptian railways. There will be plenty of scope
for him in the post, and it will not be wasted. But
just reflect again on this crowning wonder of British
Egypt — a subaltern with all but Cabinet rank and
£2000 a-year!

When the time came to go up by the desert line an
engine, two trucks, and a fatigue-party called at the
door for our baggage: that is the advantage of a rail-
way-traffic managed by subalterns. We had the luck
to get berths in the big saloon. It is built on the Indian
plan — four beds in one compartment, eight in the other,
plenty of room on the floor, and shutters everywhere
to keep out the sand. The train looked as if the other

THE S.M.R.

end of it must be at Abu Hamed already — a vista of
rails, sleepers, boxes, camels, and soldiers, and two
turkeys, the property of a voluptuous Brigadier, bub-
bling with indignation through the darknes«?. How-
ever she ran out smoothly enough towards midnight.
We slept peacefully, four of us — the other made
night hideous with kicks, and exhortations to vision-
ary soldiers to fire low — and in the morning woke up
rather less than a liundred miles on our way. But
then the first hundred miles is all up-hill, though the
gradient is nowhere difficult. The train ran beauti-
fully, for while the surface sand is very easy to work
it has a firm bottom, and the rails do not settle. All
day we rumbled on prosperously, with no mischance
more serious than a broken rail, and we crawled safely
over that.

Half the day we read and half the day we played
cards, and when it grew dark we sang, for all the world
like Thomas Atkins. Every now and then we varied the
monotony with a meal ; the train stopped frequently,
and even when it did not the pace was slow enough
for an agile butler to serve lunch by jumping off his
truck and climbing on to the saloon foot-board. The
scenery, it must be owned, was monotonous, and yet
not without haunting beauty. Mile on mile, hour on
hour, we glided through sheer desert. Yellow sand to
right and left — now stretching away endlessly, now
a valley between small broken hills. Sometimes the
hills sloped away from us, then they closed in again.

n
a

A DESERT SWINDON.

Now they were diaphanous blue on the horizon,
now soft puri)le as we ran under their flanks. But
always they were steeped throu','h and through with
sun — hazy, immobile, cilent. It looked like a part
of the world quite new, with none of the bloom
rubbed off. It seemed almost profanity that I should
be intruding on the sanctity of the prime.

But I was not the lirst intruder. Straight, firm,
and purposeful ran the rails. Now they split into a
double line : here was another train waiting — a string
of empty trucks — and also a tent, a little hut made of
sleeper baulks, a tank, points, and a board with the
inscription " No. 5." Tliis was a station — a wayside
station. But No. 6 is a Swindon of the desert.
Every train stops there half-an-hour or more to fill
up with water, for there is a great trifoliate well
there. Also the train changes drivers. And here, a
hundred miles into the iieart of the Nubian desert,
two years ago a sanctuary of inviolate silence, where
no blade of green ever sprang, where, possibly, no
foot trod since the birth of the world, here is a little
colony of British engine-drivers. Tl.iey have a little
rest-house shanty of board and galvanised iron ; there
are pictures from the illustrated papers on the walls,
and a pup at the door. There they swelter and
smoke and spit and look out at the winking rails and
the red-hot sand, and wait till their turn comes to
take the train. They don't love the life — who would?
— but they stick to it like Britons, and take the trains

THE S.M.R.

out and home. They, too, are not the meanest of the
conquerors of the Sudan.

Towards du>k mimosa bushes, dotted park-wise over
the sand, began to rise up on both sides of us, then
palms; soon we were in a thickish scrub. The air
cooled and moistened from death to life : we were
back again on the Nile, at Abu Hamed. Thereafter
we slept peacefully again, and awoke in the midst
of a large camp of white tents. They unhooked the
saloon, but the train crawled on, disgorging rails and
sleepers, till it came to a place where a swarm of
fellahin was shovelling up sand round the last metals.
The naked embankment ran straight and purposeful
as ever, so far as you could see. Small in the dis-
tance was a white man with a spirit-leveL

THE COREESPONDENT S PROGRESS.

I SAT on a box of tinned beef, whisky, and other
delicacies, dumped down on a slope of loose sand.
Eound me lay another similar case, a tent, bed, and
bath, all collapsible and duly collapsed into a brown
canvas jacket, two brown canvas bags containing
saddlery, towels, and table-linen, a chair and a table
lashed together, a wash-hand basin with shaving
tackle concealed inside its green canvas cover, a
brown bag with some clothes in it, a shining tin
canteen, a cracking lunch-basket, a driving-coat, and
a hunting-crop. On one side of me rose the em-
bankment of the main line to Berber; fifty yards
on it ended suddenly in the sand, and a swarm of
Arabs were shovelling up more of it for their lives.
On the other side of me, detached, empty, quite alone,
stood the saloon which brought me from Haifa. It
was going back again to-night, and then I should
be quite loose and outcast in the smiling Sudan.
I sat and meditated on the full significance of the

THE COBRESFONDENT'S PROGRESS.

simple military phrase, " line of communications." It
is the great discovery of the Sirdar that he has re-
cognised that in the Sudan the communications are
the essence and heart of the whole problem. And

now I recognised it too.

It was a long, long story already. I was now just
at the threshold of what was regarded officially as the
difficult part of the 1150 odd miles between Cairo and
the front ; I was still seventy miles or so from Berber
— and my problem, instead of just beginning, appeared
just on the point of an abrupt and humiliating finish.
The original question was how I was to get myself
and my belongings to the front ; the threatened solu-
tion was that I should get there, if at all, on my feet,
and that my belongings would serve to blaze the track
for anybody desperate enough to follow.

I am not an old campaigner. The old campaigner,
as you know, starts out with the clothes he stands
up in and a tin-opener. The young campaigner pro-
vides the change of linen and tins for the old cam-
paigner to open. So in Cairo I bought everything
I could think of as likely to palliate a summer in
the Sudan. I wore out my patience and my legs a
whole week in drapers' shops, and saddlers' shops, and
apothecaries' shops, and tobacconists' shops, and tin-
and -bottle shops, and general shops. I bought two
horses and two nigger boys — one to look after the
horses and one to look after me. One of them I
bought through Cook, as one takes a railway-ticket ;

NATIVE SERVANTS.

the other suddei3ly dashed at me in the street with
a bundle of testimonials unanimously stating that
he could cook more or less, and clean things if he
were shown how. Both wore tarbushes and striped
nightgowns, and nothing else visible, which was
natural ; though afterwards they emerged in all kinds
of gorgeousness. What was inconvenient was that
they neither of them understood any language I could
talk, that they both had the same name, and that T
could not for the life of me remember what it was.
However, one was black with red eyes, and the other
yellow with white; and it was something to know
them apart. The black-and-red one originally alleged
that he could talk English. It was true that he could
understand a dozen words of that lingo if pronounced
sloppily enough and put ungrammatically together.
But when it came to his turn he could say "Yes,
sir," and then followed it up with an inarticulate
burble more like the sound of a distant railway train
than any known form of human speech.

Anyhow, I started. I started with the properties
above named and six packages besides. Some went
with me on the tourist boat; others went by rail or
post boat, or Government barge, to await me ; others
stayed behind to follow me. I got to Assuan, and
there a new trial awaited me. I had no camels, and
it would be absurd to go to the Sudan without camels.
Now I knew nothing at all cf the points of a camel,
nor of its market price, nor what it eats, nor could T

THE CORRESrONDENT'S PROGRESS.

ride it. However, camels had to be bought, and I
borrowed an interpreter, and went out to the Bisharin
village outside Assuan a.id bought some. The in-
terpreter said he knew all about camels, and that
they were worth £27 a pair.

First, though, they had to be tried. The Bisharin
were all standing about grouped round little heaps of
dry, cracked mud, which it took a moment's consider-
ation to recognise as their houses. Their costume
consisted mainly of their hair— in little tight plaits
tumbling every way over their heads ; they have it
done thus in infancy, and never take it out of curl :
it looks like the inside hair of a horse's tail, where
the brush can't get at it. They all talked at the
same time, and gesticulated furiously.

The first Bishari was a wizened old man, with
a wisp or two of grey beard, a black shawl, and
a large expanse of chest, back, arm, and leg, of
a delicate plum-colour. With horrible noises he
pulled his camel down on to its knees. The camel
made still more horrible noises ; it growled, and
screeched, and snarled, and brayed, and gurgled out
big pink bladders from its inside. Then the old man
tied a pad of sackcloth on to the beast's hump by way
of saddle, seized the halter, and leaped on sideways ;
the camel unfolded its legs joint by joint and leaped
forward. The old man whacked with a will, the
camel bounded up and down, the old man bounced
in his saddle like an india-rubber ball, his shawl

BUYING CAMELS.

and I

lisharin
Che in-
id that

jisharin
eaps of
)iisider-
sostume
t plaits
have it
)f curl:
, where
at the

Q, with
v\, and
leg, of
ses he

camel
d, and
ed out
d man
ly way
13 ways ;
leaped
11, the
uunced

shawl

flapped out like wings, till all his body was native
plum-colour. Then, suddenly, the camel gathered
itself together and soared aloft — and the next thing
was the old man flying up to heaven, slowly turning
over, and slowly, then quickly, thudding to earth.
Everybody roared with laughter, including the victim;
red was flowing fast over the plum-colour arm, but he
didn't notice it. I bought that camel on the spot — to
carry five hundredweight of baggage, not me.

There was one other cropper before the trials were
over, and two of the camels cantered and galloped
round the mud warren in a way that made me
tremble. However, I trusted to luck against the
time when I might have to ride any of them, and
bought with a light heart. I also bought two camel-
men — a black, apparently answering to the name of
Jujube, and a yellow, who asserted he was my grootn's
brother. The latter produced, with great pride, a
written testimonial: it was from a British oihcer, to
the effect that he had discharged the bearer, and
would the Director of Transport kindly send him
home. But I chanced that too; and now, with the
exception of the few necessaries that were following
me — and presumably are still — I was ready to march
on Khartum.

And now came in the question of tlie lines of com-
munication. T went to the commandant of Assuau ;
could he kindly send up my horses by steamer? Yes,
certainly, when there was a steamer to send them by.

THE correspondent's PROGRESa

But steamers were few and much in request for
railway stores and supplies. It was a question of
waiting till there should appear military horses to go
up river. Mine must go and stand in the camp
meanwhile. Hurrah ! said I ; never mind about a
few days : that was one load ofif my mind. So I
hauled the horses out of the stable, and gave the syce
some money, and a letter to say who he was, and
peacefully left him to shift.

Camels, being straggling and unportable beasts,
could not go by boat; so I gave their attendants
also money, and told them to walk to Haifa. Then
I went to Haifa myself, and waited.

At Haifa, knowing its name so well, I had expected
to find a hotel. So there -was one — the " Hotel des
Voyageurs" — staring the landing-stage in the face.
But it was a Greek hostelry, very small, a mile from
the military post of Haifa, and at this stage I had a
mind above Greek hotels. So I went to Walker &
Co., the universal provider of Haifa. There was no
immediate accommodation for correspondents. So I
pitched my tent a little disconsolately in the com-
pound, and sat down to wait until there was.
Presently there was a room, and in that I sat down
to wait for the camels. One day their attendant
grinned in, and shook hands with me; the camels
were accommodated with a bunk apiece in the garden,
and 1 sat down again to wait for the horses. I waited
many days and then wired; the commandant wired

TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES.

3f7

back, " Your horses cannot go by steamer at prcent.'*
"When was " at present " going to end ? So next I
wired to Cook's agent to send them by road; he
replied that they had started four days before. So
far, so good. I sat down to wait some more.

Only two days before they miglit be expected, on
March 1, came the news that the British brigade
had gone up to Berber, and that correspondents might
go too.

Hurrah again ! Only when, how ? 0, you can
go to-morrow in the saloon, of course, to rail-head.
And beyond ? Well, beyond you must take your
chance. Can camels go by train ? It was liardly
likely. Horses ? Not at present — and — well — you
had better go very light.

Clearly everything that was mine must take its
chance too. I started the camels to walk across the
desert — two hundred and thirty-four miles from Nile
to Nile again — and told them to be quick about it.
Of course they could never have done it, but that
the traffic - manager kindly gave them authority to
drink some of the engines' water on the way. I left
orders to the horses to do the same; left all my
heaviest goods lying about on the bank of the Nile ;
definitely gave up all hope of the things that were
supposed to be coming up after me ; started, and
arrived in the early morning of March 3.

Now came the time to take my chance. And here,
sure enough, comes a chocolate Arab, witli the in-

THE CORRESPONDENT'S PROGRESS.

formation that he has any number of camels to let.
The chance has turned out a good one, after all. But
then comes along a fair Englishman, on a shaggy grey
pony ; I was told he was the Director of Transport.
That's all right ; I'll ask his advice. Only, before I
could speak, he suavely drew the attention of corres-
pondents to the rule that any Arab hiring camels
already hired by the army was liable to two years
imprisonment. The news was not encouraging; and
of course the Arabs swore that the army had not
hired the best camels at all. I believed it at the
time, but came to know the Arab better afterwards.
Anyhow here I sat, amid the dregs of my vanishing
household, seventy miles from Berber — no rail, no
steamer, no horse, no camel. Only donkeys, not to be
thought of — and, by George, legs ! I never thought
of them, but I've got *em, and why not use 'em.
I'll walk.

to let.
1. But

gy grey
msport.
)efore I
corres-
camels
years
ig; and
lad not
at the
jrwards.
mishing
rail, no
ot to be
thought
ise 'em.

I MARCH TO BERBER.

The donkeys had been hired, at war prices, abont
ten in the morning, delivery promised within an
hour. At three in the afternoon two of us sweated
over from the rail -head to the village, to try and
hurry them up. Fifteen had been ordered ; five were
nearly ready. The sheikh swore by i.llah that all
should be ready within an hour. At five we went
over again. There were only four by now; the
sheikh swore by Allah that the others should be
ready within an hour.

On that we began to threaten violence ; whereupon
round a mud -wall corner trotted eighteen donkey«,
followed by eight black men and a boy. Twenty-two I
It was late, but it was better than could be expected
of any Arab. We kept them sedulously in our eye
till we had them alongside the mountainous confusion
of three correspondents' light baggage. Arrived at
the scene of action, they sat down with one consent
and looked at it.

I MAECH TO BERBER.

The only way to hurry an Arab is to kill him,
after which he is useless as a donkey-driver; so we
sat down too, and had some tea, and looked at them.
Presently they made it known that they had no
rope. A rope was produced and cut into lengths;
each took one, and sat and looked at it. Finally
arose an old, old man, attired in a rag round his head
and a pair of drawers : with the eye of experience he
selected the two lightest articles, and slowly tied
them together. Example works wonders. There was
almost a rush to secure the next smallest load, and
in ten minutes everything was tied together and slung
across the little pack-saddles, except one load. This
they looked at for a good long time, reluctant to get
a piece of work finished ; at last they felt justified in
loading this on also.

We were ready: we were actually about to start.
Gratitude and wonder filled my soul.

Three men, nine Arabs, nine more to see them off,
twenty-two donkeys — and, Heaven forgive me, I had
almost forgotten the horse. That is to say. Ids owner
applied to him an Arab word which I understood to
mean horse — plural before he was produced, singular
when it was no longer possible to allege that there
was more than one of him. Experts opined that he
might in the remote past have been a dervish horse —
a variation from the original type, produced by never
feeding the animal. His teeth, what remained of
them, gave no clear evidence of his age, but on a

.»:>

A VETERA24 STEED.

ill him,
■; so we
it them.

had no
lengths ;

Filially
his head
ience he
jvly tied
here was
oad, and
nd slung
id. This
Qt to get
stifled in

to start.

hem off,
le, I had
ds owner
:stood to

singular
lat there

that he

horse —
by never
ained of

ut on a

general view of him I should say he was rising ninety.
Early in the century he was probably c astnut, but
now he was partly a silver chestnut sua partly pre-
sented no impression of colour at all: he was just
faded. He wore a pessimistic expression, a coat about
an inch and a quarter long, an open saddle sore, and
no flesh of any kind in any corner. We offered him
fodder — something like poor pea-halm and something
like string, only Icf nutritious. He looked at it
wearily, smelt it, ana i 'rned in perplexity to his
master as if asking instructions. He had forgotten
what food was for. ^,

The young mo i. was climbing up the sky when
we set off. With chattering and yells the donkeys
and Arabs streamed out on to the desert track. The
first load came undone in the first five minutes, and
every one had to be readjusted in the first hour. The
Arab, you see, has only been working with donkeys
for ten thousand years or so, and you can't expect
him to have learned much about it yet. But we kept
them going. I was rearguard officer, with five Arabic
words, expressing "Get on" in various degrees of
emphasis, and a hunting-crop.

We only marched three hours to camp that nighi,
but by the time we off-loaded in a ring of palms, with
the Nile swishing below and the wind swishing over-
head, we had earned our dinner and some sleep : had
we not induced Arabs to start ? And now came in
one of the conveniences — so far the only one — of

I MAECH TO BEBBEB.

travelling in the Sudan. " Three angarebs ," said the
correspondent of experience ; and back came the ser-
vants presently with three of the stout wooden frames
lashed across with thongs that form the Sudan bed:
you can get them anywhere there is a village — as
a rule, to be sare, there is none — and they are luxuri-
ous beyond springs and feathers.

At half-past one I opened my eyes and saw the
moon stooping down to meet the fringe of palm leaves.
The man of experience sat up on his angareb and cried
Awake." They did awake : Jiree hours' sleep is not
long enough to make you sleepy. We loaded up by
the last moonlight, and took the road again. For
nearly three hours the rustling on our right and the
line of palms showed that we kept to the Nile bank ;
then at five we halted to water the donkeys — they eat
when they can and what they can — and started for a
long spell across the desert. Grey dawn showed us a
gentle swell of stony sand, hard under foot ; freshness
came with it to man and beast, and we struck forward
briskly.

When the sun came up on us, I saw the caravan
for the first time plainly; and I was very glad we
were not likely to meet anybody I knew. My kit
looked respectable enough in the train, and in Berber
it went some way to the respectable furnishing of a
house. But as piled by Sudanese Arabs on to donkeys
it was disreputable, dishevelled, a humiliation beyond
blushes. The canteen, the chair and table that had

▲ PICTURESQUE CARAVAN.

said the
the ser-
1 frames
an bed:
^age — as
J luxuri-

3aw the
1 leaves,
od cried
p is not
up by
n. For
ind the
i bank ;
bhey eat
id for a
^ed us a
•eshness
forward

caravan
?lad we
My kit
Berber
ng of a
lonkeys
beyond
lat had

looked so neat and workmanlike, on the donkey be-
came the pots and sticks of a gipsy encampment. My
tent was a slipshod monstrosity, my dressing - case
blatantly secondhand, my washing basin was posi-
tively indecent. To make things worse, they had
trimmed my baggage up with garbage of their own
— dirty bags of dates and cast-off clothing. They
mostly insisted on riding the smallest and heaviest-
laden donkeys themselves, jumping at a bound on
to the jogging load of baggage with four legs patter-
ing underneath, and had to be Hogged off again. And
to finish my shame, here was I trudging behind,
cracking and flicking at donkeys and half- naked black
men, like a combination of gipsj, horse - coper, and
slave-driver.

But we travelled. Some of the donkeys were
hardly bigger than collies, and their drivi^rs did all
that laziness and ineptitude could suggest to keep
them back; but we travelled. It came to my turn
of the horse about half-past six or so: certainly he
was not a beast to make comparisons on, but the
donkeys left him behind unless you made him trot,
which was obviously cruel. I should say they kept
up four miles an hour with a little driving.

We gave ourselves an hour at eight for breakfast,
and the end of the march was in soft sand under a
cruel sun. It was not till nearly one that the camel
thorn — all stalk and prickles, no leaves — gave way
to palms again, and again we looked down on the

I MAECH TO BERBEB.

Nile. A sinj^^le palm gives almost as much shade
as an umbrella with the silk off, but we found four
together, and a breeze from the river, and a drink —

that first drink in a Sudan camp ! — and lunch and
a sleep, and a tub and tea, and we reflected on our
ten hours' march and were happy. At five we
jogprled off again.

We lost the place we had intended to camp at, and
the desert began to get rugged and to produce itself
ever so far both ways, like the parallel lines in Euclid,
and we never got any farther forward on it. It got
to be a kind of treadmill — we going on and the desert
going back under us. But at last we did get to a
place — didn't know its name, nor cared — and went to
sleep a little more. And in the pale morning by
happy luck we found two camels, and two of us
trotted joyously forward past swimming mirages and
an endless string of ruined mud villages into mud
Berber. The donkeys were not much behind either:
they did about seventy miles in forty-two hours. But

1 am afraid it must have been the death of the horse,
and I am sorry. It seems a cruelty to kill him just as
he was beginning to be immortaL

ch shade
imd four

drink —
[inch and
i on our

five we

p at, and
ice itself
a Euclid,
. It got
le desert
get to a
went to
^ning by

of us
iges and
ito mud

1 either:
s. But

le horse,
1 just as

VI.

THE SIRDAR.

Major-General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener is
forty -eight years old by the book ; but that is irrele-
vant. He stands several inches over six feet, straight
as a lance, and looks out imperiously above most men's
heads ; his motions are deliberate and strong ; slender
but firmly knit, he seems built for tireless, steel-wire
endurance rather than for power or agility : that also
is irrelevant. Steady passionless eyes shaded by de-
cisive brows, brick -red rather full cheeks, a long
moustache beneath which you divine an immovable
mouth ; his face is harsh, and neither appeals for
affection nor stirs dislike. All this is irrelevant too :
neither age, nor figure, nor face, nor any accident of
person, has any bearing on the essential Sirdar. You
could iuKighie the character just the same as if all the
externals were different. He has no age but the prime
of life, no body but one to carry bis mind, no face
but one to keep his brain behind. ; he brain and the
will are the essence and the whole of the man — a

THE SIRDAB.

brain and a will so peifect in their workings that,
ill the face of extremest difficulty, they never seem
to know what struggle is. You cannot imagine the
Sirdar otherwise than as seeing the right thing to da
and doing it. His precision is so inhumanly unerring,
he is more like a machine than a man. You feel that
he ought to be patented and shown with pride at
the Paris International Exhibition. British Empire:
Exhibit No. I., hors concours, the Sudan Machine.

It was aptly said of him by one who had closely
watched him in his office, and in the field, and at
mess, that he is the sort of feller that ought to be
made manager of the Army and Navy Stores. The
aphorist's tastes lay perhaps in the direction of those
more genial virtues which the Sirdar does not possess,
yet the judgment summed him up perfectly. He
would be a splendid manager of the Army and Navy
Stores. There are some who nurse a desperate hope
that he may some day be appointed to sweep out the
War Office. He would be a splendid manager of the
War Office. He would be a splendid manager of
anything.

But it so happens that he has turned himself to the
management of war in the Sudan, and he is the com-
plete and the only master of that art. Beginning life
in the Iloyal Engineers — a soil reputed more favour-
able to machinery li^an to human nature — he early
turned to the study of the Levant. He was one of
Beacoustield's military vice-consuls in Asia Minor ; he

FIFTEEN YEARS OF EGYPT.

gs that,
er seem
[ine the
ig to do
iierring,
eel that
ride at
!)mpir3 :
le.

closely
and at
t to be
The
f those
possess,
r. He
i Navy
te hope
3Ut the
' of the
iger of

to the
e com-
ng life
avour-
I early
one of
or; he

was subsequently director of tho Palestine Explora-
tion Fund. At the beginning of the Sudan troubles
.he appeared. He was one of the original twenty-five
oflicers who set to work on the new Egyptian army.
And in Egypt and the Sudan he has been ever since —
on the stair generally, in the field constantly, alone
with natives often, mastering the problem of the
Sudan always. Tlie ripe harvest of fifteen years is
that he knows everything that is to be learned cf his
subject. He has seen and profited by the errors of
others as by their successes. He has inherited the
wisdom and the achievements of his predecessors. He
came at the right hour, and he was the right man.

Captain K.E., he began in the Egyptian army as
second-in-command of a regiment uf cavalry. In
Wulseley's campaign he was Intelligence Officer. Dur-
ing the summer of 1884 he was at Korosko, negoti-
ating with the Ababdeh sheiks in view of an advance
across the desert to Abu Hamed; and note how
characteristically he has now bettered the then
abandoned project by going that way to Berber and
Kliartum himself — only with a railway ! The idea of
the advance across the desert he took over from Lord
Wolyeley, and indeed from immemorial Arab caravans ;
and then, for his own stroke of insight and resolu-
tion amounting to genius, he turned a raid into an
irresistible certain conquest, by superseding camels
with the railway. Others hud thought of the desert
route : the Sirdar, correcting Korosko to Haifa, used

THE SIRDAR.

it. Others had projected desert railways : the Sirdar
made one. That, summarised in one instance, is the
working of the Sudan machine.

As Intelligence Officer Kitchener accompanied Sir
Herbert Stewart's desert column, and you may be
sure that the utter breakdown of transport which
must in any case have marred that heroic folly was
not unnoticed by him. Afterwards, through the long
decade of little figlits that made the Egyptian army,
Kitchener was fully employed. In 1887 and 1888 he
commanded at Suakim, and it is remarkable that his
most important enterprise was half a failure. He
attacked Osman Digna at Handub, when most of the
Emir's men were away raiding ; and although he
succeeded in releasing a number of captives, he
thought it well to retire, himself wounded in the
face by a bullet, without any decisive success. The
withdrawal was in no way discreditable, for his force
was a jumble of irregulars and levies without dis-
cipline. But it is not perhaps fanciful to believe that
the Sirdar, who has never given battle without mak-
ing certain of an anniliilatir-g victory, has not for-
gotten his experience of haphazard Bashi-Bazouking
at Handub.

He had his revenge before the end of 1888, when
he led a brigade of Sudanese over Osman's trenches at
Gemaizeh. Next year at Toski he again commanded
a brigade. In 1890 he succeeded Sir Francis Gren-
fell as Sirdar. That he meant to be Sirdar in fact as

THE SUDAN MACHINE.

v^ell as name he showed in 1894. The young Khe-
dive travelled south to the frontier, and took the
occasion to insult every British officer he came across.
Kitchener promptly gave battle : he resigned, a crisis
came, and the Khedive was obliged to do public
penance by issuing a General Order in praise of the
discipline of the army and of its British officers.
Two years later he began the reconquest of the
Sudan. Without a single throw-back the work has
gone forward since — but not without intervals. The
Sirdar is never in a hurry. With immovable self-
control he holds back from each step till the ground
is consolidated under the last. The real tigliting
power of the Sudan lies in the country itself — in its
barrenness which refuses food, and its vastness which
paralyses transport. The Sudan machine obviates
barrenness and vastness : the bayonet action stands
still until the railway action has piled the camp with
supplies or the steamer action can run with a full
Nile. Fighting men may chafe and go down with
typhoid and cholera : they are in the iron grip of the
machine, and they must wait the turn of its wheels.
Dervishes wait and wonder, passing from appreliensiun
to security. The Turks are not coming ; the Turks
are afraid. Then suddenly at daybreak one morning
they see the Sirdar ad'^ancing upon them from all
sides together, and by noon they are dead. Patient
and swift, certain and relentless, the Sudan machine
rolls conquering southward.

Mf""!*

../ir,U..i^-'''?%*^^

THE

isIRDAa

In the meantime, during all che years of preparation
and achievement, the man has disappeared. The man
Herbert Kitchener owns the affection of private
friends in England and of old comrades of fifteen
years' standing; for the rest jf the world there is
no man Herbert Kitchener, but only the Sirdar,
neither asking affection nor giving it. His officers and
men are wheels in the machine : he feeds them enough
to make them efficient, and works them as mercilessly
as he works himself. He will have no married offi-
cers in his army — marriage interferes with work.
Any officer who breaks down from the climate goes
on sick leave once : next time he goes, and the Egyp-
tian army bears him on its strength no more. Asked
once why he did not let his officers come down to
Cairo during the season he replied, " If it were to
go home, where they would get fit and I could get
more w ^^k out of them, I would. But why should I
let ti '•: ^ iown to Cairo?" It is unamiable, but it
is war, and it has a severe magnificence. And if you
suppose, therefore, that the Sirdar is unpopular, he is
not. No general is unpopular who always beats the
enemy. When the columns move out of camp in the
evening to march all niglit through the dark, they
know not whither, and fight at dawn with an enemy
they have never seen, every man goes forth with a
tranquil mind. He may personally come back and
he may not ; but about the general result there is not
a doubt. You bet your boots the Sirdar knows : he

-^^^

A BUmiLTi CAREExl,

3aration

'he man

private

fifteen
-here is
Sirdar,
ers and
enougli
cilessly
ed offi-

work.
te goes

Egyp.
Asked
3wn to
vere to
aid get
lould I
but it
if you
', he is
its the
in the
:, they
enemy
^ith a
k and
is not
vb: he

wouldn't fight if he weren't going to \^'n. Other
generals have been better loved; none w;;- ever better
trusted.

For of one human weakness the Sirdar is be-
lieved not to have purged himself — ambition. He
is on his promotion, a man who cannot afford to
make a mistake. Homilies against ambition may be
left to tho^e who have failed in their own : the
Sirdar's, if apparently purely personal, is legitimate
and even lofty. (le has attained eminent distinction
at an exceptionally early age : he lias commanded vic-
torious armies at an age when most men are hoping
to command regiments. Even now a junior Major-
General, he has been intrusted with an army of six
brigades, a command such as few of his seniors have
ever led in the field. Finally, he has been charged
with I mission such as almo^l eve'^v one of them
would have greedily accepted, — ■'b tvov.'iiing triumph
of half a generation's war. Naiurally he has awak-
ened jealousies, and he has bouglii permissiou to take
each step on the ^ ay only by biilli..iil success in the
last. If in this case he be not so stii'^y unbending to
the high as he is to the low, who shall blame him?
He has climbed too high not to toke every precaution
against a fall.

l)Ut he will not fall, just yet at any rate. So far
as Egypt is concerned he is the niaji of destiny — the
man who has l>een preparing himselt' sixteen years for
one great purpc i. For Anglo - Egypt he is the

THE SIRDAB.

Mahcii, the expected ; the man who has sifted experi-
ence and corrected error; who has worked at small
things and waited for great ; marble to sit still and fire
to smite ; steadfast, cold, and inflexible ; the man who
has cut out his human heart and made himself a
machine to retake Khartum.

VII

ARMS AND MEN.

The campaign of 1897, which opened with General
Hunter's advance from Merawi on Abu Hamed,
ended with the occupation of the Nile valley as far
as Ed Damer, seven miles beyond the junction of that
river and the Atbara. At the beginning of March,
when I reached the front, the advanced post had
been withdrawn from Ed Damer, which had been
destroyed, and established at Fort Atbara in the
northern angle of the two rivers. Between that
point and Berber, twenty - three miles north, was
stationed the army with which it was proposed to
meet the threatened attack of Osman Digna and
Mahmud.

It was not possible to use the v/hole force at tlie
Sirdar's disposition for that purpose. The Anglo-
Egyptian strategical position was roughly a semi-
circle, with Onidi rmnn and Khartum for a centre, so
that the Khalifa held the advantage of the interior.
The westward horn of the semicircle was the

ARMS AND MEN.

garrisons of Dongola, Korti, and Merawi ; the east-
ward that of Kassala. In advance of the regular
garrisons, friendly Arabs held a fan - shaped series
of intelligence posts in the Bayuda desert, and at
Adarama, Gos Eedjeb and El Fasher on the upper
reaches of the Atbara. The Dervishes maintained
one desert post at Gebra to the north-v^est of Omdur-
nian, and one to the nortli-east at Abu Delek. But
hemmed in as tliey were, they had the manifest
advantage that they could always strike at the newly
recovered province of Dongola by the various routes
across the Bayuda desert. So that Korti and Merawi
had to be garrisoned, as well as Kassala.

The garrisons, though they never so much as saw
the enemy, played, nevertheless, an indispen=':ible part
ir the Atbara campaign. The infantry of the force
iiam ?diately under the Sirdar's eye was divided into
four brigades — three Egyptian, one British. The divi-
sion of the Egyptian army, counting three brigades,
was under the command of Major-General Archibald
Hunter.

If the Sirdar is the brain of the Egyptian army,
General Hunter is its sword-arm. First and above
everytliing, he is a fighter. For fourteen years he
has been in the front of all the fighting on the
Southern border. He was Intelligence Officer dur-
ing the anxious days before Ginnis, when the
Camerons and 9th Sudanese were beset by tri-
umphant dervishes in Kosheh fort, and reinforce-

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER.

ments were far to the northward. Going out on a
sortie one day, he lingered behind the retiring force
to pick off dervishes with a rifle he was wont to
carry on such occasions : there he received a wound
in the shoulder, which he is not quit of to-day.
When Nejumi came down in '89, Hunter was in
the front of everything : he fought all day at the
head of the blacks at Argin, and commanded a
brigade of them at Toski. Here he was again
wounded — a spear-thrust in the arm while he was
charging the thickest of the Dervishes at the head
of the 13th. Thereafter he was Governor of the
frontier at Haifa, Governor of the frontier at Don-
gola, Governor of the frontier at Berber — always on
the frontier. When there was fighting he always led
the way to it with his blacks, whom he loves like
children, and who love him like a father. Fourteen
years of bugle and bullet by night and day, in sum-
mer and winter, fighting Dervishes, Dervishes year in
and year out — till fighting Dervishes has come to be
a holy mission, pursued with a burning zeal akin to
fanaticism. Hunter Pasha is the crusader of the
nineteenth century.

In all he is and does he is the true knight-errant
— a paladin drifted into his wrong century. He is
one of those happy men whom nature has made all
in one piece — consistent, simple, unvarying; every-
thing he does is just like him. He is short and thick-
set ; but that, instead of making him unromantic, only

ARMS AND MEN.

draws your eye to his long sword. From the feather
in his hehnet to the spurs on his heels, he is all energy
and dancing triumph; every movement is vivacious,
and he walks with his keen conquering hazel eye look-
ing out and upward, like an eagle's. Sometimes you
will see on his face a look of strain and tension, which
tells of the wound he always carries with him. Then
you will see him lolling under a palm-tree, while his
staff are sitting on chairs; light-brown hair rumpled
over his bare head, like a happy schoolboy. When I
first saw him thus, being blind, I conceived him a
subaltern, and oflered opinions with indecorous free-
dom : he left the error to rebuke itself.

Eeconnoitring almost alone up to the muzzles of
the enemy's ritles, charging bare-headed and leading
on his blacks, going without his rest to watch over the
comfort of the wounded, he is always the same —
always the same impossible hero of a book of chivalry.
He is renowned as a brave man even among British
officers : you know what that means. But he is
much more than a tilting knight-errant; he is one
of the finest leaders of troops in the army. Ee-
port has it that the Sirdar, knowing his worth,
leaves the handling of the actual fighting largely to
Hunter, and he never fails to plan and execute a
masterly victory. A f^ )und and brilliant general, you
would say his one fault was his reckless daring; but
that, too, in an aruiy of semi-savnges, is a necessary
qufi^ity of generalship. Furthermore, they say he is

"OLD MAO."

as good in an oflice as he is in action. AV)ove all,
he can stir and captivate and lead men. " General
Arcliie" is the wonder and the darling of all the
Egyptian army. And when tlie time comes that
we want a new national hero, it may be he will be
the wonder and tlie darling of all tlie Empire also.
The First Ih-igade of Hunter's division was still
quartered in Berber. It consisted of the 9tli Sudanese
under Walter Bey, 10th Sudanese (Nason Bey), 11th
Sudanese (Jackson Bey), and 2nd Egyptian (Pink
Bey). The brigadier was Lieutenant-Colonel Hector
Archibald Macdonald, one of the soundest soldiers in
the Egyptian or British armies. He had seen more
and more varied service than any man in the force.
Promoted from the ranks after repeated and con-
spicuous acts of gallantry in the Afghan war, he was
taken prisoner at Majuba Hill. He joined the Egyp-
tian army in 1887, and commanded the 11th Sudanese
at Gemaizeh, Toski, and Afafit. At Gemaizeh the
11th, ever anxious to be at the enemy, broke its
formation ; and it is said that Macdonald Bey, after
exhausting Arabic and Hindustani, turned in despair
to abusing them in'^broad Scots. Finally, he rode up
and down in front of their rifles, and at last got them
steady under a heavy fire from men who would far
rather have killed themselves than him. In the cam-
paigns of '96 and '97 he was intrusted with a brigade ;
he showed a rare gift for the handling of troops, and
wherever the fighting was hardest there was his

•*i>. <...... :,

,.«^..

S^.^fa!

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ARMS AND MEN.

brigade to be found. In person, " old Mac " — he is
under .fifty, but anything above forty is elderly in the
Egyptian army — is of middle height, but very broad, —
so sturdily built that you might imagine him to be
armour-plated under his clothes. He walks and rides
with a resolute solidity bespeaking more strength than
agility. He has been known to have fever, but never
to be unfit for duty.
> The Second Brigade also consisted of three Sudanese
•'battalions and one Egyptian — the 12th, 13th, and
14th Sudanese (Townshend, Collinson, and Shekleton
Beys), and the 8th Egyptian under Kiloussi Bey, a
soldierly old Turk who was through the Russo-Turkish
war. Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell commanded it —
an officer who has served in the Egyptian army
through all its successes; big, masterful, keen, and
reputed an especially able military administrator, he
is but just entering midtUe age, and ought to have a
brilliant career before him. This b:igade was quar-
tered at Essillem, about half-way between Berber and
the Atbara.

At tlie Atbara was Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis with
an all -Egyptian brigade — the 3rd, 4th, and 15th,
under Sillem, Sparkes, and Hickman Beys, and the
7th under Fathy Bey, a big, smiling Egyptian of great
energy and ability, a standing contradiction of the
theory that a native Egyptian can never make a
smart officer. The brigadier is one of the most
popular oflicers in this or any other army. Colonel

LEWIS BKY.

— ^he is
^ in the
)road, —
Q to be
id rides
[th than
,t never

udanese
ith, and
lekleton

Bey, a
Turkish
led it—
n army
sen, and
ator, he

have a
IS quar-

ber and

vis with
15th,
md the
of great

of the
make a
le most

Colonel

Lewis's talents and abounding vitality would have
led him to distinction in any career. From the fact
that he is afl'ectionately known as "Taffy," it may be
deduced that he is in whole or part a Welshman —
certainly he is richly dowered with the vivacity, the
energy, and the quickness of uptake of the Celt.
He treats his staff" and subordinates like younger
brothers, and disci [iline never suff'ers. I have heard
him say that he is always talking, but he is also
always very much worth listening to. Finally, I
once went into a store in Berber and proposed to
buy tinned Brussels sprouts. "But are they fit to
eat ? " I asked, in sudden doubt " Oh yes, sir," cried
the unshaven Greek, with enthusiasm ; " Lewis Bey
likes them very much."

Taking the strength of a battalion at 700 rifles,
each infantry brigade would n'.imber 2800 men. To
these we must add the cavalry under Lieutenant-
Colonel Broadwood, a rapid, adroit, and daring
leader: long-legged, light, built for a horseman, never
tired, never more than half asleep, never surprised,
never flurried, never slow, he is the ideal of a
cavalry general. The Egyptian trooper is a being
entirely unlike anything else in the world. Wlmt
miracles of patience and tact, toil and daring, have
been devoted to him will never be known; for tlie
men who did it will not tell. The eight squadrons,
with galloping Maxims, were at this time divided
between the three Egyptian camps. So were five

ARMS AND MEN.

batteries of artillery, the command of which was
with Lieutenant-Colonel Long — slow of speech, veil-
ing a passionate tenderness for guns and a deadly
knowledge of everything pertaining to them. Finally,
tliere were two companies of camel corps with the
Tliird P»rigade. The whole strength of the Egyptian
force would thus fall not very far short of 10,000 men,
with 46 guns. Operating from Port Atbara were also
three gunboats.

One mile north of the Second Brigade, Major-
General Gatacre's British were encamped at Debeika.
At this time it had only three battalions — the 1st
Lincolnshire (10th) under Colonel Verner, 1st Cameron
Highlanders (79th) under Colonel Money, and Ist
"Warwickshire (6th) under Lieutenant-Colonel Quayle-
Jones. The 1st Seaforth Highlanders (72nd : Colonel
Murray) were under orders, as we heard, to come up
and complete the brigade. Besides the infantry, there
was a battery of Maxims under Major Hunter-Blair.
The brigade was as fine a one as you could well pick
out of the army, whether for shooting, average of
service, or strength. Two compa:iies of the Warwicks
had been sent, to their despair, to Merawi; but even
so the strength of the brigade must have been over
2500.

General Gatacre came up with a great reputation,
which he seized ev^ry occasion to increase. His one
overmastering quality is tireless, abounding, almost
superhuman energy. From the moment he is first

"GENERAL BACK-ACHEn."

out of his hut at reveille to the time when he goes
nodding from mess to bed at nine, he seems pt^ssessed
by a demon that whips lum ever into activity. Of
middle height and lightly built, his body is all steel
wire. As a man he radiates a gentle, serious courtesy.
As a general, if he has a fault it lies on the side of
not leaving enough to his subordinates. Restless
brain and body will ever be at something new —
working out a formaLion, riding hours across country
looking for a camp, devising means to get tlirough a
zariba, personally superintending the making of a
road, addressing the men after church parade every
Sunday. In the ranks they call him "General
Back-acher," and love him. " He is the soldier's
general," I have heard rapturous Tommy exclaim,
when the brigadier has been satisfying himself in
person that nobody wanted for what could be
obtained. Later on in the campaign some thought
he drove his officers and men a little hard. But
whatever he asked of them in labour and discomfort
he was always ready to double and treble for him-
self.

This, then, was the Sirdar's command — a total of
12,000 to 13,000 men, with 52 guns. The Seaforths
might be expected to add about 1000 more. All
numbers, I should here remark, are based on the
rougliest estimates, as, by the Sirdar's wish, they were
never stated publicly. In ary case, there was not much
doubt that the force was sufficient to account hand-

ARMS AND MEN.

somely for anything that was likely to come against
it. Whether the dervishes were even coming at
all was not at this time very certain. It was known
that Mahmud had taken over his i'»rce from
Metemmeh, which had hitherto been his head-
quarters, to join Osman Digna at Shendi on the
eastern bank. That was evidence that the attack,
if it was coming, would fall on us rather than the
Merawi side. Osman's men, it was further reported,
had begun to drift northward in detachments ; though
whether this meant business or not it was hard to
say. It seemed difficult to believe that they had let
Berber alone last autumn and winter when it was
weakly garrisoned, only to attack now, when attack
must mean annihilation. But you must remember
the peculiarities of Arab information. The ordinary
Arab spy is as incurious about figures as the Sirdar
himself could desire ; " few " and " very few," " many "
and " very many," are his nearest guesses at a total.
It was not at all certain that Mahmud and Osman,
though they probably knew that reinforcements had
come up, had the vaguest idea of the real strength of
the force.

Finally, said those who remembered, this was just
like Toski over again. Whispers and whispers for
months that the horde was coming j disappointment
and disappointment ; and then, just when doubt was
becoming security and the attempt madness, a head-

OSMAN DIGNA.

long rush upon inevitable destruction. Such follies
issue from the very nature of the Malidist polity
— a jealous ill-informed despot safe at Oiiidurman
and ill-supplied Emirs apprehensive at the front
Therefore we hoped for the best. What their force
might be, of course we knew hardly better than
they knew ours. It might be 10,000, or 15,000, or
20,000.

If they came they would fight: that was certain.
How they would fight we knew not. It depended
on Mahmud. Osman Digna has become a common-
place of Sudanese warfare — a man who has never
shown himself eminent either for personal courage
or for generalship, yet obviously a man of great
ability, since by evasive cunuing and dogged per-
sistence he has given us more trouble than all the
other Emirs together. His own tribe, the Hadeiidowa,
the most furious warriors of Africa, are long since
reconciled with the Government, and have resumed
their old trade of caravan -leading. That Osman
struggles on might fancifully be traced to his strain
of Turkish blood, contributing a steadfastness of
purpose seldom found in the out-and-out bar-
barian. He has become a fat old toad now, they
pay, and always leaves fights at an early stage for
private prayer; yet he is still as much alive as
when he threw up a position on the Suakim
County Council to join the Expected Mahdi, and

!•' i)

ARMS AND MEN.

you cannot but half admire the rascal's persistence
in his evil ways.

Had Osman been in command, he doubtless knew
too much to risk a general engagement. But it
seemed that the direction of thikigs lay mainly with
Mahmud. And of Mahmud, but for the facts that he
was a social favourite in Omdurman, was comparatively
young, and had wiped out the Jaalin for the Khalifa,
nobody — except probably Colonel Wingate — knew
anytliing at all.

Wliatever tliere was to know, Colonel "Wingate
surely knew it, for he makes it his business to know
everything. He is the type of the learned soldier, in
which perhaps our army is not so strong as it is on
other sides. If he had not chosen to be Chief of
the Intelligence Department of the Egyptian Army,
he might have been Professor of Oriental Languages
at Oxford. He will learn you any language you like
to name in three months. As for that mysterious
child of lies, the Arab, Colonel Wingate can converse
with him for hours, and at the end know not only how
much truth he has told, but exactly what truth he has
suppressed. He is the intellectual, as the Sirdar is
the practical, compendium of British dealings with the
Sudan. With that he is himself the most practical
of men, and few realise how largely it is due to the
system of native intelligence he has organised, that
operations in the Sudan are now certain and unsur-
prised instead of vague, as they once were. Nothing

COLON KL WINGATE.

is hid from Colonel Wingate, whether in Cniro or at
the Court of Menelik, or on the shores of Lake Cliad.
As a press censor he has only one fault. He is so in-
dispensable to the Sirdar that you can seldom get
speech of him. His rise in the array has been almost
startlingly rapid ; yet there is not a man in it but, so
far from envying, rejoices in a success earned by rare
gifts and unstinted labour, and borne with an inviol-
able modesty.

VIII.

IN THE BRITISH CAMP.

Beyond doubt it was a great march. If only there
had been a fight immediately at the farther end of
it, it would have gone down as one of the great
forced- marches of history.

News came to Abu Dis of Mahmud and Osman
Digna's advance on a Friday afternoon, February
25 ; the men were just back from a sixteen - mile,
seven-and-a-half-hour route-march in the desert. By
eight next morning the last detachment had been con-
veyed by train to rail-head, which had been moved
on past their camp to Surek ; by ten at night the
brigade was on the march. They marched all night ;
in the early morning came a telegram bidding them
hasten, and they marched on under the Sudan sun
into the afternoon. A short halt, and at three on
Monday morning they were off again. At ten that
night they got into Geneineteh, and were out again
by three next morning. Six hours' march, seven
hours' halt, eight hours' march again, and they were

A LiliEAT MAliCII.

close to Berbur. And there they learned that the
Dervishes had after all not arrived. A halt of twenty-
four hours outside Berber rather damaged the record ;
but that was better than damaging the troops. Not
but that they were quite ready to go on ; it was by
the Sirdar that the halt was ordered. They reached
Berber — cheering blacks lining two miles of road, and
massed bands playing the Cameron men, and the
Lincolnshire poacher, and Warwickshire lads, and
especially a good breakfast for everybody — and
marched through to their camp ten miles beyond.

They started out ou Saturday night, February 26 ;
they reached camp on Thursday evening, March 3.
Altogether they made 118 miles within five days-
four, if you leave out the day's halt — or 134 in five
and a half, if you also add the route-march; con-
tinuously they did 98 miles within three days.

That is marching. Furthermore, it was marching
under nearly all conditions that make marching a
weariness. In India troops on the march have a
host of camp-followers to do the hard and disagree-
able work. Of course, you and I could easily walk
twenty-five miles a day for as long as anybody liked
to name. But how would you like to try it with kit
and rifle and a hundred rounds of ammunition? Also,
when you did halt, how would you like to have to
set to work getting wood to make your fire and water
to cook your dinner ? How would you like to march
with baggage-camels, so slow that the}- poach all your

IN THE BRITISH CAMP.

sleep ? Especially, how would you like to be a cook
— to come in tired and sweating, hungry and thirsty,
and then stand out in the sun preparing dinner for
your comrades ? On the first three days' march some
of the cooks got no more tlian four hours' sleep, and
had to be relieved lest they dropped at their posts ;
few of the officers got more. Plenty of men went to
sleep while marching; others dropped with weariness
and vigil, like a boxer knocked stupid in a fight. One
subaltern, being with baggage in the rear-guard, fell
off' his camel without noticing it, and went on peace-
fully slumbering in the sand. He woke up some time
in the dead of night, and of course had not the vaguest
idea where the army had gone to or in which direc-
tion he ought to follow it. He had hung his helmet
and belts on the camel, which of course had gone on
composedly, only glad to get rid of him. He was
picked up by a man who was looking for somebody
else.

A gunner in the Maxim battery had a worse time.
He too dropped asleep, and woke up to find himself
alone. He found himself near the river, and went
on to overtake the force. Only unluckily — so mag-
nificently unreasoning can the British soldier some-
times be — he followed down the stream instead of
up. On top of that, he conceived an idea that he
was in the ens^my's country, with prowling dervishes
ambushed beliind every mimosa bush. So that while
search parties quested for him by day, he carefully

THE BOOT SCANDAL.

a cook
thirsty,
ner for
ih some
3p, and

posts;
went to
sariness
t. One
ird, fell

peace-
le time
/aguest
I direc-
helmet
(one on
le was
Qebodj

e time,
limself
I went
) mag-
some-
;t'ad of
hat he
[•vishes
i while
refuUy

hid himself, and at night pushed on again to-
wards Cairo. It was several days before he was
picked up.

All these are inevitable accompaniments of a forced
march; what might have been avoided, and should
have been, was the scandal that the men's boots gave
out. True, the brigade had done a lot of marching
since it came up-country, some of it — not much —
over rock and loose sand. True, also, that the Sudan
climate, d(;structive of all things, is particularly de-
structive of all things stitched. But the brigade had
only been up-river about a month, after all, and no
military boot ought to wear out in a month. We
have been campaigning in the Sudan, off and on, for
over fourteen years; we might have discovered the
little peculiarities of its climate by now. The Egyptian
army uses a riveted boot ; the boots our British boys
were expected to march in had not even a toe-cap.
So that when the three battalions and a battery
arrived in Berber hundreds of men were all but bare-
foot: the soles peeled off, and instead of a solid double
sole, revealed a layer of shoddy packing sandwiched
between two thin slices of leather. Not one man fell
out sick ; those who dropped asleep went on as soon
as they came to, and overtook their regiments. But
every available camel was burdened with a man who
lacked nothing of strength or courage to march on —
only boots. General Gatacre had half-a-dozen chargers;
every one was carrying a bare -fooled soldier, while

m THE BRITISH CAMP.

1 1',.

I.* '

the general trudged with his men. All the mounted
officers did the same.

It is always the same story — knavery and slackness
clogging and strangling the best efforts of the British
soldier. To save some contractor a few pence on a
boot, or to save some War Office clerk a few hours of
the work he is paid for not doing, you stand to lose a
good rifle and bayonet in a decisive battle, and to
break a good man's heart into the bargain. Is it
worth it ? But it is always happening ; the history
of the Army is a string of such disgraces. And each
time we arise and bawl, " Somebody ought to be
hanged." So says everybody. But nobody ever is
hanged.^

^ A certain stir followed the publication of these criticisms in
England, penetrating as far as the HouBe of Commons, and even the
War OflBce. The official reply to them was in effect that the boots
were very good boots, only that the work done by the brigade over
bad ground had tried them too severely. It is a strange sort of answer
to say that a military boot is a very good boot, only you mustn't
march in it. Having walked myself over most of the same ground
as General Gatacre's brigade, I am able to say that, while there is a
good deal of rock and loose sand, the greater part of the going is
hard sand or gravel. The boots I wore myself I have on at the
moment of writing, as sound as ever.

It is possible that the War Office is right, and that for other
purposes in other countries the boots supplied were very good boots.
But in the Sudan, what with the drought and the fine cutting sand,
everything in stitched leather goes to pieces with heart-breaking
rapidity. It is to be presumed that our authorities could have
discovered this fact : in the Egyptian army it is known perfectly
well.

After Mr Powell Williams had more than once implied in the
House that there was no foundation for the criticismB in the text,

A SEVEIIE UEGImE.

That these men came so sturdily through the test
stands to everybody's credit, but especially their
brigadier's. From the day he took up his command
General Gatacre set to work to make his men hard.
Amazing stories floated down to Haifa, rebuking us
with tlie stern simplicity of life at rail-head — no drink,
perpetual marching, sleep every night in your boots.
The general, we heard, had even avowed that he meant
to teach his men to march twenty miles witliout water-
bottles. He would merely halt them from time to
time and water them — most wisely, since the soldier
either swigs down all his water in the first hour, and
is cooked for the rest of the day, or else, if he thinks
he is in for a short march, pours the confounded thing
out on the sand to lighten it. A most wise thing —
if you can do it. For some of the old inhabitants
of the Sudan shook their heads when they heard such
tales. " He'll get 'em stale," said they ; " wait till the
hot weather; in this country you must make yourself
comfortable." They were probably riglit — they knew ;
and for myself, I intended to give comfort the fullest
possible trial. But so far the fact stood that the

Lord Lansdowne, in hia speech .announcing the proposed transmogri-
6cation of the Army Medical ServicoH, gave away the War Office's
caae in the following terms : "The Isgyptian cutnpaign had brought
to light one weak point which we couUl not ullord to ignore. The
Army boot, although a good boot, was apparently un^uited to resist
the peculiar and insitlious action of the desert sand. ... Tie
trusted they would be able to invent a boot which even General
Gatacre and the desert sand would not be able to Wv^ar out."
—{' Daily Mail ' Report, May 5.)

IN THE BRITISH CAMP.

British had done their work brilliantly, and that their
brigadier trained them to it.

When my camel padded into their camp by moon-
light the day's work was done, and they were going to
sleep. You came to the camp through a tangle of
thick mimosa ; a zariba of the same impossible thorns
was heaped up all round it ; the men were quartered
along the river overlooking the foreshore. There was
only time to be grateful for supper, and a blanket spread
under the lee of a straw-plaited hut. Next thing I
knew reveille was sounding, at a quarter past five.
Directly on the sound stepped out the general — middle
height, build for lightness and toughness together,
elastic energy in the set of each limb, and in the keen,
grave face a determined purpose to be equal to re-
sponsibility. He stayed to drink a cup of cocoa, and
then mounted, and was away with his aide-de-camp ;
General Gatacre's aide-de-camp requires to be a hard
man. When break fast- time came the general was no-
where in camp, nor was he an hour later, nor an hour
later still. He had just taken a little twenty-five
mile scamper to look out a new site for his camp.

At reveille the camp had suddenly turned from dead
to alive. You heard hoarse orders, and the ring of
perpetual bugles. The dry air of the Sudan cracks
the buglers* lips, as it does everybody else's ; to keep
them supple they were practising incessantly, so that
the brigade is wrapped in bugling best part of the
day. To-day it was also wrapped in something else.

AN ILL-CHOSEN SITE.

It seemed to me that daylight was very \on^ in com-
ing — that lines of khaki figures seemed to pass to and
fro in an unlifting mist. But that was only for the
first few sleepy moments. As the north wind got up
witli the sun it soon became very plain what was the
matter.

Dust ! The camp was on land which had once been
cultivated, black cotton land ; and black cotton land
when the wind blows is neither wholesome nor agree-
able. It rose off the ground till the place was like
London in a fog. On the horizon it lowered like
thunder-clouds; close about you it wliirled up like
pepper when the lid of the castor comes off. You
felt it, breathed it, smelt it, tasted it. It chok«d
eyes and nose and ears, and you ground it between
your teeth. After a few hours of it you forgot what
being a man was like ; you were merely clogging into
a lump of Sudan.

It was a bad mistake to pitch on such a spot ; and
when you came to walk round the camp you saw how
ill-equipped were the men to put up with it. Their
heavy baggage — officers' and men's alike — had been
left at rail-head ; over 2500 men had come with 700
camels. The tents had arrived, but they were only
just being unloaded from the steamer. The men were
huddled under blankets stretched on four sticks; of
the officers, some had tents, others sat in tiny elbow-
squeezing tukls (huts of straw or rushes), such as the
prophet Jonah would not have exchanged for his

IN THE BRITISH CAMP.

gourd. Tliere was hardly a shelter in the camp in
which a man could stand upright. One or two good
tukls had been built — wooden posts with beams lashed
across them, and mats or coarse stems of halfa grass
plaited between. But, taking the place as a whole,
it was impossible to be comfortable, and especially
impossible to be clean.

It was nobody's fault in particular, and in this good
weather it did not particularly matter. It happened
not to have begun stoking up at the time ; when it likes
it can be mid-summer in March. When it did begin,
and especially if it came to a matter of summer
quarters, such a camp as Debeika was an invitation
to disease and death. You have to learn the Sudan's
ways, they say, if you do not want the Sudan to eat
you alive. The British brigade had to learn.- Sure
enough the Sirdar came to inspect it the day after,
and on March 11 the brigade shifted camp to the
empty and relatively clean village of Uarmali, two
miles higher up the river.

',b

IX.

PORT ATBARA,

It needed only half a look at the Egyptian camp to
convince you how much the British had to learn. The
liospitable dinner-table was quite enough. In accord-
ance with a detestable habit which I intend to correct
in future, I arrived late for dinner : it was the fault of
the camels, the camel-men, the servants, the guide, my
companions, the country, and the weather. None the
less kindly was I set down at table and ate of soup
and fish, of ragout an.* fresh mutton and game, and
was invited to drink hock, claret, champagne, whisky,
gin, lime-juice, ginger-beer, Rosbach, and cognac, or
any combination or permutation of the same. I was
the guest of men who have been on the Sudan
frontier for anything up to fifteen years, during which
time they have learned the Sudan's ways and over-
come its inhospitality.

As soon as everybody began to show signs of falling
asleep at table — which hot days begun at four or five
in the morning and worked hard through till half-past

FORT ATBAKA.

seven soon lead you to consider the most natural
phenomenon in the world — I went to bed under a
roof. The owner of the tukl was up the river, o3
Shendi, on a gunboat. His house was palatially built
with painted beams from the spoils of a raid on
Metemmeh, and plaited with palm -leaf and halfa
grass. Other officers preferred their tents ; but the
insides of these were sunk anything from one foot to
four underground, the excavation neatly backed with
dried Nile mud, so that a ten-foot tent became a lofty
and airy apartment. The last thing 1 saw was a vast
upstanding oblong tukl, which looked capable of hold-
ing a company. 1 was told it 'V\as the house of the
mess-servants of one Egyptian battt lion. It was more
palatial than all the edifices in the British camp put
together.

In the morning it was blowing a sand-storm, and
Englishmen's eyes showed bloodshot through blue
spectacles. It was gritty between the teeth, and to
walk up wind spelt blindness ; yet it was clean sand,
and did not form soil in the mouth like the black
dust of Debeika. In the early morning Fort Atbara
appeared through the driving cloud as through smoked
glass — a long walled camp, with its southern apex
resting on the junction of Nile and Atbara. To find
so strong a place in the lately won wilderness was
a revelation, not of Englisii energy, which is under-
stood, but of Egyptinn industry. The wall was over
six feet high, firmly built of sun-dried mud; round it

A MONUMENT OF EGYPTIAN INDUSTRY.

had been a six-foot ditch, only the importunate sand
had already half silted it up again. On the inside
was a parapet, gun platforms with a couple of care-
fully clothed Maxims in each, a couple of guard-houses
at the two main gates and a couple of blockhouses
outside. Across the Atbara was a small fort ; at the
angle of the rivers a covered casemate gallery that
would accommodate half a company precluded any
attempt to turn the wall and attack from the fore-
shore. On the other side of the Nile was a smaller
fort, walled and ditched likewise. In the inside
straddled a crow's nest — built also with painted beams
from Mahmud's house in Metemmeh — with a view that
reached miles up both rivers. A couple of miles up
the Atbara you could see dense mimosa thickets ; so
much of the bank as could get water has dropped
back almost to virgin forest in the fourteen years of
dervish devilry. But under the walls of Fort Atbara
was neither mimosa nor Sodom apple nor any kind
of scrub. Only a forest of stumps showed where the
field of fire had been cleared — over a mile in every
direction. Upright and regular among the stumps
you could see a row of stakes ; each marked a range
of 100 yards up to 500 : the Egyptian soldier was
to hold his fire up to that and gain confidence by
seeing his enemy go down. Best of all, the fort, though
it dominated the country for miles, was itself hardly
visible. From the ridge of the desert a mile away it
was a few trees, the yardarms of a few sailing barges,

FORT ATBARA.

and a shelter trench. The whole dervish army might
easily have been persuaded to run their heads on it ;
but they might have butted in vain against Fort
Atbara till there was not one of them left standing.

The whole of this work had been made by the men
who garrisoned it. There were none but Fellahin
regiments in Fort Atbara; but the Egyptian soldier
on fatigue duty is the finest soldier in the world.
In a population of ten millions the conscription
only asks for 20,000 men or so, and it can afford to
pick and choose. In face the fellah soldier is a shade
sullen, not to say blackguardly ; in body he would be
a joy to a sculptor. Shorter than the taller tribes of
blacks, taller than the shorter, he is far better built
all round. When he strips at bathing-time — for like
all riverine peoples he is more clean than bashful — the
bank is lined with studies for Hercules. And all the
thews he has he puts into his work. Work is the
fellah's idea of life, especially work with his native
mud : the fatigue which other soldiers incline to
resent as not part of their proper business he takes to
most kindly of all his soldiering. Marching, digging,
damming, brick-making, building, tree-felling — you can
never find him unwilling nor leave him exhausted. He
is the ideal soldier-of-all-work, true son of a country
where human hand - labour has always beaten the
machine.

The troops were housed either in post -and -straw
tukls or in tents ; but already a vast mud - brick

SKETCH MAP OF THE HILE AND ATBARA
TO illustrate: the operations against mahmoud

QUEEN CITY OF THE SUDAN.

barrack stretched its skeleton across the camp.
Along the foreshore the mud huts were hospital or
officers' quarters or mess -houses. Already one big
straw tukl was a cafi, where enterprising Greeks had
set up a soda-water machine and instituted a diner du
jour. And down on the beach the cluster of slim-
sparred gyassas and the little street of box-and-mat
built Greek shops marked the beginning of a town.
As railway terminus, for this year at present, an
American miglit almost call it the queen city of the
Sudan. Only for the present it must be a city with-
out native population ; for the inhabitants of this reach
are very few, and subsist on precarious subsidies paid
them for protecting each other against the raids of
the dervish.

Among the craft at the riverside the first you
noticed was the gunboat. White, with tall black
funnel amidships, deck above deck and platform top-
ping platform, it looked more like a building than a
warship. But for all their many storeys these gun-
boats draw only some two feet of water, while the
loftiness of the gun- platforms enables them to search
the highest bank at the lowest state of Nile. Ahead
on the uppermost deck points the hungry muzzle of
a gun ; there are a couple more amidships, and a
couple of Maxims on a dizzy shaking platform higher
yet.

The war fleet at this time counted three stern-
wheelers — the Zafir (Commander Keppel, E.N.), Fatha

fli

FORT ATBARA.

(Lieutenant Beatty, R.N.), and iVasa (Lieutenant Hood»
E.N.) Three more — the Malik (King), Sultan, and
Sheikh — were down the river, waiting for their sec-
tions to be put together against high Nile. Fort
Atbara was the Portsmouth of the Sudan: one of
Captain Keppel's squadron always lay there, taking
a week in its turn to rest and repair anything
needful. The other two would be always up the
river — one cruising ofif Shendi, and the other patrol-
ling the seventy miles of river between. If neces-
sary the boats could run past Shendi, forty miles
more, to Shabluka, so that they acted as reconnoitnng
parties more than a hundred miles from the most
advanced m litary post.

Naval operations have played a part in Sudan
warfare ever since Gordon's time: was not "the
Admiral " himself on Beresford's Zafia through those
famous - infamous days which saw the tantalising
tragedy of Khartum? Here, as elsewhere, the
Sirdar has gathered up the experience of the past
and brought it to full development. Everybody told
him that he would never get the gunboats over the
Fourth Cataract : a general who had been there in
the Wolseley days delivered a lecture demonstrating
unmercifully the mad impossibility of the scheme. A
day or two after the Sirdar sent the boats over. To
be sure one turned turtle in the attempt, and a naval
lieutenant was fished out three-quarters drowned, and

WHAT THE r.UNBOATS DID.

most

two Egyptians had to be cut out through tlie bottom
of the boat. Yet here were three vessels steaming up
and down unperturbed, right under Mahmud's nose.
The value of their services it would be quite impos-
sible to exaggerate : they were worth all the rest of tlie
Intelligence Department put together. From their
reports it was known that the dervishes had crossed to
Shendi and were coming down the river. Moreover,
you may imagine that officers of her Majesty's navy did
not confine their activity to looking on. A day or two
before this Mahmud had been transferring his war
material in barges from Metemmeh to Shendi.
Knowing the ways of " the devils," as they amiivbly
call the gunboats, he had entrenched a couple of hun-
dred riflemen to cover the crossing. But one boat
steamed cheerfully up to the bank and turned on the
Maxims, while the other sunk one nuggar and captured
two. A fourth lay in quite shallow water under the
very muzzles of the dervish rifles. But on each boat
are carried about half a company of Egyptian troops
with a white officer. While the Maxims poppled
away above them, the detachment — it was of the 15th
Egyptians on this occasion — landed and cut out the
nuggar before its owners* eyes. With men capable of
such things as this about on the river, it was only by
drilling a hole in the bottom of their boats and sink-
ing them during the day that the dervishes could
keep any craft to cross the river in at all.

FORT ATBAEA,

The second day at Fort Atbara I stepped out after
lunch, and there were two white sweltering gunboats
instead of one. Everybody who had nothing else to
do hurried as fast as the heat would let them down to
the river. There the first thing they saw was an
angareb being laboriously guided ashore by four native
soldiers : on it lay a white man. He was a sergeant
of marines, shot in the leg while directing the fire of
the forward Maxim. " The devils have hit me," they
said he cried out, with justly indignant surprise as he
felt the bullet, then jumped to the gun and turned it
himself on the quarter the shot came from. That was
in the early morning; now he was very pale and a
little limp, but smiling. Then came down the doctor
hastily. "Didn't I say he wasn't to be brought
ashore?" he said. "All right, sir," answered the
wounded man, still resolutely smiling ; "I expect I'm
in for hospital anyhow." And away to hospital they
bore him, for the boat would be up river again by
dawn the next day.

Meantime the detachment of soldiers were stepping
ashore with cheerful grins. It was easy to see how
valuable was this gunboat work in giving the
Egyptians confidence. True, they had lost one man
wounded and had a few chips knocked off the stern-
wlieel ; but had they not landed at Aliab — thirty miles
from Fort Atbara — driven off the dervishes, and
captured donkeys and loot? The loot was being

AN EXCITING SERVICE.

unladen at the moment — an angareb or two and odd
garments, especially many bundles of rough riverside
hay. '' Take that up to my old horse," said the
lieutenant in command, satisfaction in his tones. " Is
there any polo this afternoon ? "

It was hard to say whether this work best suited
the young naval officer or the young naval officer best
suited the work. Steaming up and down the river in
command of a sliip of his own, bombarding here,
reconnoitring there, landing elsewhere for a brush
with tlie dervishes, and then again a little way fartlier
to pick up loot, — the work had all the charm of war
and blockade-running and poaching combined. If a
dervish shell did happen to smash the wheel where
would tlie boat be, perhaps seventy miles from any
help? It was said the Sirdar was a little nervous
about them, and to my inexperience it was a perpetual
wonder that the boats came back from every trip.
But somehow, thanks to just a dash of caution in their
audacity, they always did come back. Impudently
daring in attack, with a happy eye to catch the latest
moment for retreat, they were just the cutting -out
heroes of one's youth come to life. They might have
walked straight out of the ' Boy's Own Paper.'

Every returning boat brought fresh news of the
advance. Dervishes at Aliab, even if not in force,
could not but mean a movement towards attack. It
was quite impossible to wear out the hospitality of

FORT ATBAKA.

Fort Atbara, but duty began to wonder what the rest
of tlie army was doing. So I recaptured my camel —
peacefully grazing in the nearest area of dervish raid,
and very angry at being called on to work after three
days of idleness— and bumped away north towards
Berber.

THE MARCH OUT.

Alas for the Berber season — for the sprightly promise
of its budding, the swift tragedy of its blight !

It would have been the most brilliant social year
the town has ever known. Berber is peculiarly fitted
for fashionable display : its central street *vould hold
four Regent Streets abreast, and the low mud walls,
with one-storeyed mud-houses just peeping over them,
make it look wider yet. On this magnificent avenue
the merchant princes of Berber display their rich
emporia. Mortimer, Angelo, Walker, and half-a-dozen
ending in -poulo, had brought caravans over the
desert from Suakim, until you could buy oysters and
asparagus, table-napkins and brilliantine, in the
middle of the Sudan. Then there are the cafis,—
"Officers* Club and Mineral Waters" is the usual
title of a Sudan cafi, — where you could drink mastik
and kinds of whisky, and listen to limpid streams of
modern Greek from the mouths of elegants who shave
twice and even three times a-week. There at sun-

THE MArCH OUT.

down sat the native officers on chairs before the door,
every breast bright with the ribbons of hard victorious
campaigns, talking their ancestral Turkish and drink-
ing drinks not contemplated by the Koran. There
were five regiments in garrison, and more outside;
the town was alive with generals, and the band played
nightly to the Sirdar's dinner.

There was flavour in the sensation of sitting at
dinner under the half-daylight of the tropic moon,
kicking up black -brown sand, looking into a little
yard with an unfenced sixty-foot undrinkable well in
one corner and a heat-seamed mud wall all round it,
and listening to a full military orchestra wailing for
the Swanee Ribber, or giggling over the sorrows of
Mr Gus Elen's friend, who somehow never felt 'isself
at 'ome. For myself, I was just beginning to be very
much at home indeed. It was a splendid house to
share among three, one of the most palatial in Berber
— two rooms as high as an English double-storeyed
villa, doorway you could drive a hansom through, two
window-holes in one room and one in the otiier, bricks
of the finest quality of Nile mud, and roof of mats
that never let in a single sunbeam. A fine house ; and
we had further embellislied it with two tables — they
cost a couple of pounds apiece, timber and carpenters
being scarce in Berber — five slielves, a peg, nnd eight
cane - bottomed bedroom cliairs, brought across the
desert in sections. In a fortnight our entertainments
would have been the talk of Berber, and now

BERBER — OLD AND NEW.

To-night the High Street was as bare and bald,
Berber as desolate and forlorn, as old Berber itself.
Old Berber, von must know, is the Berber which was
before the Mahdists came and took it and besomed
it with three days' massacre. It stands, or totters,
some half mile south of the present dervish-built town.
Palms spread their sunshades over it, and it is era-
bosomed in the purple-pink flower, white-green bush,
and yellow-green fruit of Sodom apples. At a dis-
tance it is cool luxury ; ride into it, and it is only the
sun-dried skeleton of a city. In what was once the
bazaar the bones are thickest: here are the empty
sockets out of which looked the little shops — all silent,
crumbling, and broken. Altogether there are acres
and acres of Old Berber — quite dead and falling away,
not a single soul in the whole desolation. But when
the Egyptian army first came last year there were
bodies — bodies left thirteen years unburied, and dry
wounds yawning for vengeance.

New Berber to-day was hardly less forlorn. On
tlie morning of March 15, the few passengers down
the High Street all carried arms. Here was a man
on a fleet camel: he would have sold it the day be-
fore for £20; now no price would tempt his Arab
covetousness into parting with his possible salvation.
Here strode a tall man with white gown kilted up
above black legs : he carried a Kemington ritle, and
with his free hand pushed before him a donkey bear-
ing a bundle and a bed. An angareb is the first

THE MARCH OUT.

luxury of the Sudan: Egyptian soldiers, when an-
garebs are looted, can hardly be restrained from
taking them away on their backs. This man was
removing wardrobe and furniture together on one
donkey. Down at the riverside every boat was busy ;
the natives were crossing over to the islands and to
the western bank. Down at the landing-stage, three
miles north of the town, where the hospital was and
the post-office, and whither the telegraph was now
removed, the 1st Battalion, now to form all the garri-
son of Berber, was building a fort.

And in their stores and cafh in the High Street,
with twitching faces, sat the Greeks. They explained
in half -voices that they could not move their stock
because they had 400 camel-loads, and there were not
ten camels to be bought in all Berber. They com-
mented on the strange strategy that aims at beating
the enemy rather than at protecting property. They
even made a deputation to the Sirdar on the point;
but his Excellency pursued his own plan, and merely
served out Remingtons to the traders. Whereat the
Greeks pointed out that the rifles and a few cases of
wine and tinned meat against their doors would make
them impregnable ; and then fell to twitching again.

What it was all about, nobody among the outsiders
knew. But we presumed that the gradual crescendo
of intelligence as to the dervish advance had resulted
in the decision that it was better to be in position too
early than too late. The Sirdar left early on the 15th;

A SPLENDID BATTALION.

the greater part of the garrison — MacdonaWa fighting
brigade of blacks — had cleared the town the evening
before and marched for Kenur, the point of concen-
tration, when the moon rose at one in the morning.
I saw the start of the 9th, the first black battalion
raised ; and fine as are many of our British regiments,
these made them look very small. The Sudanese
battalions, as has been said, are enlisted for life, and
every black, wherever he may be found, is liable, as
such, for service. I have seen a man who was with
Maximilian in Mexico, in the Russo - Turkish War,
across Africa with Stanley, and in all the later
Egyptian campaigns, and who marches with his
regiment yet. However old the black may be, he
has the curious faculty of always looking about eigh-
teen: only when you thrust your eyes right in his
face do you notice that he is a wrinkled great-grand-
father of eighty. But always he stands as straight as
a lance.

Not that the 9th average that age, I take it ; or if
they do, it does not matter. Their height must
average easily over six feet. They are willowy in
fioure, and their legs run to spindle-shanks, almost
ridiculously; yet as they formed up on parade they
moved not only with the scope that comes from
length of limb, but the snap of self - controlled
strength as well.

They love their soldiering, do the blacks, and take it
very seriously. When they stood at attention they

THE MARCH OUT.

might have been rows of black marble statues, all
alike as in the ancient temples, filling up the little
square of crumbling mud walls with a hole in its
corner, c^ typical of the Berber landscape. Then the
English coiinel snapped out something Turkish: in an
instant the lines of each company had become fours ;
all turned with a click ; the band crashed out a
march — barbaric Ethiopian, darky American, or Eng-
lish music-hall, it is all the same to the blacks — and
out swung the regiment. They moved ofif by com-
panies through a narrow alley, and there lay four new-
killed goats, the sand lapping their blood. Every
officer rode, every man stepped, over the luck token ;
they would never go out to fight without it. Then
out into the main street, every man stepping like a
conqueror, the band blaring war at their head ; with
each company a little flag — blue, black, white, amber,
or green, or vermilion — on a spear, and half-way down
the column the colour the Camerons gave them when
they shared the glory of Ginnis. Boys trailed behind
them, and their women, running to keep up, shot after
them the thin screams that kindle Sudanese to victory.
A black has been known to kill himself because his
wife called him a coward. To me the sight of that
magnificent regiment was a revelation. One has got
accustomed to associate a black skin with something
either slavish or comical. From their faces these men
might have been loafing darkies in South Carolina or
minstrels in St James's Hall. But in the smartness

UNAFRAID "LIKE THE ENGLISH."

of every movement, in the pride of every private's
bearing, what a wonderful difference ! This was quite
a new kind of black — every man a warrior from his
youth up. "Lu-u-u, lu-u-u," piped the women; the
men held up their heads and made no sound, but you
could see the answer to that appeal quivering all down
the column. For " we," they say, "are like the English ;
we are not afraid."

And is it not good to think, ladies and gentlemen,
as you walk in Piccadilly or the Mile End Eoad, that
every one of these niggers honestly believes that to be
English and to know fear are two things never heard
of together? Utterly fearless themselves, savages
brought up to think death in battle the natural lot of
man, far preferable to defeat or disgrace, they have
lived with English oil&cers and English sergeants,
through years of war and pestilence, and never seen
any sign that these are not as contemptuous of death
as themselves. They have seen many Englishmen die;
they have never seen an Englishman show fear.

THE CONCENTRATION,

At the time I was disposed to blame the Mess Presi-
dent, but on calm reflection I see that the fault lay
with the nature of the Arab. We knew that the
Sirdar was to start early on the 15th on the eighteen-
mile ride to Kenur, and it was our purpose to travel
shortly behind him. The only restrictions, I may say
at once, laid upon correspondents during this campaign
were that they were not to go out on reconnaissances,
and especially not to go near the Sirdar. They were
advised not to stand in front of the firin" line durinir
general actions, but even this was not insisted upon.
It did indeed require a fair deal of tact and agility to
keep out of the Sirdar's eye, since his Excellency had
a wearing habit of always appearing at any point
where there was anything of interest going on. But
practice sopn brought proficiency, and for the rest tlie
correspondent, except when he had to work, enjoyed
by far the most enviable position in the army.

Therefore we had planned to start as soon as the

TUB HUMOURS OF TRANSPORT.

Sirdar was out of siglit, and arrive just after he had
disappeared into his quarters. We rose up at five and
gloomily began to dismintle our home. We carted
the tables and the chairs into the yard ; we tore down
the very shelves : who could tell when they would not
be useful ? By seven breakfast was over ; the horses
and camels were grouped around our door in the High
Street ; the bags and cases were fastened up and lying
each on the right side of its right camel. There was
nothing left but the chairs and the tables and the
shelves and a bucket, and the breakfast things and a
case to put them in. At eight I went out to see how
things were looking; they were looking exactly the
same, a question of precedence having arisen as to
whose duty it was to wash up. At nine they were
still the same, and we expostulated with the men :
they said they were just ready. At ten the chairs
and tables and 'breakfast things and camels were still
lying about, and the men had disappeared. At eleven
they had not returned. At twelve they condescended
to return, and, adjourning the question of washing up,
began packing the breakfast things dirty. At this
point each man separately was called a dog, fined
a pound, and promised fifty lashes. They received the
judgment with surprised and wounded but respectful
expostulation : what had they done ? They had merely
been in the bazaar a very little while, thou Excel-
lency, to buy food. By this time we were getting
hungry ; so, rather than delay the loading up, we went

THE CONCENTRATION.

to a Greek caf6 and lunched on ptomained sardines
and vinegar out of a Graves bottle. When we got
back things were exactly as we had left them: the
men suavely explained that they had been lunching
too. At last at half-past one every camel had been
loaded and stood up ; and then it was discovered that
all the chairs were being left behind. It became
necessary to catch camels one by one, climb up tliem,
and, standing on neck or hump, to tie two chairs
apiece on to them. While the second was being done,
the first walked away and rubbed himself against a
wall, and knocked his chairs off again. Every one of
the men rushed at him with furious yells ; the second
camel, left to himself, waddled up to the wall with an
absent-minded air, and rubbed off his chairs.

At this point— about two in the afternoon, six hours
after the contemplated start — human nature could
bear it no longer. With cun"^B and blows we told
them to follow immediately if Lliey valued their lives,
and rode on. That was all they wanted. Looking
back after a hundred yards we saw every camel loaded
up and starting. If we had stayed behind we should
never have got off that night. If we had ridden on
six hours before we should not have been delayed.
One time is as good as another to the Arab as long as
he feels that he is wasting it. Give him half an hour
and he will take an hour ; allow him six hours and he
will require twelve.

But of course by this time it was hopeless to expect

now CAMELS AIIE LOADED.

»6

that tlie l)n;4i;;ige would muku ciu^liteeii miles by dark.
At Essillciii, a dozLJi iniUm out, we found Colonel
[Maxwell's brigade with all its ba;^gage paeked, waiting
only camels to move on too. At Darmali we found
exactly the same state of things. General Gatacre'a
never-failing hospitality produced dinner, after which
we fell in with the disposition of the rest of the army,
and waited for camels too. At ten, just as we were
going to sleep in the sand in the middle of the main
street of the village, they loafed up, very cheerful, and
feeling quite sure that they would be neither fined
nor flogged. Had they not covered thirteen miles iu
a trifle under eight hours ?

Then suddenly I was awake again, at the shy meet-
ing of a quarter-moon and dawn. The beginning of
what I knew, after my boy came to my chilly bed-
chamber under a wall and said reveille was about to
sound, was a monstrous confusion of camels. You
could see that the ground was strewn with vague,
shapeless, swaying lumps, with smaller, more agile
shadows crawling over them. What they were was
very plain from the noises : the camels had arrived.
The camel, when it is a question of either working or
leaving off work — so magnificently impartial is his
stupidity —can protest in any voice from a wolf's snarl
to the wail of an uncomforted child. As each camel
was loaded it jerked up its towering height and tower-
ing load — one of ours this time, I blush to say, was
two sacks of barley, a deal table, and all the eight

THE CO.NCENTRATION.

cane-bottomed chairs, waving their legs at the moon ;
and a weirdly disreputable sight it was — and then it
was the next camel's turn to howl. It is a wonderful
sii^ht camels being loaded up, with buckets and table-
legs and baths and tea-kettles, hung round them as if
they were Christmas-trees ; but one soon has enough
of it. So I left them trying to eat the hospital stores,
and rode slowly out into the twilight.

Outside the zariba a heavy black snake was forging
slowly along the desert road ; when I came nearer it
changed into a centipede; then the centipede had a
kilt on, and finally it divided into the Cameron High-
limders. In front of them were the Warwicks, behind
ihcm the Maxim battery — four guns with carriages
and three mules tandem, two on tripods and one mule
to carry the whole gun — and the Lincolns ; the whole
brigade was on the march. Only seventy-five men of
each regiment remained, to their indignation, as guard
for the stores that the camels must make a second
journey to fetch. As for the heavy baggage, that was
put in the houses of the "illage and left to its fate.
Officers started with 30-\). kit, and men with 9-lb.
Scarcity of camels perhaps justified the abandonment,
but with the thermometer already 100° in the shade, it
meant a lot of hardship.

After a month and a half of General Gatacre, five
miles with ritie and ammunition and 9-lb. kit is very
much the same to the British soldier as walking down-
stairs to breakfast is to you. They were just getting

BX7ILDIN0 A ZAEIBA.

moon ;
then it
nderful
. table-
tn as if
enough

stores,

forging
iarer it

had a
\i High-

behind
irriages
le naile
e whole
men of
s guard

second
hat was
its fate.
Lh 9-lb.
mment,
hade, it

ire, five

is very

^ down-

getting

into their stride when the sun rose. The orange ball
stepped up over the desert sky-line briskly and all in
one piece, plainly intending to do a good day's work
before he lay down again — and behold, we were at
Kenur. Behold, also, the Sirdar's flag, white star and
crescent on red, borne by one of three orderlies. Be-
fore it rode the Sirdar himself, in white apparel, fresh
and cool, also like one who has his work before him
and knows how it is done, and means to do it. The
British halted. There was a word and a rattle, and
the battalions which had been formed in one long
column, four abreast, were marching off at right angles
in columns of a company apiece. In no space and
no time the whole brigade had tucked itself away
and taken up its quarters. And hardly had the
British left the road clear than in swung the second
black brigade from Essillem.

These were different, many of them, from the lank
soldiers of the 9th — short and stubby, plainly of other
tribes ; but whether the black has seventy-eight inches
or sixty, every one of them is a soldier. They tramped
past with their untirable bands drumming and blow-
ing beside them ; in a couple of hours they had cut
their mimosa and made their zariba, and all tlie Der-
vishes in the Sudan would not be too many tor them.
The British, too, were out all day in the sun, at the
same work, every man with his ride on his back. It
had warmed up a little more now — though 100" in
the dry Sudan is not near so hot as it would be in

THE CONCENTRATION.

England — but the British stuck to their work like
men, and their zariba, a word unknown to them two
months back, was every bit as straight, and thick, and
prickly as the natives'.

And now we were concentrated, and only waited for
them to come on. And, wonderful beyond all hope,
they were coming on. The indispensable gunboats,
tirelessly patrolling the river, kept the Sirdar fully
informed of everything. On Shebaliya Island, forty
miles south of the Atbara, they had slung an angareb
aloft between a couple of spars. The Dervishes' route
led within twelve hundred yards of it. There they
passed everlastingly — men, women, and children;
horses, goats, and donkeys, singing and braying, flying
their banners, thrumming their war-drums, booming
their melancholy war -horn. And on the angareb,
under an umbrella, sat a man and counted them.
There was reason to hope that they were little short
of 20,000.

Conformably with the traditions of the gunboat
service, things did not stop at counting. On the 13th
Bimbashi Sitwell and a section of the 4th Egyptians
lauded from the Fatha, Lieutenant Beatty's boat, and
attacked a large force which had crossed to the island.
There were about 1000 Dervishes and 40 Egyptians,
but neither of the united services saw anything
irregular in the proceedings. In face of the swarm
of enemies Bimbashi Sitwell led his men into a ditch,
whence they kept up a steady fire. Suddenly he felt

TRIUMPHANT AUDACITY.

a tremendous blow on his shoulder; he thought one
of tlie soldiers had let his rifle out of hand, but turn-
ing round to swear, found himself on his back. Thou
he heard the voice of Lieutenant Beatty, R.N. : " It's
all right," it said ; " we're doing 'em proper." " ^lake
it so," he replied nautically, and then, hearing a new
burst of fire from the right, " You'd better order up a
few more file, and turn them out of that." The next
thing he knew, ail:er the blank, was that they were
turned out of that, and that 38 of them were dead,
which was very nearly one each for the 40 Egyptians.
Birabashi Sitwell had a well-furnished pair of shoul-
ders. The bullet ran through both, but missed the
spine. Four days after, he was receiving visitors at
Fort Atbara in pyjamas and a cigarette. Which was
a happy issue to perhaps the most staggeringly auda-
cious of all the audacities perpet.ated by the gunboats
on the Nila

100

XIL

AT KENUR.

The first thing I saw of the social life of Kenur was
the Press censor shaving himself : he said that any-
body might take any quarters that nobody else had
taken. As he spoke my eye fell on a round tukl
between the Sirdar's quarters, the Censor's, and the
telegraph tent — plainly an ideal residence for corre-
spondents. It appeared empty. True, it was not
much bigger than a 'bus-driver's umbrella ; but you
could just get three men and a table into it. It
would do very well for to-day: to-morrow we ex-
pected to fight. As it turned out, we stayed at Kenur
four days, during which the tukl contracted hourly,
till in the end it seemed nearly half big enough for one
person. Moreover, it turned out to be tenanted after
all— by enormous bees, which had dug out the inside
of the wooden framework til) the whole place was one
large hive. Honour and prudence alike seemed to call
for an attack on them. But on reflection I pointed
out that the truest courage lay in sitting quite still

ARRIVAL OF THE SKAFORTHS.

101

when a large bee settled on the back of yonr neck, and
that the truest precaution lay in smoking tobacco.
So we sat down quite still and smoked tobacco for
four days.

Kenur was like all the villages in this part of the
world, only if possible longer. All are built along
the Nile, that the inhabitants may have as short a
way as possible to go for water: Kenur was from two
to three miles long, and the camp stretched the whole
length of it. Between the camp and the river was
nearly a mile of land once cultivated, now overgrown
with Sodom apples. Nervous critics pointed out that
dervishes might attack the long line of the zariba,
and slip in between the force and its water. But
most people knew that nothing of the sort would
happen. The Sirdar is not the man to wait to be
attacj ed, and the long, open camp was beautifully
adapted for bringing out the whole army in fighting-
line at a moment's notice.

The first afternoon at Kenur was enlivened by the
advent of the first four companies of the Seaforths.
They came by steamer, smiling all over, from colonel
to private, to find they were in time. Down by the
river to meet them was an enormous band drawn from
all the blacks, bristling with half-jocose, half-ferocious
swagger as the darlings always are. The Seaforths
formed up into column, deep-chested, upstanding, un-
deniable, a delight to look upon ; the Sirdar fell in by
the colonel, the band began to wail out "Hieland

102

AT EENUB.

Laddie" and "Annie Laurie," and anything else it
thought would make them feel at home, and ofif they
swung towards the southern horn of the zariba. All
round it they marched, every regiment, white, black,
and yellow, lining the route in its turn, following its
colonel in " Hip, hip, hip, hurrah ! " Does not every
native soldier know that the Highlanders have sworn
to wear no trousers till they put them on in Khartum ?
The second four companies came in next day, with
an equal ear-splitting. Colonel Lewis's brigade at
Fort Atbara was only five miles off, connected by
telegraph, so that now we were complete. Meanwhile
the days at Kenur were not wasted — days seldom are
with the Sirdar about. Every .iiorning at half-past
six or so the whole force paraded and manoeuvred.
The first day's exercise was an attack in line, British
on the right, Maxwell's in the centre, M'Don aid's on
the left. The two latter used the attack formation of
the Egyptian army — four of each battalion's six com-
panies in line and two in support. The British had
three Vjattalions in line and the four companies of the
Seaforths in support: on each flank were guns, and
the extreme battalion in each case was in column of
companies. This was the formation in which the
Sirdar advanced on Dongola in '96, except that the
place of the flanking columns was there taken on the
right by the cavalry — who now were of course recon-
noitring all day — and on the left by the Kile with
the gunboats.

A STATELY SPECTACLK

103

else it
S* they
I. All

black,
ing its
■j every

sworn
artum ?
y, with
^ade at
jted by
mwhile
lorn are
alf-past
Deuvred.

British
aid's on
ation of
ix Corn-
ish had
3 of the
ins, and
lunm of
lich the
that the
on the
e recon-

ile with

The next day the force manoeuvred in brigade
squares in echelon, and the day after formed one
square of the whole army, skeleton companies repre-
senting the Third Brigade. It was in the first of these
formations that we did all the subsequent marching
up the Atbara — a stately spectacle. On the right,
and leading, was the British brigade — an advancing
wave of desert-coloured khaki, with a dash of dark
for the kilts of the Highlanders. They marched in
columns of fours, that being a handy and flexible for-
mation, and easily kept in line : the officer has only
to see that four men are keeping a proper front with
the rest of the brigade instead of fifty ; and at the
word all can wheel up into line in less than a minute.
Next, leftward and clear in rear, so that an attack on
its front or the British flank would meet a cross-fire,
marched Maxwell's brigade. Leftward and in rear
of that came Macdonald. The Egyptian forces, march-
ing in line for the front and rear of the square,
and in column for its flanks, and having darker uni-
form, made a denser blotch on the desert than the
British. But dark or light, when you looked along
the force it ^vas tremendous, going forward wave by
wave irresistibly, devouring the desert.

Thus, on ti^e morning of Sunday, March 20, the
force broke up from Kenur. The camp went wild,
for the news said that Mahmud was actually on the
Atbara at last. He had seized Hudi ford, it was said,
seven miles from the junction of the rivers ; and to

104

AT KENUR.

Hudi we were to march straight across the desert. The
Intelligence Department more than half disbelieved
the native stories. The native has no words for dis-
tance and number but " near " and " far," " few " and
"many" ; "near" may be anything within twenty miles,
while " many " ranges from a hundred to a hundred
thousand. However we marched — eleven miles at
two miles an hour, in a choking sand-storm that
muffled the sun to a pale winter moon, till at three in
the afternoon we struck the river at Hudi. Here we
found three battalions of Lewis's brigade, the 15th
being left to garrison Fort Atbara ; but devil a
dervish.

105

rt. The
K'lieved
for dis-
w " and
y miles,
mndred
iiiles at
m that
three in
lere we
le 15th
devil a

XIII.

ON THE ATBARA.

Coming down to the Atbara after the desert was like
entering the gates of heaven. To you in England,
fields pulsing with green wheat and gardens aflame
with tulips, it might have seemed faded. To us it
was paradise.

The north bank drops twenty feet plumb to the
sky-blue river. A stone's -throw across, the other
bank is splashed with grass that struggles against
jaundice; but it is real grass, md almost greenish,
and after the desert we are very grateful for it. Be-
yond that shelves a bare white-brown beach, thirsty
for flood-time; beyond that a wail of white-green
new - fledged mimosa topped with turrets of palm.
Over it all the intense blue canopy of midday, the
fires of sunset, or the black roof of midnight pierced
with innumerable stars, so white and clear that you
almost hold up your hand to touch them — it was
worth a couple of marches of sand - storm to come
into such a land.

106

ON THE ATBARA.

Our side, too, was thick with mimosa and dom-
palm, and tufted with grass — great coarse bunches,
mostly as thick as straw and as yellow; but a few
blades maintained a bloodless green, and horses and
camels went without their sleep to tear at them. The
camels eat the mimosa too — elsewhere a bush that
grows thorns and little yellow honey-breathing flufif-
balls, but on the fruitful Atbara a cedar-spreading
tree, with young leaves like an acacia's. The camels
rear up their affected heads, and ecstatically scrunch
thorns that would run any other beast's tongue
through ; their lips drop blood, but they never notice
it. And the blacks eat the dom-nuts — things like
petrified prize apricots, whose kernel makes vegetable
ivory, and whose husks, they say, taste like ginger-
bread ; though, having no ore-crusher in my kit, I
cannot speak to that. But lanky Sambo was never
tired of shying at them as they clustered just above
the dead leaves and just below the green, and Private
Atkins lent a hand with enthusiasm. Then Sambo
would grin all round his head and crack the flinty
things between his sliiniug teeth, and Thomas would
stand staring at him, uncertain whether he was a
long-lost brother-in-arms or something out of a circus.

Tiiey might well chew mimosa, and halfa-grass,
and dom-nuts, for even on the river we were in a
desert. We marched and camped in an utterly empty
land. Atbara banks are green, birds whistle and coo
in the tree- tops, now and again a hare switchbacks

dom-

nches,
a few
es and
The
b that
fluff-
eading
camels
crunch
tongue
notice
^s like
ge table
ginger-
kit, I
3 never
b above
Private
Sambo
J flinty
1 would
was a
, circus,
a-grass,
re in a
' empty
and coo
3hbacks

AN EMPTY LAND.

107

across the line of march ; but along all the river there
was not one living man. Here on the Atbara there
were but rare traces of population — a few stones, half
buried, standing for salt-workings, or a round, half
washed-out mud-bank for a wall.

In the empty Nile villages their bones were long
ago gnawed white by jackals and hyenas, their sons
were speared and thrown into the river, their wives
and daughters led away to the harems of Omdurmau.
It is good land for the Sudan in this corner of the
two rivers, worth, in places, perhaps as much as a
penny an acre; and the Khalifa has swept it quite
clean, and left it quite soulless.

And soulless it seemed to stay. We slept one
night at Hudi in a scnd-floored quadrangle of zariba,
and you could hear the men expecting batile througii
their sleep. Next day, still looking to see black heads
and spears rise over every sky-line, we marched to
Eas el Hudi, six miles farther. Both Hudis were
fords over the Atbara, and where one ended the
other began : as the river was already nearly all ford,
and the whole place contained not a single hut,
you could call anywhere anything you Tked. That
same day (March 21st) the cavalry found the enemy.
Perhaps it would be more strictly correct to say that
the enemy found them: they were halted and dis-
mounted when the Dervish horse suddenly attacked
the sentries. The troopers were in their saddles and
out at the enemy smartly enough, and after a short

108

ON THE ATBARA.

scuffle the Dervishes sheered off into the bush. The
cavalry lost seven troopers killed and eight wounded,
of whom two died next day. These were the first
fatalities of the campaign.

Next day, the bulk of the force remaining in Ras
Hudi camp, a stronger reconnaissance went out — all the
cavalry, with Maxims and the 13th Sudanese in sup-
port. Just as we were sitting down to breakfast we
heard heavy firing up river. On the sound rang out
bugles ; syces could be seen frantically slamming
saddles on to horses, and tugging them over to the
Sirdar's headquarters. Ten seconds later the whole
force was getting under arms. I pushed a tinned
sausage down my throat and a biscuit into my holster,
looked that my water-bottle was both full and well-
corked — of course it was neither — and blundered
through tussocks and mimosa - thorns out of camp.
Already the long columns of khaki were combining
into brigade-squares ; in a matter of minutes the army
was riveted together and rolling majestically over the
swaying desert towards the firing. This time, by a
variation on the usual order, Macdonald's brigade was
on the right, its front level with Gatacre's, while Max-
well was echeloned on the left, and Lewis in support :
the reason for this was that half a mile of bush fringed
the Atbara, and the blacks were expected to be handier
in it than the British. So we marched and marched.
The British officers had had no breakfast, but they
were used to that by now : officers and men — white,

A FALSE AIARM.

109

black, and brown — all tingled with the exultant anti-
cipation of battle. At last, four miles or so out of
camp, we halted before a mile- wide slope of stony
gravel — a God-sent field of fire. On the brow we
could see a picket of cavalry : presently a rider
detached himself, and came bucketing towards the
Sirdar's flag. The order was given to load, and the
sigh of contentment could be heard above the clatter
of locks. It had come at last!

But it hadn't. We had noted it as ominous that no
more firing had beckoned us as we advanced. The
reconnaissance and the fight alike seemed to have
faded in front of us like a mirage. The sun was
getting hot overhead: to go on indefinitely without
any kind of baggage was not to be thought of. " Rise
up, men, and prepare to go home," came the reluctant
order. The army rose up and faced about, and cursed
its way into camp again. It turned out afterwards
that the enemy'o cavalry had appeared in force, and
that ours led them back to the 13th. CoUinson Bey
formed square, and gave them a volley or two at half
a mile or so. A few Dervishes came out of their
saddles ; and that was all, for they fell back and re-
appeared no more.

After that came to-morrow and to-morrow and to-
morrow. Some days there was a little shooting, other
days there was not ; and we in camp heard and saw
nothing in either case. Every morning one or two
native battalions with Maxims went out, support-

ON THE ATBARA.

ing the cavalry. They went out about three, and
frizzled through morning, midday, and afternoon at a
genial spot called Khor Abadar, five or six miles out :
a khor is a dij desert watercourse, but this one was no
more — nor less — than about a mile of what looked like
rather rough sea solidified into clay. Having frizzled
duly there all day, they would swing in again at seven
or so, striding into camp bolt upright and with a
jaunty snap, as if they had been out a quarter of an
hour for a constitutional. You could always tell when
the reconnaissance was coming in by the rolls of ^ust
that blotted out the camp. At the corner where they
stepped inside the zariba, Blackfriars on a November
night was midday to it. You caught at a black face
and the top of a shouldered rifle floating past from one
eye to the other ; you felt, rather than beheld, a loom-
ing horse-head and lance- butt over your shoulder.
You neither saw nor heard, but were aware of regi-
ments and squadrons as in the dream of a dog-sleep.
And as lazy day sweated after lazy day, the whole
camp and the whole army began to dim into the
phantom of a dream. The vivacicas, never-sleepy
bugles became a singing in your ear, tne ripple of sun
on bayonets was spots before the eyes, the rumour of
the crouching enemy was the echo of a half-remembered
fairy tale very, very far away.

For, to be quite truthful, during that long succes-
sion of to-morrows at Kas el Hudi, nobody quite knew
where the Dervishes were. It was quite certain they

WAITING THE ENEMY.

Ill

were somewhere near, for their cavalry was seen
almost daily ; and they must be camped on the
Atbara, for there was nowhere else wh<3nce they
could get water. We were quite confident that they
were there, and that the fight was coming, and we
invented all sorts of stories to explain their delay in
coming on. They started down the Nile fast; they have
slackened now — so we assured ourselves — to wait for
their rear-guard, or to reconnoitre, or to knock down
dom-uuts, or fur any of a thousand reasons, and we
were here a day sooner than was necessary. A day
too soon, of course, was nothing — or rather it would
be nothing after we had fought ; at present an extra
day certanly meant a little longer discomfort. You
must remember that the army was nearly 1400 miles
from the sea, and about 1200 from any place that the
things armies want could possibly come from. It had
to be supplied along a sand - banked river, a single
line of rail, which was carrying the material for its
own construction as well, and various camel-tracks.
Tliat 13,000 men could ever have been brought into
this hungry limbo at all shows that the Sirdar is the
only English general who has known how to campaign
in this country. The real enemy, he has seen, is not
the Dervishes, whom we have always beaten, but the
Sudan itself.

He was conquering it; but for the moment the
Sudan had an opening, and began trying us rather
high. Not me personally, who had three camels

112

ON THK ATBARA.

and two blankets and much tinned meat. To
me and my likes the Sirdar's refusal of transport —
most natural and proper, after all — had been a bless-
ing; it had made correspondents self-supporting, and
therewith rich. But for the moment the want of
transport and Mahinud's delay in coming on was hard
on the troops — especially hard on the British brigade,
and hardest of all on their officers. Officers and men
came alike with one blanket and no overcoat. Now
you must know that, though the Sudan can be live
coals by day, it can be aching ice by night. It is the
healthiest climate in the world if you have shade at
noon and many rugs an hour before reveille ; but if
you have not, and especially if you happen to be a
kilted Higlilander, it interferes with sleep.

You must further remember that we left Kenur
with the intention of fighting next day or the
next. The British took the expectation seriously;
the Egyptian oliicers did not. "You see," said one,
" I've been in this bally country five years ; so when
I was told to bring two days' kit, I brought a fort-
night's." He was now sending his private camel back
to Fort Atbara for more; the officers of the British
brigade had no private camels. The officers had
brought only what could go into a haversack, which
includes, roughly, soap and a sponge, and a tooth-
brush and a towel, but not a clean shirt, nor a
handkerchief, nor shaving-tackle; so that the gilded
popinjays were a little tarnished just at present. One

HOW BRITISH OFFICERS FARED.

113

of them said, most truly, that an English tramp in
summer, with a sweet haystack to sleep under, and
sixpence a-day for bread and cheese and beer at way-
side inns, was out of reckoning better off than a
British officer on the banks of the Atbara. He slept
on a pillow of dusty sand, which worked steadily into
his hair; he got up in the middle of the night to
patrol; then he lay down again and shivered. The
men could sleep three together under triple layer of
blanket ; the officers must sleep each in his position
on the flank or in the centre of his company. When
he got up in the morning he had nothing to shave
with, and lucky if he got a wash. The one camel-
load of mess stores was wellnigh eaten up by now;
he received the same ration as the men. His one
shirt was no longer clean ; he hardly dared pull out
his one handkerchief ; he went barefoot inside his boots
while his socks were being washed. And always —
night or day, on fatigue or at leisure, relatively clean
or unredeemedly dirty, when he had borrowed a shave
and felt almost like a gentleman again, or when he
lay with his head in the dust and the black private
doubted whether he should salute or not — his first
paternal thought was the wellbeing of his men.

When we found Mahmud he should pay for it.
But in the meantime where was he ? There was a
perpetual series of cavalry reconnaissances, and a
perpetual stream of scallywags coming in from liis
camp. Any day from dawn to da.*k you might see

114

ON THE ATBARA-

half-clofhed black men squatting before Colonel
Wingate. Some were fairly fat; some were bags of
bones. But all stated with one consent that they
were hungry, and having received refreshment felt
that they could do no less than tell Colonel Wingate
such tidings as they conceived he w( Id like to hear.
There was no such thing as a place on the Atbara,
as I have explained: there were names on the map,
but as they named nothing in particular you could
put them anywhere you liked within ten miles or
so. Also, there is no such thing as distance in the
native mind, so that the native also could locate any-
thing anywhere that seemed convenient.

On the 27th Bimbashi Haig reconnoitred the op-
posite bank of the Atbara up to Manawi — say eighteen
miles — and saw no trace of the enemy. Combining
that fact with the precipitate from the scallywags'
stories, we came to the conclusion that Mahmud and
Osman were on the southern bank, somewhere near
the spot marked on the map as Hilgi. It was believed
that on the first news of the first cavalry contact they
entrenched themselves there in a four-mile belt of
scrub. Now General Hunter had made a reconnais-
sance up the Atbara last winter as far as Adarama —
indispensably informative it turned out — and the Staff
know what sort of scrub it is. It is an impenetrable,
flesh-tearing jungle of mimosa-spears and dom-palm
and stumbly halfa-grass and hanging ropes of creeper:
no army in the world could possibly attack through it.

A BOLD STRATAGEM.

115

That being so, the Sirdar's course appeared to be
to wait at Eas el Hudi until Mahmud came out.
Hunger might bring him out — only as yet it had not.
The more trustworthy of the deserters said that there
was still a certain store of food. You must know
that the Dervishes have honeycombed the Sudan with
caches of buried grain: many have been found and
opened by the Egyptian army, but it is possible
that some remain to draw on. Moreover, men v/ho
were at Toski told how, in the starving army of
Wad-el-Nejumi, the fighting men were well fed
enough : it was the women and the children and
the followers whose ribs broke through the skin.
The scallywags were starved, of course: that is why
they came in, and being starved themselves they saw
the whole army in like case. But it seemed by the
best information that what with food they brought,
and stores they found, and dom-nuts they knocked off
the trees, the dervishes had a few days of fairly filled
stomach before them yet.

Then how to fetch them out ? The situation called
for a bold stroke, and the Sirdar answered it, after his
wont, with a bold and safe one. On the morning of
March 24 the 15th Egyptians left Fort Atbara in the
three gunboats for Shendi. Left at Shendi were all
the women of Muhmud's force, and with his women
gone the Sudani is only half a man. It might draw
him and it might not ; it was worth trying.

116

XIV.

THE RAID ON SHENDI.

I HAD steppiid out in the morning to pick fruit from
the sanduh for breakfast. Below me, in the shallow
river, a damson-skitined black was bathing and wash-
ing his white Friday clothes and whistling " The
British Grenadiers." The sun was just up; but in
the Sudan he begins to blister things the moment he
is over the horizon. The sanduh lay on the south side
of the north wall of our zariba. Greengages were
glittering in the young sunshine; but to pull up mis-
apprehension, I may as well say at once that sanduk
is the Arabic for provision-case, and that our green-
gages glittered through glass bottles. It may be that
you were never much attracted by bottled fruits. But
they taste of fruit a good deal more than tinned ones ;
and when your midday is six hours of solid 110 in
the shade, you will find bottled fruits one of the
things least impossible to eat that you are likely to
get.
Therewith entered the Mess-President's head camel-

A NEW USE FOR ELI-IMAN.

117

man. He was a Jaali by tribe; his name meant
"Powerful in the Faith"; and in this wilderness I
liked to think that if he were not black, and had no
moustache, and no razor-cut tribal marks on his checks,
his tilted nose and smiling teeth, and erect, sprightly
carriage would make him a rather pretty -ugly Frencli
girl. He approached his lord's bed before the tent
door and pattered Arabic faster than I can keep up
with. But the sum of his tale was this : that the raid
on Shendi had been a great success, many Dervishes
were slain, and many taken, with many women
, \nd children ; that his fellow-Jaalin had done best
part of the execution, and that the 15tli Battalion was
already back again at Fort Atbara.

Then let us go to Fort Atbara, said we, and hear all
about it. We are going mouldy for want of exercise
— t nd, to be quite open with you, the liquor famine
here is getting grave. Last night the boy came up
with a couple of bottles : " Only two wine more," said
he, and mournfully displayed one Scrubbs's Cloudy
Ammonia — try it in your bath, but not in your
drinking-cup — and one Elliman's Embrocation. So
saddle up; it is 1000 to 5 against a fight here to-da}-,
and it is better to sweat a-horseback in the desert
oven-blast than fry in sand and camp-smells here.

So the Mess-President and I picked our way over
the spongy ground outside camp where the water lies
in flood time, and then swung out, quarter of an hour
canter and ten minutes walk, over the hard sand u.:\d

118

THE RAID ON SHENDL

gravel of the desert. The way from Fort Af^ara was
trodden already into a road as broad as Berber High
Street, and aliuost as populous — now a white under-
clothed Jaali scallywag with a Remington and a
donkey, now a lolloping convoy of camels, now a
couple of Greeks with stores. For the Jew, as we
know him, is a child for commercial enterprise along-
side the Sudau Greek. A Greek had his o i^ens going
on Ferkee field before the last shot was fired; the
moment the Suakim road was opened the Greek's
camels were on it. The few English merchants here
were hard and enterprising, and they had good stuff —
only just when you wanted it, it was usually just a
day's journey av/ay. The Greek gets his stuff up every-
where: it* is often inferior stuff, and he caravans it
with a double-barrelled rifle on his shoulder and
visions of Dervishes behind every mimosa bush; but
he gets it up. He chargps high for it, but he deserves
every piastre he gets.

At Fort Atbara there stood already a small bazaar
of tukls, and a pink shirt -sleeved, black -stubble-
chinned Greek in each among his wares. There we
laid in every known liquor except claret and beer ;
there we even got six dozen Pilsener-bottles of soda-
water — of such are the privations of the Sudan.
Most of the Greeks seemed to confine their energies
to sardines, many degrees over proof. But one had
planted a little salad-garden ; another knew where he
could get tomatoes; a third specialised in scented

THK SUDAN GREEK.

119

ara was

lY High
; under-
and a
now a
, as we
e along-
QS going
ed; the
Greek's
nts here
1 stuff—
J j^ist a
ip every-
avans it
der and
ash; but
deserves

1 bazaar
stubble-
here we
id beer ;
of soda-
Sudan,
energies
one had
vhere he
scented

soap and stationery. Eemember, we were twelve
hundred miles from the nearest place where people
buy such things in shops ; remember, too, that not
an inch of Government truck or steamer could be
spared for private dealers ; and then you will realise
what a Nansen of retail trade is the Sudan Greek.

But a correspondent cannot live by soda-water and
tabasco sauce alone: let us try to acquire some in-
formation. In the commanderia — that stable house
of mud, six-roomed and lofty roofed, the stateliest
mansion of the Sudan — sits Hickman Bey, who swep<:
out Shendi. In the English army it would be almost
a scandal that an officer of his service should go any-
where or do anytbing. The Egyptian army is an
army of young men, with the red-hot dash of a boy
tempered by responsibility into the fine steel of a
man at his best for both plan and deed.

But about the raid. To listen to any one of the
men who conducted it you would think that he had
been a passenger, and that all the others had done all
the work: that is their way. The three gunboats
with their naval officers — now <you observe the full
significance of the fact that the British Navy's com-
mand of the sea runs up to the Sixth Cataract — with
the 15th Battalion, guns, and 150 friendly Jaalin,
left Fort Atbara on March 24. They were to have
surprised Shendi in the morning of the 26th ; but
luck was bad, though it turned out not to matter
much. One of the boats went aground, as boats will

120

THE RAID ON SHKNDL

on a daily falling Nile. It took some hours to get
her off, and then, as it was too late for Saturday
morning, and an afternoon attack would leave no
light for pursuit, it was decided to make it Sunday.
So the boats went slow, stopping here and there to
wood up on ;he depeopled banks ; but at one place it
fell out that the landing-party came on three Dervislies.
One of them got away with his skin and the alarm.
When he came to Shendi the garrison — 700 men with
many women and children — were tom-tomming a
fantasia on account of an alleged victory whereof
Mahnmd had advertised them. The fantasia broke
up hurriedly, and all the best quality women were
sent away on camels to Omdurman. That meant, of
course, the Baggara Arab women. The women of
the black riflemen and spearmen were left to shift.
At ten on Sunday morning Colonel Hickman and
his raiders duly appeared and landed. They found
the enemy drawn up between the bank and rising
ground ; there were four forts — one sunken, three cir-
cular earth walls — but Mahmud took away the guns
with him. The Fifteenth formed column of fours and
marched placidly in front of the enemy, taking not the
least notice of their fire — which indeed hurt nobody —
till it outflanked their left. The two forces were then
more or less like a couple of L's lying on their backs,
one inside the other. The dervish L was the inside
one — the stem of it fighting men and the foot scally-

THE JAALIN'S CHANCE.

121

to get

turday
,ve no
unday.
lere to
(lace it
'vishes.
alarm.
;n with
niiig a
?vhereof
L broke
n were
eant, of
men of
shift,
an and
found
rising
ree eir-
|he guns
urs and
not the
body —
re then
backs,
le inside
scally-

wags carrying bundles; the Egyptian L's stem was
the Fifteenth, and its foot, stretching inland towards
the loot, the Jaalin.

Birabashi Peake, of the Artillery, let ofif two rounds
of shrapnel over the scallywags, and the fight was
over. Instantly the plain was quite black with the
baggage the dervishes dropped — bundles of clothes,
angarebs, chairs, big war-drums, helmets, spears, gib-
bas, bags of dhurra, donkeys, horses, women, children.
Every dervish was making for Omdurman as hard as
his legs would let him.

Now came the Jaalin's chance. The Jaalin used to
be a flourishing tribe, and inhabited the island of
Meroe — the country between the Atbara and the Blue
Nile. A few years ago the tribe had a difference of
opinion with the Khalifa : there are not many Jaalin
now, and what there are inhabit where they can.
The survivors are anxious to redress the balance by
removing a corresponding proportion of Baggara, and
they began. After a time they came to Hickman
Bey, panting, but only half happy. " It is very good,
thou Excellency," they cried ; " we're killing them
splendidly. They're all out in the desert, only we
can't get at them to kill them enough. Can't we have
some of the donkeys to pursue on ? " " Take the lot,"
said his Excellency.

So the island of Meroe beheld the novel sight of
Baggara cavalry, on brood mares with foals at foot,

122

THE BAID ON SHENDL

fleeing for their lives before Jaalin on donkeys. Most
of the five-and-twenty horsemen got away to tell the
news to the Khalifa ; by this time probably their
right hands and right feet were ofif. The footmen the
Jaalin pursued till ten at night, and slew to the tune
of 160 ; also there were 645 prisoners, mostly women.
They got a tremendous reception from the women at
Fort Atbara when they reached it, and joined in it
themselves quite unaffectedly. By now they are pro-
bably the wives of such black soldiers as are allowed
to marry ; as like as not many of them actually had
husbands, brothers, sons, fathers in one Sudanese bat-
talion or another. A Sudan lady's married life is full
of incident in these days ; it might move the envy of
Fargo, North Dakota. But when all is said and done,
a black soldier with a life engagement at 15s. a-month
minimum, with rations and allowances, is a more
brilliant catch than any Baggara that ever came out
of Darfur.

It was a raid that for neatness and thoroughness
might teach a lesson to Osman Digna himself. What
Osman and Mahmud said when they heard their men's
women were gone, and that their own retreat along
the Nile could be harried for a hundred miles as far
as Shabluka, I do not pretend to know. I should be
sorry to meet any of the ends they must have invoked
upon all the Sirdar's relatives.

And when we got back, and the camels seesawed

THE cook's GRIEVINCE.

123

in with the sandttJcs, the cook, for all his new wealth,
was very angry. "You Imve brouglit no curry-
powder, thou Effcndim," ha said. " You didn't say
you wanted any curry-powder," the Mess-President de-
fended himself. " Yes I did," said tlie cook, sternly ;
" I said we were short of all vegetables."

124

XV.

REST AND RECONNAISSANCES.

The force remained in camp at Ras el Hudi till April
3. Mahmud's exact position was still undetermined,
his intentions yet more so. It was a queer state of
things — two armies within twenty miles of each other,
both presumably wishlul to fight, both liable to run
short of provisions, yet neidier attacking and neither
quite Rure where the other was. But the Sirdar had
always the winning hand. While he sat on the At-
bara Mahmud was stale-mated. It may be supposed
that he came down the Nile to fight: very well, here
was the Sirdar ready to fight and beat him. Osman
Digna probably had raiding in his head. But he could
not raid Berber while the Sirdar was below him on
the Atbara : that ^^'oul(l have meant seventy miles
across the desert, wiih wells choked up — though he
may not have known this — and the Sirdar always
liable to attack him on flank or to get to r)erber before
him. One day v/e had a report that he had started on
a journey the other v/ay, towards Adarama; but, if he

MAHMUD STALE-MATED.

125

ever went at all, it was probably to dvy np |:rrain:
there was nothing worth raiding about Adam ma.
Finally, now that Shendi was destroyed, to go buck
meant ruin ; the blacks, irritated by the loss of their
women, would desert ; the gunboats would harry the
retreat as far as Shabluka ; it was even possible that
the whole Anglo-Egyptian force would get to the Nile
before they did. And if he stayed where he was, then
in the end he must either fight or starve.

Mahmud was stale-mated, no doubt, whatever course
he took ; only in the meantime he took none. He did
not move, he did not fight, and he did not starve.
And we were still not quite sure wliere he was. The
army stayed a fortnight in Eas Iludi camp, recon-
noitring daily, with an enemy within twenty miles,
whose precise position it did not know. It hardly
seems to speak well for the cavalry. Yet it would be
most unjust to blame them : the truth is that the
Egyptian cavalry was hopelessly outnumbered and
outmatched. Broadwood Bey had eight squadrons —
say 800 lances — with eight Maxims and one horse
battery. There were also two companies of camei-
corps, but these were generally wanted for convoys.
Against this Mahmud, as he said afterwards himself,
had 4000 Baggara horse.

Furthermore, it cannot be said that the Egyptian
cavalry were above criticism. They were enormously
improved, as will shortly be seen : ever since the Don-
gola campaign they had come on greatly, but it is

126

EEST AND RECONNAISSANCES.

doubtful whether they will ever hava the dash of the
best European or Indian cavalry. They havi great
merits: in an empty land they will live on almost
nothing, and no stretch of work can subdue their iron
bodies to fatigue. They are no longer open to sus-
picion on the score of courage. But in reconnaissance
work they want smartness and intellij^ence. It could
not be imputed to them as a fault that they did not
ride through five times their force and see what was
behind. But it was a fact that the Baggara worked
better in the bush than they did. Day after day they
would rid(3 out and see nobody or only a vedette or
two ; as soon as they began to retire they were fol-
lowed by dervishes, who had apparently been seeing
them all the time. An officer told me that one day,
walking out from Fort Atbara, he saw a returning
patrol under a native lieutenant. He stood still under
a tree to see if they would see him : they passed him
by like men asleep. In a word, the Egyptian trooper
is what it is inevitable he should be. You cannot
breed a light quick-witted scout out of a hundred
centuries of drudgery and serfdom. He will improve
with time ; meanwhile he is still a fellah

Considering the quantity and quality of their
material, it was wonderful that Broadwood Bey
and his British officers did as much as they did.
To work the weakest arm of a force cannot be in-
spiriting work, but they stuck to it with unquench-
able courage and inexhaustible patience. If it be

GENERAL HUNTER FINDS THE ENEMY.

127

asked why the cavalry was not strengthened with
British or Indian regiments, the answer is very easy.
It was almost a miracle that so large a force had been
got up to the Atbara and fed there ; to bring up more
horses into a country almost naked of fodder was a
physical impossibility, too impossible even for Sir
Herbert Kitchener.

But if the cavalry was for a while unsuccessful in
localising Mahmud's entrenchment, it was wholly suc-
cessful in keeping his scouts from coming near us, and
that was no small achievement. The Bag<>ara might
have made things very unpleasant for us even at Ras
el Hudi. But for the patrols of the unwearying
cavalry they could easily have crept up in the bush
across the river and fired into camp all night every
night. They might have got below the camp and cut
up convoy after convoy till hunger drove i he Sirdar
down to Fort Atbara again and opened the way to
Berber. We sat day after day and wondered why
they never did it; but they never did.

At last, on March 30, General Hunter went out.
WitVi him went the cavalry, the horse-battery, and
four Maxims, while two battalions of infantry and
a field battery were advanced in support to Khor
Abadar. When he got back that evening everybody
knew that Mahmud's stronghold was found. He had
gone on until he came to it. He had ridden up to
within 300 yards of it and looked in. What he saw,
of course, the Intelligence Department knew better

128

BEST AND RECONNAISSANCES.

than I did, but some things were common property.
The position faced the open desert — we all breathed
freely at this — and went right back through the scrub
to the river. Round it ran a tremendous zariba three
miles long, and in the centre, on an eminence, were
trenches affording three tiers of fire. This proved to
be an exaggeration as regarded size, and a misunder-
standing otherwise : the triple trench ran nearly round
the position. What was certain and to the point was
that the place was trimmed with black heads, but
that their owners seemed reluctant to come out. The
horse-battery gave them a score of rounds or so, but
they made no answer, and in their thick bush any
casualties they may have had were safely concealed.

However, here at last was Mahmud marked down.
To be precise, he was at Nakheila, eighteen miles away,
as the cavalry and Staff said, though, when the in-
fantry came to foot it, they made it well over twenty :
every infantry man knows how cavalry and Staff will
underrate distances. Wherever he V/as, we knew the
way to him, and we could take cur time. Now what
would the Sirdar do ?

For the next two days tha camp buzzed with
strategy and tactics. It was no longer what Mahmud
would do: Mahmud, as we have seen, could do noth-
ing. But would the Sirdar wait for him to starve into
attack or dispersal, or would he go for Nakheila ?
Many people thought that, being a careful man, he
would wait and not risk the loss an attack would

EEASONS FOR THE ATTACK.

129

operty.
'eathed
3 scrub
a three
e, were
oved to
mnder-
r round
int was
is, but
:. The
so, but
sh any
jealed.
. down.
s away,
the in-
wenty :
aff will
lew the
w what

i with
^ahmud
noth-
ve into
kheila ?
lan, he
would

cost; but they were wrong. On the evening of April
1 it became known that we were moving; on the
morning of the 3rd four miles forward to Abadar.
Some theorists still held out that the change of camp
was a mere matter of health; and indeed sanitation
had long cried for it. Others held that the Sirdar was
not the man to lengthen his line of communication
for nothing: the move meant attack.

What considerations resolved the Sirdar to storm
Mahmud's zariba, I do not pretend to know. But
many arguments for his decision suggested themselves
at once. It was true that the Dervislies could not
stay at Nakheila for ever, but as yet there was no sign
of starvation from them. On the other hand, it was no
joke to supply 12,000 men even seventeen miles from
Fort Atbara by camel-transport alone: as time wore
on and camels wore out, it became less and less easy.
Secondly, the white brigade was beginning to feel the
heat, the inadequate shelter, and the poor food : up to
now its state of health had been wondt^rfui — only
two percent of sick or thereal)0uts — but now began to
appear dysentery and enteric. Finally, it was hardly
fitting that so large a British force should sit down
within twenty miljs of an enemy and not smash him.
There was a good deal of lurking sympathy with
Mahdism in some Egyptian quarters far enough away
not to know what I^Iahdism was: to shrink from a
decisive attack would nourish it. The ettect on the
troops themselves would be disheartening, and dis-

130

REST AND RECONNAISSANCES.

heartenment spells lassitude and sickness. And to
the Dervishes themselves a battle would be a far
more killing blow than a dispersal and retreat. In
all dealings with a savage enemy, I suppose the
rule holds that it is better and cheaper in the end
to attack, and attack, and attack again. All con-
siderations of military reputation pleaded unanimously
that Mahmud must be destroyed in battle; and at
last the army was on the direct road to destroy
him.

131

XVL

CAMEL-CORPS AND CAVALRY.

"Camel CORPS luck," said the Bimbashi, and smiled
bitterly, then swore. " my God, if this is the big
show ! "

Climbing up over sand -bags on to one of the
gun -platforms of Fort Atbara, we crouched in the
embrasure and listened. Boom — boom — boom; very
faint, but very distinct, and at half-minute intervals.
We had ridden in the day before from the Sirdar's
camp up the Atbara to buy more bottled fruit and,
alas! more gin from the Greek shanties on the Nile
beach. A convoy, on a similar errand, had been
attacked by Dervishes half an hour after we had
passed it, yet we heard not a shot. To-day, all this
way off, we heard plainly : it must be an action indeed.
Our own army, we knew, was not to move. Could it
be that Mahmud had come down and was attacking
us at Abadar ? And we eighteen miles away at Fort
Atbara, and down there in the sand-drift roadway the
wobbling, grousing camels, that were to be conveyed

132

CAMEL-CORPS AND CAVALRY.

out at two miles an hour ! We joined the Bimbashi,
and cursed miserably on the chance of it.

But no, we struggled to ] ersuade ourselves, it
couldn't be so bad as that, it must be a battalion
come out to clear the road for our convoy. Or it
must 1 ^.h^ .connaissance that was going up to the
dervish z'-d^\- at Nakheila. Correspondents are not
allowed t^ go :?h. reconnaissances, so that if it is
only that, there's no great loss after all. Anyhow it
is eleven o'clock now. The baggage camels have
lolloped out under the mud guard-house, through the
fort -gate, through the gap in the mimosa -thorn
zariba. The camel-corps escort is closing up in rear :
we are ofif.

Half a mile ahead ride five blacks, their camels
keeping perfect line. The sun flashes angrily on their
rifle-barrels, but they look him steadily in the face,
peering with puckered eyes over the desert below
them: in this land of dust and low scrub a camel's
hump is almost a war balloon. Far out on their right
I see a warily advancing dot, which is four more ; a
black dot on the rising leftward skyline, three more ;
out on the right flank of the baggage camels, shaving
the riverside thickets, gleam white spider legs, which
are a couple of camel-troopers more. They stop and
examine a track ; they break into a trot and disappear
behind a palm clump ; they reappear walking. But
the main force of the two companies rides close about
the swinging quadrangle of baggage camels — in front,

CAMEL-CORPS LUCK.

133

in rear :

on flank, in rear. Slowly and sleepily the mass of
beasts strolls on into the desert, careless what horsemen
might be wheeling into line behind the ridge, or what
riflemen might be ambushed in the scrub. But the
scouts in front are looking at every footprint, over
every skyline, behind every clump of camel-thoni.

To be out of an exciting action is camel-corps luck ;
this is camel-corps work. The Bimbashi missed his
part in the reconnaissance to ride all ni^;ht ;nd guard
the menaced convoy; he slept one hoi ' at aawn, and
now returns in the sun. He is quite fresh and active.
This is his usual work ; but he is rot nappy because
this also is his usual luck. Only th,. Egyptian army
would have found it very difficult to do without him
and his desert cavalry in the past, and even now, with
all the desert roads except the Bayuda behind it,
finds plenty of work for the camel-corps still. And
one day they say, " Take out twenty camels," and
the next day, "Take out the rest." The next day,
" Those twenty that weren't out yesterday can't
possibly be tired" — but the Bimbashi goes out every
day. The skin is scaled ofl' his nose with sun, and
his eyes are bloodshot with sand, and the hairs of his
moustache have snapped off short with drought, and
his hair is bleaching to white. All that is the hall-
mark of the Sudan.

Getting into the saddle had been li1<e sitting down
suddenly in a too hot bath; by this time you could
not bear your hand upon it. Out in the dcjsprc

:t'

134

CAMKL-CORPS AND CAVALRY.

! !
. ii ■

gleamed the steel-blue water and black reflected trees
of the mirage; even in mirage there is no green in
the midday sun of the Sudan. What should be green
is black; all else is sun-coloured. It is torment to
face the gaudy glare that stabs your eyes. If you
lift them to the sky it is not very blue — I have seen
far deeper in England; but it is alive all over with
quivering passionate heat. Beating from above and
burning from below, the sun strikes at you heavily.
There is no way out of it except through the hours
into evening. No sound but boot clinking on camel-
stirrup : you hear it through a haze. You ride along
at a walk, half dead. You neither feel nor think, you
hardly even know that it is hot. You just have
consciousness of a heavy load hardly to be borne,
pressing, pressing down on you, crushing you under
the dead weight of sun.

We met the usual people — a Greek with four
camels, a bare - legged boy on a donkey, a bare-
breasted woman under a bundle — the second and
third-class passengers of the desert. We questioned
them with alternate triumph and despair, as they
answered alternately after their kind. One said it
was two squadrons, a battery, and a battalion fighting
in our old camp at Ras Hudi ; another said Mahmud
had come down to Abadar and had fought the Sirdar
for four hours ; another said Mahmud had gone right
away, and that the whole Anglo-Egyptian army had
gone after him. Every story was wholly false, be-

THE SCENE OF A DERVISH RAID.

135

gotten only of a wish to please; whence you perceive
the nd vantages enjoyed by him who would collect
intellijiPti'TP in the Sudan.

Slowly tlie niinute^- crawled on ; the camels crawled
slower. On days like this you feel yourself growing
older : it seemed months since we heard the unns
from the paiopet; it would have hardly seemec
wonderful if we hftd heard that the campaign haa
been fini-^hed while we were away. We had ridden
awhile with the Bimhashi. but conversation wilted in
the sun ; now we had ambled ahead till even the
advanced guard had dropped out of sight behind.
One servant with us rode a tall fast camel ; from that
watch-tower he suddenly discerned cases lying open
on the sand about a hundred yards off the trampled
road. Anything for an incident: we rode listlessly
up and looked. A couple of broken packing-cases,
two tins of sardines, a tin of biscuits, half empty, a
small case of empty soda-bottles with " Sirdar" sten-
cilled on it, and a couple of empty bottles of whisky.
Among them lay a cigarette-box with a needle and a
reel of cotton, a few buttons, and a badge-— A.S.C. —
such as the Army Service Corps wear on their
shouhler-straps.

We were on the scene of last evenin;:;'s raid. Two
camels, we remembered, had been cut off and the loads
lost. We found the marks on tlie sand wlieie tlie con-
voy-camels had knelt down in living zariba to wait
for relief from Abadar, seven miles away. All the

136

CAMEL-CORPS AND CAVALRY.

time it took to fetch the camel-corps the Dervishes
must have lurked in the bush eating biscuits and
drinking the whisky of the infidel. The Sirdar's
soda-water was plainly returned empties, so that they
would have found the whisky strong; the sardines,
not knowing the nature of tinned meats, they had
thrown away. "We waited to report to the Liinbashi.

Presently the convoy crept up, a confusion of vague
necks and serpent heads, waving like tentacles. Tiie
Bimbashi had given his horse to an orderly, and was
sleeping peacefully on his camel. Now we had found
among the scattered camel-loads a wineglass, broken
in the stem, but providentially intact in the bowl.
Also we had bought for a great price at Fort Atbara
four eggs, and had whisky wherein to break them.
So the Bimbashi slipped oil his camel all in one piece,
and wo lunched.

By now the damned sun was taking his hand off
us. We were slipping through his fingers; ho was
low down behind us, and his rays sprawled into
larger and longer shadows. Then he went down in
a last sullen fusion of gold. The camels, feeling them-
selves checked, flopped down where they stood; the
drivers flopped down beside them, and bobbed their
heads in the approximate direction of Mecca. They
might well give thanks ; with sunset the world had
come to life again. A slight air sprang up, and a
gallop fanned it to a grateful breeze. Soon the
eastern sky became a pillar of dust; the horses in

A CAVALRY FIGHT.

137

Dervishes
uita and
Sirdar's
:hat they
sardines,
they had
jinibashi.
of vague
les. The
, and was
ad found
s, broken
he bowl.
?t Atbara
ak tliera.
me piece,

hand off
ho was
^led into
down in
ng them-
ood; the
Ded their
a. They
orld had
p, and a
50on the
lorses in

camp were being led to water. The great fight was
still timed for tlie day after to-morrow, and another
twelve hours of sunlessness were before us.

The camp was just as we had left it, all but for
one piece of news : the cavalry had had a fight, and
had fouglit well against every arm of the enemy. It
was their guns, not our own, we had heard nearly forty
miles away at Fort Atbara. General Hunter was in
command of the reconnaissance, and when General
Hunter goes out to look at the enemy you may be
sure he will look at him if he has to jump over his
zariba to do it. Leaving the supporting battalion of
infantry behind, the eight squadrons of cavalry with
eight Maxims rode to tlie front of Mahmud's entrench-
ment. Last time he had made no sign of life. This
time the first appearance brought out 700 cavalry.
These were pushed back, but next came infantry,
swarming like ants out of the zariba till the desert
was black with them. They were estimated at some
1500 ; they opened fire, not effectively. Then came
a bang to the rearward : he was firing his guns. And
on each flank, meanwhile, emerged from the bush be-
side ihe entrenchment his encircling cavalry to cut
ours oif.

"It was j\raiwand over again, only properly done,"
said one of the men who saw it. The Maxims opened
fire on both cavalry and infantry, knocking many over,
though the Dervislies were always in open order. And
when it was time to go the La^^f^ara horsemen were

'OO'

138

CAMEL-CORPS AND CAVALBT.

by this time across our true line of retirement. Broad-
wood Bey ordered his troopers to charge. Behind his
Enf,'lish leaders — the Bey himself, who always leads
every attack, and Bimbashis le Gallais and Persse —
the despised unwarlike fellah charged and charged
lionie, and the Ba;:rgara lord of the Sudan split before
liini. Binibashi Persse was wounded in the left fore-
arm by a bullet tired from horseback ; six troopera
were killed and ten wounded. The loss of the Der-
vishes by lance, and especially by Maxim bullet,
was reckoned at near 200.

Our seventeen casualties were a light price to pay
for such a brilliant little fight, to say nothing of the
iiiiormation gained, and above all, the vindication of
the Egyptian trooper. That the fellah was fearless of
bullet and shell all knew ; now he had shown his in-
ditference to cold steel also. The cavalry mess was a
hum of cheerfulness that night, and well it might be.
The otiicers were all talking at once for joy : the
troopers riding their horses down to the pool moved
with a swing that was not there before. For the
dog^^ed, up-hill, back-breaking, heart-breaking work
of tifteen years had come to bear fruit.

And cheerfulness spread to the whole army also:
next morning — the 5th — we were off a(]rain, this time
to Umdabieli, seven miles across the desert. The bush
at Abadar was almost jungle — full of green sappy
plants and creepers, a refreshment to camels, but a
prospective hotbed of fever for men. Everybody wa«

<>* m.

Broad-
lind his
ys leads
Persse —
charged
t before
eft fore-
troopers
;he Der-
i bullet,

e to pay
y of the
jation of
iarless of
L his in-
ss was ft
night be.

oy : the
A moved

For the
ng work

ny also:
;his time
Che bush
n sappy
s, but ft
)ody waa

DMDABlEfl.

139

getting very sick of the Atbara, which had been such
a paradise of green when we first camped on it. We
missed the ever-blowing breeze of the Nile; the night
was a breathless oven and the day a sweaty stewpan.
The Atbara seemed even getting sick of itself: day by
day it dropped till now it was no river at all, but a
string of shallow befouled pools. All longed for the
fatherly Nile again.

So once more the squares marched forth before day-
light, and black dusk lowered under the rising sun.
Umdabieh was a novelty for an Atbara camp, in tliat a
few mud huts marked the place whence the Dervishes
had blotted out a village. The river was punier than
ever and the belt of bush thin ; lucky was the man
whose quarters included a six-foot dom-palia to lay his
head under. I spent both afternoons at Umdabieh
chasing a patch of shadow round and round a tree.
We did nothing on the 6th, for on the evening of the
7th we were to march, and to fi-^ht on Good Friday,

140

XVII.

THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA.

As the first rays of sunrise glinted on the desert
pebbles, the army rose up and saw that it was in
front of the enemy. All night it had moved blindly,
in faith. At six in the evenin<][ the four brigades
were black squares on the rising desert outside the
bushes of Umdabieh camp, and tliey set out to march.
Hard gravel underfoot, full moon overliead, about them
a coy horizon that seemed immeasurable yet revealed
nothing, the squares tramped steadily for an hour.
Then all lay down, so that the other brigades were
swallowed up into the desert, and the faces of the
British square were no more than shadows in the
white moonbeams. The S(piare was unlocked, and
first the horses were taken down to water, then the
men by half-battalions. We who had water ate some
bully-beef and Itiscuit, put our heads on saddle-bags,
rolled our bodies in bl.'inkets, and slept a little.

The' next thing was a long rustle about us, stealing
in upon us, urgently whispering us to rise and mount

3 desert

was in

blindly,

brigades

side the

) march.

)ut them

revealed

n hour.

es were

of the

ill the

L'd, and

hen the

\te some

lie-bags,

ule.

stealing
1 mount

THE WAR-MACHINE MOVES FORWARD.

and move. The moon had passed overhead. It was
cue o'clock. The square rustled into life and motion,
bent forward, and started, half asleep. No man spoke,
and no liglit showed, but the sand-niunied trampling
and the moon-veiled figures forbade the fancy that it
was all a dream. The sliapes of lines of men — now
close, now broken, and closing up again as the ground
broke or the direction changed — the mounted olhcers,
and the hushed order, "Left shoulder forward," the
scrambling Maxim mules, the lines of swaying camels,
their pungent smell, and the rare neigh of a horse,
the other three squares like it, which we knew of
but could not see, — it was just the same war-machine
as we had seen all these days on parade. Only this
time it was in deadly earnest, moving stealthily but
massively forward towards an event that none of U3
could cpiite certainly foretell.

AVe marched till sometliing after four, then halted,
and the men lay down again and slept. The rest
walked up and down in the gnawing cold, talking to
one and another, wondering in half-voices were we
there, would they give us a fight or should we find
their lines empty, liow would tlie fight be fought, and,
above all, how were we to gee over their zariba. For
jMalimud's zariba was pictured very high, and very
thick, and very prick' ^, which sounded awkward for
the Cameron Iliglilanders, wlio were to assault it.
Somebody had proposed burning it, either with war-
rockets or paraffir and safety matches ; somebody else

-t ff.

142

THE BATTLE OF THE ATBAFA.

snggested throwiii;; blankets over it, tliongh how you
throw blankets over a ten by twenty feet hedge of
camel-thorn, and what you do next when you have
thrown them, the inventor of the v-Ian never ex-
plained. Others favoured scaling-ladders, apparently
to take headers off on to the thorns and the enemy's
spears, and even went so far as to make a few ; most
were for the simpler plan of just taking hold of it and
pulling it apart. But how many of the men who
pulled would ever get through the gap ?

Now tlie sun rose behind us, and the men ro^se, too,
and we had arrived. Bimbrshi Fitton had led the
four brigades in the half-light lo within 200 yards of
the exact positions they were to take in the action.
Now, too, we saw the whole army — rigiiij of us
Macdonald's, right of him, again, Maxwell's, to our left
rear Lewis's in support, f " away leftward of them
the grey squadrona of the ■. ivalry. The word came,
and the men sprang up. The squares shifted into the
fighting formations: at one impulse, in one superb
sweep, near 12,000 men moved forward towards tho
enemy. All England and all Egypt, and the flower
of the black lands beyond, Birmingham and the West
Highlands, the half-regenerated children of the earth's
earliest civilisation, and grinning savages from the
uttermost swamps of Equatoria, muscle and machinery,
lord and larrikin, Balliol and the Board School, the
Sirdars brain rnd the camel's back — all welded into
nr.'^, the awful war machine went forward into action.

'.%'• 7>'

. .- , ^

" ; .>■<■■-«

THE Fir.ST GUN,

We could see their pr=',itiori quite well by nov/,
about a mile and a half away — the usual river fringe
of grey-green palms meeting the usual desert fringe
of yellow-gre} mimosa. And the smoke-grey line in
front of it all must be their famous zariba. Up from
it rolled a nimbus of dust, as if they were still busy
at entrenching ; before its riglit centre fluttered half a
dozen flags, white and pale blue, yellow and pale
chocolate. The line went on over the crunchinj::
gravel in awful silence, or speaking brielly in half-
voices — went on till it was not half a mile from the
flags. Then it halted. Thud! went the first gun,
and phutt ! came faintly back, as its shell burst
on the zariba into a wreathed round cloud of just
the zariba's smoky grey. I looked at my watch,
and it marked 6.20. The battle that had now
menaced, now evaded us for a month — the battle
had begun.

Now, from the horse battery and one field battery
on the right, from two batteries of Maxin -Nordenfelts
on the left, just to the riL;ht front of the British, and
from a war-rocket which changed over from left to
right, belched a rapid, but unhurrie*', re^jular, relent-
less shower of destruction. The round grey clouds
from shell, the round white puff's from shrapnel, the
hissing splutter of rocki ts, flighted down metiiodi-
cally, and aligiited on every part of the zariba and of
the bush behind. A fire sprang and . .varmed redly
up the dried leaves of a palm-tree; bclore it sank

TEE BATTLE OF THE ATBABA.

another flung np l)csi(le it, and then another. Wlien
the shellini,' beLjan a few sparse shots canie back; one
gunner was wounded. And all over the zariba we
saw dust-clollu'd fl^L;nrcs strolling unconcernedly in
nnd out, clu'ckiii;^' when a shell diT)[)ped necr, and
then passing eontenij)tuously on again. The eueniy's
cavalry a[)[)eared gallojiing and foiining np on our
left of the zariba, threatening a charge. But tut-tut-
tut-tut went the Maxims, and through glasses we
could see oar ca^^alry trembling to be at them. And
the Daggara horsemen, remeuiliering the guns that
]iad riddled th.eni and tlie srpiadrons that had shorn
through ihem three days before, fell back to cover
again. By now, when it lr.d lasted an hour or more,
not a man showed along the whole line, nor yet a
spot of rille smoke. All seemed emj)ty, silent, lifeless,
but for one iiobbled. camel, waving his neck and
stupid head in lu'l[)less dumb bewildcrnumt. Pres-
enlly the edge of the storm of devastation caught
him too, and we saw him no more.

An hour and twenty mimit(^s the guns spoke, and
Ihen were silent. And now for the advance along the
whok. lino,. JMaxwell's brigade on the right — 12th,
13th, (xV'i 14i.h Sudanese to a,ttack and 8th Egyptian
supporLing — used the ]"]gyptian attack formation, —
^our CO n panics of a battalion in line and the other
two in sui)port. IMacdtjuald, — 9th, 10th, and 11th
Sudanese in front and 2nd E.L'yptian supporting, — his
space being constricted, had three companies in line

5.
■5(

1 1

Line of

fes

THE CAMEUONS ADVANCE.

145

and threo in support. The r>ril:i,^Ii had the Camcrons
in line alon^i,' their wliolc front; then, in columns of
tlieir eight companies, the Lineolns on the rii^ht, tlie
Seaforths in the ccjntre, and the "Warwick s, two com-
panies sliort, on the left : the orders to tliese last were
i:f>t to advance till it was certain the dervish cf.valry
wouhl not charLfe in Hank. Lewis's tliree-battr.l'on
bri^L^^ade — .'Inl, 4th, and 7lh Egyptian — liad hy thipi
time two battalions to the Lritish left rop.r and one
forming square round tliG water - cauicils. All tho
artillery accompanied the advance.

The Camcrons formed fours and moved away to the
left, then turned into h'ne. Tliey halted and waited
for the advance. They were sliiflcd back a little to
the rin'ht, then halted airain. Th.en a staff oilicer
galloped furiously heliind the^T !ine, and sliouted some-
tliing in the direction of tl'.e Maxim battery. "Ad-
vance ? " yelled the major, and before the answer
could come the mules were up to the collar and the
Maxims were up to and past the left Hank of the
Camcrons. They stood still, waiting on the buyle — a
line of kliaki and dark tartan blending to purple, of
llasliing bayonets at the slope, and set, two-montli-
bcarded faces strained towards tlie zariba. In the
middle of the line shone tho Union Jack.

The bugle sang out the advance. The pipes screamed
battle, and the line started forward, like a ruler drawn
over the tussock-broken sand. Up a low ridge they
moved forward : when would the Dervishes lire ? The

146

THE BATTLE OF TUE ATBARA.

Camerons were to open from the top of the ridge, only
300 yards short of the zariba ; up and up, forward
and forward : when would they fire ? Now the line
crested the ridge — the men knelt down. " Volley-
firing by sections" — and crash it came. It came from
both sides, too, almost the samo instant. Wht-t,
wht-t, wht-t piped the bullets overhead: the line
knelt very firm, and aimed very steady, and crash
crash, crash they answered it.

! A cry more of dismayed astonishment than
of pain, and a man was up on his feet and over on
his back, and the bearers were dashing in from
the rear. He was dead before they touched him,
but already they found another for the stretcher.
Then bugle again, and up and on: the bullets were
swishing and lashing now like rain on a pond. But
the line of khaki and purple tartan never bent nor
swayed ; it just went slowly forward like a ruler.
The officers at its head strode self-containedly — they
might have been on the hill after red-deer ; only from
their locked faces turned unswervingly towards the
bullets could you see that they knew and had despised
the danger, And the unkempt, unshaven Tommies,
who in camp seemed little enough like Covenanters or
Ironsides, were now quite transformed. It was not so
difficult to go on — the pipes picked you up and carried
you on — but it was difficult not to hurry ; yet whether
they aimed or advanced they did it orderly, gravely,
without speaking. Tlic bullets had whispered to raw

INSIDE TUK ZARIBA.

147

younj^sters in one breath the secret of all the glories
of the British Army.

Forward and forward, more swishing about them
and more crashing from them. Now they were
moving, always without hurry, down a gravelly in-
cline. Three men went down without a cry at the
very foot of the Union Jack, and only one got to
his feet again ; the flag shook itself and still blazed
splendidly. Next, a supremely furious gust of bullets,
and suddenly the line stood fast. Before it was a
loose low hedge of dry camel-thorn — the zariba, the
redoubtable zariba. That it ? A second they stood
in wonder, and then, " Pull it away," suggested some-
body. Just half-a-dozen tugs, and the impossible
zariba was a gap and a scattered heap of brushwood.
Beyond is a low stockade and trenches ; but what of
that ? Over and in ! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah !

Now the inside suddenly sprang to life. Out of
the earth came dusty, black, half- naked shapes, run-
ning, running and turning to shoot, but running
away. And in a second the inside was a wild con-
fusion of Highlanders, purple tartan and black-green,
too, for the Seaforths had brought their perfect columns
through the teeth of the fire, and were charging in at
the gap. Inside that zariba was the most astounding
labyrinth ever seen out of a nightmare. It began with
a stockade and a triple trench. Beyond that the bush
was naturally thick with palm stem and mimosa-
thorn and halfa-grass. But, besides, it was as full of

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(716) 872-4503

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148

THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA.

holes as any honeycomb, only far less regular. There
was a shelter -pit for every animal — here a donkey
tethered down in a bole just big enough for itself and
its master ; beside it a straw hut witli a tangle of
thorn ; yawning a yard beyond, a larger trencb, clioke-
fuU of tethered camels and dcud or dying men. Tliere
was no plan or system in it, only mere confusion of
stumbling-block and i)ilfall. From holes below and
hillocks aljove, from invisible trenches to right and
innocent tukls to left, the bewildered bullets curved,
and twisted, and dodged. It took some company-
leading ; for the precise formations that the bullets
only stilTened were loosening now. But the oCficers
were equal to it : each picked his line and ran it, and
if a few of his company were lost -kneeling by green-
faced comrades or vaguely bayoneting along with a
couple of chance companions — they kept the mass
centred on the work in hand.

For now began the killing. Dullet and bayonet
and butt, the whirlwind of Highlanders swept over.
And by this time the Uncolns were in on the right,
and the ^laxims, galloping right up to the stockade,
had withered the left, and the AVarwicks, the enemy's
cavalry definitely gone, were volleying off the blacks
as your board comes oil" under a keen razor. Farther
and farther they cleared the ground— cleared it of
everything like a living man, for it was left carpeted
thick enough with dead. Here was a trench; bayonet
that man. Here a little straw tukl; warily round

A VERY GOOD FIGHT.

149

to the door, and then a volley. Now in column
througli this opening in the bushes; then into line, nnd
drop those few desperately firing shadows among the
dry stems beyond. For the running blacks — poor
heroes — still fired, though every second they fired less
and ran more. And on, on the British stumbled and
slew, till suddenly there was unbroken blue overhead,
and a clear drop underfoot. The river ! And across
the trickle of water the quarter-mile of dry sand-bed
was a fiy-pnper with scrambling spots of black. The
pursuers thronged the bank in double line, and in two
minutes the paper was still black-spotted, only the
spots scrambled no more. "Xow that," panted the
most pessimistic senior captain in the brigade — "now
I call that a very gixxl fight."

Cease fire I Word and whi-tle and voice took a
little time to work into hot brains ; then siulden
silence. Again, hurrah, hurrali, hurrali ! It had lasted
forty minutes; and nobody was quite certain whether
it had seemed more like two minutes or two years.
All at once there came a roar of fire from tlie h.-ft;
the half-sated British saw the river coven^d witli a
new swarm of files, only just in time to see them stop
still as the others. This was Lewis's half-brinade of
Egyptians at work. They had stood the heavy fire
that souHit them as if there were no such tilings as
wounds or death; now lliey had swept down leftward
of the zariba, sliovelled the enemy into the river-bed,
and shot them down. Bloodthirsty ? Count up the

150

THE BATTLE OF THE ATBARA.

Ejijyptinns murdered by Mahdism, and then say so if
you will.

Meanwhile, all the right-hand part of the zariba was
alive with our blacks. They had been seen from the
British line as it advanced, ambling and scrambling
over rise and dip, firing heavily, as they were ordered
to, and then charging with the cold bayonet, as they
lusted to. They were in first, there cannot be a doubt.
Their line formation turned out a far better one for
charging the defences than the British columns, which
were founded on an exaggerated expectation of the
difliculty of the zariba, and turned out a trifle unhandy.
And if the zariba had been as high and thick as the
Bank of England, the blacks and their brigaded
Egyptians would have slicked through it and picked
out the thorns after the cease fire. As against that,
they lost more men than the British, for their advance
was speedier and their volleys less deadly than the
Camerons' pelting destruction that drove through every
skull raised an inch to aim.

But never think the blacks were out of hand. They
attacked fast, but they attncked steadily, and kt'pt
their formation to the last moment there was any-
thing to torm against. The battle of the Atbara has
definitely plii:'»'d the blacks — yes, and the once con-
temned Egyptians — in the ranks of the very best
troops in the world. When it was over their officers
were ready to cry with joy and pride. And the blacks,
every one of whom would beamingly charge the

THE JUBILANT SUDAIS^KSK.

151

bottomless pit after his Bey, were just as joyons and
proud of their officers. They stood about among the
dead, their faces cleft with smiles, shaking and shaking
each other's hands. A short shako, then a salute,
anotlier shake and another salute, again and a^'ain and
again, with the head-carving sndle never narrowed an
instant. Then up to the Bey and the Bimbashis —
mounted now, but they had charged afoot and clear
ahead, as is the recognised wont of all chiefs of the
fighting Sudan when they intend to conquer or die
with their men — and more handshakes and more
salutes. " Dushman qua'iss kitir," ran round from grin
to grin ; ** very good fight, very good fight."

Now fall in, and back to the desert outside. And
unless you are congenitally amorous of horrors, don't
look too much about you. Black spindle-legs curled
up to meet red-gimbleted black faces, donkeys head-
less and legless, or sieves of shrapnel, camels with
necks writhed back on to their humps, rotting already
in pools of blood and bile-yellow water, heads without
faces, and faces without anything below, cobwebbed
arms and legs, and black skins grilled to crackling on
smouldering palm-leaf,— don't look at it. Here is the
Sirdar's white star and crescent ; here is the Sirdar,
who created this battle, this clean-jointed, well-oiled,
smooth-running, clockwork-perfect ma.sterpiece of a
battle. Not a tlaw, not a check, not a jolt ; and not a
fleck on its shining success. Once more, hurrah,
hurrah, hurrah !

152

XVIII.

LOSSES AND GAIN8,

It was over. It was a brilliant, crushing victory, and
the dervish army was destroyed : so mucli everybody
knew. But no more. The figlit liad gone forward in
a whirl : you could see men fall about you, and knew
that there must be losses on our side; but whether
they were 100 or 1000 it was inipossible even to
guess. Then, as the khaki ligures began to muster
outside the zariba, it was good to meet friend after
friend — dusty, sweaty, deep-breathing, putting up a
grimed revolver — untouched. It was good to see the
Tommies looking with new adoration to the comfort of
their rifles, drunk witli joy and triumph, yet touched
with a sudden awe in the presence of something so
much more nakedly elemental than anything in their
experience. Two hours had sobered them from boys
to men. Just then there was nothing in the world or
under it to which the army would not have been equal.
Yet, in that Godlike moment, I fancy Q\erj man in
the force thought first of home.

MAn.MUD A PRISONER.

153

Now to see what we liad done and suffered. And
first, for a new fillip to exultation, Mahmud was a
prisoner. Some soldiers of the 10th Sudanese had
found him as they swept through the zariba — found
him sitting on his carpet, his weapons at his side, after
the manner of defeated war-chiefs who await death.
He was not killed, and presently he was brought bare-
headed before the Sirdar — a tall, dark-brown com-
plexioned man of sonietliing between thirty and forty.
He wore loose drawers and a gibba — the dervish
uniform which still mimics the patched shirt of the
^lahdi, but embroiders it with gold. His face was
of tlie narrow-cheeked, higli-foreheaded type, for he
is a pure-bred Arab: his expression was cruel, but
high. He looked neither to right nor to left, but
strode up to the Sirdar with his head erect.

" Are you the man Mahmud ? " asked the Sirdar.

"Yes; I am Mahmud, and I am the same as you."
He meant commander-in-chief.

" Why did you come to make war here ?'*

" I came because I was told, — the same as you."

!Malimud was removed in custody ; but everybody
liked him the better for looking at his fate so straight
and (leliantly.

But small leisure had anybody to pity ^lahmud:
the pity was all wanted for our own people. Hardly
had the Camerons turned back from tlie river-bank
when it flew through the companies that two of the
finest ollicers in the regiment were killed. Captains

154

LOSSES AND GAINS.

Urquhart and Findlay had both been killed leading
their mea over the trenches. The first had only
joined the battalion at lius Hudi; he had newly
passed the Stall' Cjllege, and only two days before
had been gazetted major ; after less than a fortnight's
campaigning he was dead. Captain Findlay's fortune
was yet more pathetic: he had been married but a
month or two before, and the widowed bride was not
eigliteen. He was a man of a singularly simple, sincere,
and winning nature, and the whole force lamented
his loss. Probably his great height — for he stood
near 6 feet 6 inches — had attracted attack besides
his daring: he was one of the first, some said the
first, to get over the stockade, and had killed two of
the enemy with his sword before he dropped. Both
he and Captain Urquhart had got too far ahead of
their men to be protected by rif-a fire ; but they were
followed, and they were avenged.

Second-Lieutenant Gore of the Seaforths was also
killed while storming the trenches : he had not yet,
I think, completed one year's service. Among the
wounded officers were Colonel Verner of the Lincolns
and Colonel Murray of the Seaforths, both slightly :
the latter was very coolly tied up by Mr Scudamore,
the 'Daily News' correspondent, inside the zariba
under a distracting fire. More severely hit were
Major Napier (Camerons) and Captain Baillie (Sea-
forths): both were excellent officers and good com-
panions ; both afterwards died. Besides these the

THE CASUALTIES.

165

only

Seaforths had three officers wounded, the Lincolns
two, and the Warwicks one. Most of the casualties
•occurred in crossing the tronchcs, which were just wide
enough for a man to stand in and deep enough to
cover him completely. As our men passed over, the
blacks tired and stabbed upwards ; most of the wounds
were therefore below the belt.

The Seaforths happened to have most officers hit
among the four battalions of the British brigade ; as
they advanced in column against the hottest part of
the entrenchment, this was quite comprehensible. But
the Camerons, who led the whole brigade in line, lost
most in non-commissioned officers and men. Count-
ing officers, they had 15 killed and 46 wounded. The
Seaforths lost (again with officers) 6 killed and 27
wounded; the Lincolns 1 killed and 18 wounded ; and
the Warwicks 2 killed and 12 wounded. Of these
several afterwards died. Staff-Sergeant Wyeth, A.S.C.,
and Private Cross of the Camerons, were both men-
tioned in despatches. The first carried the Union
Jack, which was three times pierced ; the other was
General Gatacre's bugler. Wyeth was severely
wounded, and Cross presently seized with terrible
dysentery: both died within a few days. Private
Cross had bayoneted a huge black who attacked the
general at the zariba, and it was said he was to be
recommended for the V.C. A similar feat was done
by a colour-sergeant of the Camerons, whose major
was entangled in the stockade, and must have been

166

LOSSES AND GAINS.

killed. The colour- sergeant never even mentioned
the service to his oflicer, who only discovered it by
accident. Of course there were scores of hair-breadth
(iscapes, as there must be in any close engagement.
One piper was killed with seven bullets in his body ;
a corporal in another regiment received seven in his
clothing, one switchbacking in and out of the front
of his tunic, and not one pierced the skin. Another
man picked up a brass box inside the zariba, and
put it in his breast pocket, thinking it might come
in useful for tobacco. Next instant a bullet hit it
and glanced away. The Maxim battery had no
casualties — very luckily, for it was up with the
firing - line all the time ; probably nobody could
stand up against it. Altogether the British brigade
lost 24 killed and 104 wounded, of whom perhaps
20 died.

The Egyptian loss was heavier. They had advanced
more quickly, and by reason of their line formation
had got to work in the trenches sooner tlian the
British ; but they had not kept down the enemy's fire
with such splendid success. The 11th Sudanese,
which had the honour of having been one of the lirst
inside the zariba, lost very heavily — 108 killed and
wounded out of less than 700. Tlie total casual lies
were 57 killed, and 4 Brili.^h and IG native olUcers,
2 British non-commissioned ollicers, and 3G5 non-
commissioned ollieers and men wounded. The white
otlicers were Walter Bey and Shekleton Bey, com-

A CHEAP VICTORY.

157

nin?KHng the 9th and 14th Siulaneso respectively,
and r.inilnisliia Walsh and Ifarley of the 12th
Sudanese. Tlie former lost his leg. The instructors
were Sergeants Ilandley of the 9th and Hilton of the
12th. Tiius, out of live white men, the 12th had three
hit. More ollicers would probably have been hit, but
that none except the generals were allowed to ri<le.
Generals Hunter, Macdonald, and Maxwell all rode
over the trenches at the head of their men.

The total of casualties, therefore, works out at 81
killed and 49.'3 wounded, out of a strength probably a
little short of 12,000. It was not a wholly bloodless
victory, but beyond question it was a wonderfully
cheap one. For the results gained could not be over-
stated : jMahuiud's army was as if it had never been.
These two short hours of shell and bullet and bayonet
had erased it from the face of the earih.

A scribe taken prisoner at Sliendi said that the force
which marched nortli had been oilicially reported to
the Khalifa as 18,941 fighting men. The report may
or niay not have been true : in any case Mahmud had
not this strength on Good Friday. Some had been
shot from the gunl)oats or l>y the 4th Battalion on
Slu'baliya Island as they came down the river; some
had been killed in the skirmishes at Khor Altadar, or
in General Hunter's reconnai-sances outside Kukheila.
Many liad deserted. ]\Iahmud himself said that his
strength on the Sth was 12,0UU infantry and 4000
cavalry, with 10 guns. Some days afterwards he

168

LOSSES AND GAINS.

asserted that his cavalry had left him the day before,
but that was the brag of returning confidence. We all
saw his cavalry.

To be sure, the cavalry did get away ; and Osman
Digna, wlio never fights to a finish, got away with
them. The cavalry did nothing and behaved badly,
wliicii is significant. For the cavalry were Ikggara —
the cattle-owning Arabs of the Khalifa's own tribe,
transplanted by him from Darfur to the best lands
round Omdurman. They are the lords of the Sudan
— and ingloriously they ran away. On the other hand,
the Jehadia, the enlisted black infantry, fought most
nobly. If their fire seemed bad to us, what hell must
ours have been to them I First an hour and a half of
shell and shrapnel — the best ammunition, perfectly
aimed and timed, from some of the deadliest field-
pieces in the world ; then volley after volley of blunted
Lee-Metford and of Martini bullets, delivered coolly at
300 yards and less, with case and Maxim fire almost
point-blank. The guns fired altogether 1500 rounds,
mostly shrapnel; the Camerons averaged 34 rounds
per man. A black private, asked by his Bimbashi how
many rounds he fired, replied, " Only 15." " Why,
you're not much of a man," said his oflicer. "Ah, but
then, Eflendim," he eagerly excused himself, "I had to
carry a stretcher besides." If the black bearer-parties
fired 15 rounds, what must the firing-line have done!
Mahmud said tha^ his people had only laughed at the
shrapnel, but that the infantry fire was Shcitun tarn-

FEKOClOUa IlEKOISM.

159

am — the very devil. Mahmud, however, admitted
that, liaving been ruiind ilie position, he lay close in
his stockade during; liio boiuljardmcnt ; and us his
stockade, or casoniaie, was tlic stron;^est corner in the
place, he can hardly speak for ihe rest. And I saw
scores and hundreds of dead goats and sheep, donkeys
and camel?, lying in pits in the part of the zariba
stormed by the Ihitish. Now Thomas Atkins does not
kill animals needlessly, even when his blood is hottest.
The beasts therefore must have been killed by shrap-
nel ; and if so many beasts, we may presume tliat many
men, no better protected, were killed too. And so, I
am afraid, unavoidably, were many women, for the
zariba was full of them.

Yet the black Jehadia stood firm in their trenches
through the infernal minutes, and never moved till
those devilish white Turks and their black cousins
came surging, yelling, shooting, and bayoneting right
on top of them. Many stayed win re they were to die,
only praying that they might kill one first. Those
who ran, ran slowly, turning doggedly to fire. The
wounded, as usual, took no quarter; they had to be
killed lest they should kill. For an example of their
ferocious heroism, I cite a little, black, pot-bellied boy
of ten or so. He was standing by his dead father,
and when the attackers came up, he picked up an
elephant-gun and fired. He missed, and the kicking
monster half-killed him; but he had done what he
could.

160

LOSSES AND GAINS.

In the zariba itself Jjimbaslii Watson, A.D.C. to the
Sirdar, counted over 2000 dead before he was sick of
it. There were others left: trench after trench was
found tilled with them. A few were killed outside the
zariba ; a great many were shot down in crossing the
river-bed. Altogether 3000 men must have been
killed on the spot ; among them were nearly all the
Emirs, including Wad Bishara, who was Governor of
Dongola in 1896. But this was not half the signifi-
cance of the victory. Now you began to comprehend
the perfection of the Sirdar's strategy. If he had
waited for Mahmnd on the Nile, fugitives could have
escaped up-stream. If he had waited low down the
Atbara, they could still have got across to the Nile.
But by giving battle up at Nakheila, he gave the
escaping dervish thirty miles of desert to struggle
across before he could reach water and such safety
as the patrolling gunboats would allow him. A few
may have got back to Omdurman — if they dared;
some certainly were afterwards picked oil' by the
gunboats in the attempt. Others fled up the Atbara;
many were picked up by the cavalry through the
afternoon : some got as far as Adaraniu or even near
Kasbala, and were killed by the friendly levies there.
For the wounded the desert was cerUiiri death. In
a word, the finest dervish army was not. lietreafc
was impossible, pursuit superfluous ; defeat was anni-
hilation.

161

XIX.

THE TRIUMPH.

** Catch 'em alive 1 Catch 'em alive 1
If they once gets on the gum
They'll pop oflf to kingdom come ;
Catch 'em alive ! Catch 'em alive I
For I am the flyest man around the town.'*

Back swung the blacks from battle. The band of the
Twelfth specialises on Mr Gus Elen : it had not been
allowed to play him during the attack — only the regi-
mental march till the bandsmen were tired of it, and
then each instrument what it liked — but now the air
quoted came in especially apposite.

They had caught 'em alive 0. Hardly one but had
shing behind him a sword or a spiue-headed spear, a
curly knife, or a spiky club, or some other quaint
captured murdering-iron. Some had suppleiueiitcd
their Martini with a Itemiiigton, an inch calibre
elephant -gun with splierical iron bullets or conical
shells, a regulation Italian magazine rille, a musket
of Mahomet Ali's first expedition, a Martini of '85, or

163

THE TRIUMPH.

a Tower Rille of '56 with a handful of the cartridges
the sepoys declined to bite. Some had suits of
armour tucked inside them ; one or two, Saracen
helmets slung to their belts. Over one tarbush
waved a diadem of black ostrich plumes. The whole
regiment danced with spear-headed banners blue and
white, with golden letters thereupon promising victory
to the faithful. And behind half-a-dozen men tugged
at one of Mah mud's ten captured guns ; they meant to
ask the Sirdar if they might keep it.

The band stopped, and a hoarse gust of song flung
out. From references to Allah you might presume it
a song of thanksgiving. Then, tramp, tramp, a little
silence, and the song came again with an abrupt ex-
idtant roar. The thin-legged, poker-backed shadows
jerked longer and longer over the rough desert shingle.
They had been going from six the bitter night before,
and nothing to eat since, and Nakheila has been 111°
in the shade, with the few spots of shade preoccupied
by corpses. That being so, and remembering that
the British and wounded had to follow, the Second
Brigade condescended to a mere four miles an hour.
And " By George ! you know," said the Bey, " they're
lovely ; they're rippers. I've seen Sikhs and I've seen
Gurkha.«, and these are good enough for me. Tliis has
been the happiest day of my life. I wasn't happier
the day I got the D.S.O. than I've been to-day."

It was the happiest day of a good many lives. But
forty all but sleepless hours on your feet or in your

THE WOUNDED.

163

rtridges
5iuts of
Saracen
tarbusli
le whole
ilue and
; victory
I tugged
neant to

ng flung
esume it
I, a little
rupt ex-
shadows
shingle,
t before,
leen 111°
occupied
mif that
Second
an hour.
" they're
;'ve seen
This has
liappier
day."
es. But
' in your

saddle tell on the system in a climate that seesaws
between a grill and an ice-machine. 15y the time I got
in I was very contented to tie my horse by some wliity-
brown grass and tumble to sleep with my head on the
saddle. At midniglit dinner was n-ady ; then solid
sleep again. Awaking at five, I found an ollicer of
Colonel Lewis's brigade in his spurs and demanding
tea. He had got in from Nakheila but two hours
before, which brought his fast well over twenty-four
hours and his vigil to close on forty-eight.

For it isn't everybody that tramps back into camp
from battle with bands and praises of Allah. Some
stay for good, and it pricks you in your joy when you
catch yourself thinking of that swift and wicked injus-
tice. "Why him ? Also some come home on their
backs, or wrenched and moaning in cacolets bump-
ing on baggage-camels. Lewis's never-weary, never-
hungry Egyptians had been bringing in the wounded —
carrying stretchers across twelve black miles of desert
at something over a mile an hour. And General
Hunter, who in the morning had been galloping bare-
headed through the bullets, waving on the la test- raised
battalion of blacks, now chose to spend the night play-
ing guide to the crawling convoy. General Hunter
could not do an unsoldierlike act if he tried.

It was difficult after all to be sorry for most of the
men who were hit, they were so aggressively not sorry
for themselves. Tlie afternoon of the fight they lay
in a little palm-grove northward of the zariba under

164

THE TRIUMPH.

tents of blanket — a double row of kbaki and grey
flannel shirt, with more blankets below them and
above. One face was covered with a handkerchief;
one man gasped constantly — ^just the gasp of the child
that wants sympathy and doesn't like to ask for it;
one face was a blank mask of yellow white clay. The
rest, but for the red-splashed bandages and the im-
portunate reck of iodoform, miglit have been lying
down for a siesta. Their principal anxiety — these
bearded boys who had never fired a shot oil' tlie range
before — was to learn what size of deed tliey had
lieli)ed to do to-day, "A grahn' figlit ? The best ever
fouglit in the Sudan? Eh, indeed, sir; ah'm vara
glahd to hear ye say so." " Now, 'ow would you sy,
sir, this 'd be alongside them fights tlicy've been 'avin'
in India?" "Bigger, eh? Ah! Will it be in to-
morrow's pyper ? Well, they'll be talkin' about us at
*ome." It was not the un happiest day in these men's
lives either.

The morrow of the fight brought a quiet morning
— for all but correspondents, who had now to pay for
many days of idle luxury — and in the afternoon we
all marched ofl' to the old camp at Ahadar. Thence
on Sunday tlie briga<U'S were to march to their old
quarters — Lritisli to Darmali, 1st to Berber, 2ud to
Essillem, and 3rd to Fort Atbara. Everybody was
agasp for the moving air and moving water of the
Nile. But the British got very late into camp on
Saturday night, and there was no longer any hurry,

THE RETURN TO BERBER.

165

as there was no longer any enemy. So instead we
had an Easter Sunday church-parade — men standing
reverently four-square in the sand; in the middle
the padre, square-shouldered and square-jawed, with
putties and square boots showing under the surplice;
a couple of drums for lectern, and " Thanks be to God,
who giveth us the victory," for text.

On Monday, the 11th, the Sirdar rode into Fort
Atbara, and the Egyptian brigades followed him.
The British marched to Iludi, and thence across the
desert to Darmali, their summer quarters. There
began to be talk about leave. But before the cam-
paign closed there was one inspiriting morning — the
return to Berber.

It was more like a Boman triumph than anything
you have ever seen — like in its colour, its barbarism,
its intoxicating arrogance. The Sirdar reached Berber
an hour or so after sunrise ; the garrison — Macdonald's
brigade- -had bivouacked outside. The Sirdar rode
up to the once more enfranchised town, and was there
received by a guard of honour of the 1st Egyptians,
who had held the town during the campaign. The
guns thundered a salute. Then slowly he started to
ride down the wide main street — tall, straiglit, and
masterful in his saddle. Hunter Pasha at his side,
his staff and his flag behind him, then Lewis Bey
and some of his ollicers from Fort Atbara, then a
clanking escort of cavalry. At the gate he passed
under a triumphal arcli, and all the street was Vene-

166

THE TRIUMPH.

tian masts and bunting and coloured paper, and
soldiers of the 1st presenting arms, and men and
women and children shrieking shrill delight.

"Well might they ; for they have tried both rule , and
they prefer that of Egypt. So they pressed forward
and screamed " Lu, lu," as they saw returning the
Sirdar and their Excellencies, these men of fair
face and iron hand, just to the weak and swiftly
merciless to the proud. And when these had passed
they pressed forward still more eagerly. Farther
behind, in a clear space, came one man alone, his
hands tied behind his back. Mahmud ! Mahmud,
holding his head up and swinging his thighs in a
swaggering stride — but Mahmud a prisoner, beaten,
powerless. When the people of Berber saw that,
they were convinced. It was not a lie, then: the
white men had conquered indeed. And many a dark-
skinned woman pressed forward to call Mahmud
"Dog" to his face: it was Mahmud, last year, who
massacred the Jaalin at Metemmeh.

By this time the Sirdar had come almost to the
bazaar, at the north end of the town ; and there was a
small platform with an awning. He dismounted, and so
did the officers ; then took his stand, and in came the
troops. At their head the brigadier — "old Mac,"
bronzed and grizzled, who has lived in camp and
desert and battlefield these twenty years on end.
Then the blacks, straight as the spears they looted at
Nakheila, quivering with pride in their officers and

THE FINEST SIGHT OF ALL.

167

)er, and
len and

ule , and

forward
ling the

of fair
[ swiftly
d passed

Farther
lone, his
Mahmud,
ghs in a
r, beaten,
saw that,
hen : the
y a dark-

Mahmud
rear, who

ist to the
lere was a
,ed, and so

came the
)ld Mac."
iamp and

on end.

looted at
Beers and

their own manhood — yet not a whit prouder than
when they marched out a month before. Tlien the
cavalry and the guns and the camel-corps — every arm
of the victorious force. And Berber stood by and
wondered and exulted. The band crashed and the
people yelled. " Lu-u-u, lu-u-u-u " piped the black
women, and you could see the brave, savac^e, simple
hearts of the black men bounding to the appeal.
And the Sirdar and General Hunter and the others
stood above all, calm and commanding ; below Bey
and Bimbashi led battalion or squadron or battery, in
undisturbed self-reliance. You may call the show
barbaric if you like: it was meant for barbarians.
The English gentleman, if you like, is half barbarian
too. That is just the value of liim. Here was this
little knot of white men among these multitudes of
black and brown, swaying them with a word or the
wave of a hand upraised. Burned from the sun and
red-eyed from the sand, carrying fifteen years* toil
with straight backs, bearing living wounds in elastic
bodies. They, after all, were the finest sight of the
whole triumph — so fearless, so tireless, so confident

1G8

XX.

EGYPT OUT OP SEASON.

TiiEi^E was no difTerence in Port Said. Ships want
coal in July as in December: the black dust hung
over Llie Canal in sullen fog, and the black demons of
the pit wailed as they tripped from lighter to deck
under their baskets. In the hotel the Levantine
clerks and agents took their breakfast in white ducks
under a punkah, but that was all the change. Black
island of coal, jabbering island of beggars and touts,
forlorn island cranked in by sea and canal and swamp
and sand. Port Said in summer was not appreciably
more God-forsaken than in the full season.

Ismail ia was not appreciably deader than usual.
If anything, with half-a-dozen French summer gowns
and a French bicycle club, in blue and scarlet jerseys,
doing monkey-tricks in front of the station, it was a
shade more alive.

In Cairo came the awful chauGje. Cairo the fashion-
able, the brilliant, was a desolation. When you run
into the station in the season, the platform is lined

CAIRO IN JULY.

169

ps want
st hung
mons of
to deck
evantine
te ducks
Black
id touts,
1 swamp
)reciably

usual.

iY gowns
- jerseys,
It was a

1 fashion-
you run
is lined

with names of hotels on the g '-laced caps of under-
porters : you can hardly step out for swarms of
Arabs, who fight for your baggnge. On the night of
July 12, the platform showed gaunt and Inrge and '
empty. The streets were hardly better — a few list-
less Arabs in the square outside the station, and then
aven'.3 on avenue of silent darkness.

By daylight Cairo looked like a ball-room the
morning after. One hotel was shamelessly making
up a rather battered face against next season. The
verandah of Shepheard's, wliere six months ago you
f'ould not move for tea-tables, nor hear the band for
the bazz of talk, was quite empty and lifeless; only
one pCi'spiring waiter hinted that this was a hotel.
The Conlinental, the centre of Cairene fashion, had a
whole wing shuttered up; the mirrors in the great
hall were blind with whiting, and naked suites of bed-
room furniture camped out in the great dining-room.
Some shops were shut ; the rest wore demi-toilettes
of shutter and blind ; the dozing shopkeepers seemed
half -resentful that anybody should wish to buy in
such weMther. As for scarabs and necklaces and curi-
osities of Egypt, they no longer pretended to thiidv that
any sane man could give money for such things. As
you looked out from the Citadel, Cairo seemed dazed
under the sun ; the very Pyramids looked as if they
were taking a holiday.

All that was no more than you expected: you knew
that no tourists came to Egypt in July. But native

170

EGYPT OUT OF SEASON.

Egypt was out of season too. The streets that clacked
wiih toutB ''^' jeifgars, that jingled with every kind
of hawker's ruL^bish — you passed along them down
a vista of closed jalousies and saw not a soul, heard
not a sound. The natives must be somewhere, only
where ? A few you saw at road-making, painting, and
the like jobs of an ofl-season. But every native was
dull, listless, hanging from his stalk, half dead. Eyes
were languid and lustreless : the painter's head drooped
and swayed from side to side, and the brush almost
fell from his lax fingers. In the narrow bevel of
shadow left under a wall by the high sun, fiat on back
or face, open-mouthed, half asleep, half fainting, gasped
Arab Cairo — the parasite of the tourist in his holiday,
the workman leaving his work, donkey-boy and donkey
flat and panting together.

"Well might they gasp and pant ; for the air of
Cairo was half dead too. You might drive in it at
night and feel it whistle round you, but it did not
refresh you. You might draw it into your lungs, but
it did not fill them. The air had no quality in it, no
body: it was thin, used up, motionless, too limp to
live in. The air of August London is stale and close,
poor ; exaggerate it fifty-fold and you have the air of
July Cairo. You wake up at night dull and flaccid
and clammy with sweat, less refreshed than when you
lay down. You live on what sleep you can pilfer
during the hour of dawn. As you drive home at night

NILELKSS EGYPT.

171

clacked
jry kind
m. down
il, heard
,'re, only
:ing, and
tive was
i. Eyes
drooped
1 almost
bevel of
on back
■;, gasped
holiday,
i donkey

e air of

in it at

did not

mgs, but

in it, no

limp to

nd close,

le air of

d flaccid

vlien you

an pilfer

3 at night

you envy the dark figure in a galabeah stretched on
the pavement of Kasr-en-Nil bridge; there only in
Cairo can you feci a faint stirring in the air.

To put all in one word, Egypt lacks its Nile. The
all-fathering river is at his lowest and weakest. In
places he is nearly dry, and what water he can give
the cracked fields is pale, green, unfertile. He was
beginning to rise now, slowly ; presently would come
the flood and the brown manuring water. The night
wind would blow strongly over his broadened bosom,
the green would spring out of the mud, and Egypt
would be alive again.

Only in one place was she alive yet — and that was
the Continental Hotel. Here all day sat and came
and went clean-limbed young men in flannels, and
at dinner-time the terrace was cool with white mess-
jackets. Outside was the only crowd of natives in
Cairo — a thick line of Arabs squatting by the opposite
wall, nursing testimonials earned or bought, cooks
and valets and grooms — waiting to be hired to go up
the Nile. Up at the citadel they would show you the
great black up-standing 40-pounder guns with which
they meant to breach Khartum. Out at Abbassieh
the 21st Lancers were changing their troop-horses for
lighter Syrian? and country-breds. The barrack-yard
of Kasr-en-Nil was yellow with tents, and under a
breathless afternoon sun the black-belted Eifle Brigade
marched in from the station to fill them. The wilted

172

EGYPT OUT OF SEASON.

ArnKs liardlv turned tlieir lioads at the band; the
liillus held tlieir shoulders square and stepped out
with a rattle.

The Egyptian may feel the sun ; the Enf,dishnian
must stand up and march in it. You "see it is his
country, and he must set an exam])le. And seeing
Egypt thus Nileloss, bloodless, you felt more than
ever that he must lose no time in taknvj' into firm
fingers the keys of the Nile above Khartum.

nd; the
ped out

173

;Hslinian
t is his
1 scciu^i,'
>re tlian
ito firm

XXI.

GOING UP.

On the half-lit Cairo platform servants flung agonised
arms round brothers' necks, kissed them all over, and
resigned themselves to the horrors of the Sudan. In-
side the study carriages was piled a confusion of bags
and bundles, of helmet-cases and sword-cases, of can-
vas buckets cooling soda, and canvas bottles cooling
water, — of Beys and Bimbashis returning from leave.
It was rather like the special train that takes boys
back to school. A few had been home — but the Sirdar
does not like to have too many of his oihcers seen in
Piccadilly; it doesn't look well. Some had been to
Constantinople, to Brindisi and back for the sea, to
San !^tefano, the Ostend of Egypt, to Cairo and no
farther. Like schoolboys, they had all been wild to
iwav. and now

g^^

iiey

Thank the Lord, no more Cairo — sweat all the night
instead of sleep, and mosquitos tearing you to })ieces.
Give me the ni^lit-breeze of the desert and the clean
sand of the Sudan.

174

GOING UP.

But first we had to tunnel through the filthiest
seventeen hours in Egypt. The servants had spread
our blankets on the bare, hard leatlier seats of the
boxes that Egyptian railways call sleeping - cars ; a
faint grateful air began to glide in through tlie
windows. And then came in the dust. AVithout haste
— had it not seventeen hours before it ? — it streamed
through every chink in a thick colfee-coloured cloud.
It piled itself steadily over the seats and the floor, the
bags and bundles and cases ; it built up wails of mud
round the soda-water, and richly larded the half-cold
chicken for the morrow's lunch. We choked ourselves
to sleep ; in the morning we choked no longer, the
lungs having reconciled themselves to breathe powdered
Egypt. Our faces were layered with coffee-colour,
thicker than the powder on the latest fashionable
lady's nose. Hair and moustaches, eyebrows and eye-
lashes, and every corner of sun-puckered eyes, were
lost and levelled in rich friable soil. And from the
caked, sun-riven fields of thirsty Egypt fresh clouds
rose and rolled and settled, till in all the train you
saw, smelt, touched, tasted nothing but dust.

At Luxor came the first novelty. ^JVhcn I came
down the practicable railway stopped short there:
now a narrow-gauge railway ran through to Assuan.
It is not quite comprehensible why the gauge should
have been broken, — perhaps to nuike sure that the
line should be kept exclusively military. It can
easily be altered afterwards to the Egyptian gauge;

THE PRICE OF TAXIING THE SUDAN.

175

filthiest
1 spread
,s of the
- cars ; a
ugh tlie
)ut haste
streamed
;d cloud,
floor, the
5 of mud
half-cold
:>urselves
iger, the
)owdered
e-colour,
ihiouable
and cyc-
les, were
[rom the
h clouds
rain you

I came
t there:

Assuan.
e should
that the

It caa
1 gauge;

meanwhile the journey is done by train in twelve
hours against the post-boat's thirty-six.
• Assuan was the same as ever. Shellal, at the head
of the cataract, the great forwarding station for the
South, was the same, only much more so. The high
bank was one solid rampart of ammunition and beef,
biscuit and barley ; it clangt'd and tinkled all niglit
through with parts of steamers and sections of barges.
Stern- wheelers came down from the South, turned
about, took in fuel, hooked on four barges alongside,
and thudded off up-river again. No hurry ; no rest.
And here was the same Commandant as when I came
up before. He had had one day in Cairo ; his hair
was two shades greyer ; he was still being reviled by
everybody who did not have everything he wanted
sent through at five seconds' notice ; lie was still
drawing unmercifully on body and brain, and ripping
good years out of liis life to help to conquer the Sudan.
Victory over dervishes may be won in an hour, may
be cheap ; victory over the man-eating Sudan — the
vietoi/ of the railway, the steamer, the river — means
months and years of toil and so much of his life lust,
to every man that heljis to win it.

The steamer tinkered at her fourteen-year-old boiler
for twenty hours, and then tru(l;4tMl '.AX towards Haifa.
She did the 200 odd miles in 77 hours, so that it
would have been ahnost as quick to have gune by
road in a wheelbarrow. lUit llu'u the nu;4!4ars ah^ng-
side were lieavy with many mu k-; u( barley, to be

176

GOING UP.

turned later into cavalry chargers. Moreover, on the
second morning, roinuling a bend, we suddindy saw a
line drawn diagonally across the river. All the water
below the line was green ; all above it was brown
And the brown ])ressed slowly, thickly forward, driv-
ing the green before it. This was the Nile-tlood, — the
rich Abyssinian mud that comes down ]>lue Nile and
Atbara. When this should have floated down below
the cataract, Egypt would have water again, air again,
bread again, life again. And the Sudan would have
gunboats and barges of cartridges and gyassas of food
and fodder, and the Sirdar thundering at the gates of
Khartum.

Next windy, green-treed Haifa — only this time it
was less windy than last, and the trees, though still
the greenest on the Kile, were not so green. Last
time there had been melons growing on the sandy
eyot opposite the conimandeiia, and the eyot had
grown higher daily ; this time it was all dry sand
and no melons, — only it grew daily smaller in the
lapping water. But s}>iiiig or summer, Haifa's busi-
ness is the same — the railway and the recruits. That
line was finished now up to the Atbara, and the fore-
shore was clear of rails and sleepers, liut instead
they were forcing through stores and supj)!ies, chok-
ing the trucks to the thnjat with them. Tiie ghit had
only begun when the line reached its terminus; it
would be over before the new white brigade came
through. Everything in the Siidar's Expedition has

CONTENTED RENEGADES.

177

its own time — first material, then trnnF:port, then
troops; and woe unto liim wlio is buliiml his lime.
The pkitform was bhick and brown, hhie and wliite
witli a great crowd of natives. For (h-awn up in line
opposite the waiting trucks were rigid squads of black
figures in the familiar brown jersey and blue putiies,
and on the tarbushes the badges, green, black, red,
yellow, blue, and white, of each of tlie six Sudanese
battalions. Tiiin-shauked Shilluks and Dinkar. trom
the White Nile, stubby Beni-llelba from Darfur and
the West, — tliey were just the figures and hudiUed
savan^e-smiling faces that we had last seen at Berber.
Only — the last time we had seen those particular
blacks they were shooting at us. Every one ^lad begun
life as a dervish, and had been taken prisoner at or
after tlie Atbara. Now, not four months after, here
tliey were, erect and soldierly, vvitli at least the rudi-
ments of shooting, un their way to fight their former
masters, and very glad to do it. Tlicy knew when
they were well ofi" Before they were slaves, half-
clotlied, half-fed, half-armed, good to lose thuir women
at Shendi,and to stay in the trenches of Nukheila when
the liaggara ran away. Now tliey are free soldiers,
well ]niid, well clothed, well fed, with weapons they
can triist and oHicers who charge ahead and would
latluT die than leave them. Their women — who, after
all, only ])iecetled them into the Egyptian army — are
as safe from recapture at Haifa as you are in the
Strand. No wonder the blacks grinned merrily as

178

GOING UP.

they bundled up on to the trucks, and the women
lu-lu-hied them off with the head-stabbing shrillness
of certain victory.

The first time I travelled on the S.M.R. I enjoyed
a berth in the large saloons ; the second time in one
of the small saloons ; this time it was a truck. But
the tru'k, after all, was the most comfortable of the
three. It was a long double-bogie, witli a plank roof,
and canvas curtains that you could let down when
the sun came in, and ei;.;ht aH'_;arebs screwed to the
floor. Therein six men piled tlieir smaller baggage,
and set up their tables, and ate and drank and slept
and yawned forty-eiglit hours to the Atbara. Of all
the three months* changes in tlie Sudan, here were the
most stupefying Abeidieh, where the new gunboats
had been put together, liad grown from a hut and two
tents to a railway station and triangle and Matering-
plant and engine - shed, and rows of seemly mud-
barracks, soon to be hospital. But the Atbara was
even more utterly transformed. I had left it a for-
tified camp; I found it a kind of Nine Elms. Lewis
Bey's house, tlien the pride of the S^dan, now cowerud
in the middle of a huge mud-walU*d station-yard.
Boxes and barrels and bags climbed up and over-
shadowed and clioked it. Ammunition and stores,
food and fodder — the jonrney had been a crescendo
of them, but this was the fortissimo. You wandered
al)Out among the streets of piles tliat towered over-
head, and lost yourself in munitions of war. Along

women
irillncss

enjoyed
in one
k. But
1 of the
nk roof,
n when
to the

id slept
Of all
s^ere the
unboats
md two
atering-
y mud-
xra was
t a for-
Levvis
cowered
)n-yard.
d over-
stores,
escendo
andered
id over-
Along

"FABTIlEli SOUTH."

179

the Nile bank, where two steamers together had been
a rarity, lay four. Another paddled ceaselessly to and
fro across the river, where the little two-company
camp had grown into lines for the cavalry and camel
corps. Slim -sparred gyassas fringed all the bank;
lateen sails bellied over the full river.

Of troops the place was all but empty ; the indis-
pensable E-yptians were away up the river cutting
and stacking wood for tlie steamers or preparing
depots. In mid-April the Atbara was the as yet un-
attained objective of the railway; in mid-Tjly the
railway was ancient history, and the Atbara was the
port of departure for the boats. Just a half-way house
on the road to Khartum. What a man the Sirdar is— ■
if he is a man ! We got out and pitched our tents ;
and here we found the men who had not been on
leave — the railway and the water transport and the
camel transport and the fatigues in general — working
harder, harder, harder every day and every night.
We drank a gin-and-soda to the mast^x-toast of the
Egyptian army : " Farther South I "

180

XXIL

THE FIRST STEPS FORWAED.

At the beginning of August the military dispositions
were not, on pnper, very diirerent from those of the
end of April. The Sirdar's headquarters had been
moved to tlie Atbara in order that the vast operations
of transport at that point might go on under his own
eye. Of the four infantry brigades which had fought
against Malimud, three were still in their summer
quarters. Neither of the two additional brigades
had yet arrived at tlie front.

The force destined for Omdurman consisted of two
infantry divisions, one British and one Egyptian; one
regiment of liritish and ten squadrons of Egyptian
cavalry; one liidd and one howitzer battery, and two
siege-guns of DiiLish artillery and one horse and four
tifld batteries of Kgyplian, besides both IJritish and
K^yptian Maxims; eigliL compjinics of camel-corps;
the medical service and the transport cor])s; six
fightiug gunboats, with eight transport steamers and
a \i06l of sailing boats.

THE E(.YPT[AN INFANTKY.

181

The Egyptian infantry division was coniniantlcd, as
before, by Major-Gencral Hiuit«3r; but it now counti'd
four bii^ades instead of three. The First, Second, and
Third (Macdonahl's, Maxwell's, and Lewis's) were con-
stituted as in the Atbara ciunpai^ai.

The commanding otlicers of battalions were the
same except for the 13Lh Sudanese. Sniitli-Dorrien
Tey, who originally raised the regiment, now com-
manded in place of Collinson JJey. The latter oOicer
had been promoted to the command of the Fourth
Brigade. It was entirely Egyptian — the 1st (I>im-
bashi Doran), 5th (I5orhan Bey, with native o(licers),
17th (lUmbury Bey), and the newly-raised 18th (l)im-
bashi Matchett). Of these the first was at Fort
Atbara; the 17th and IStli were coming up from
Merawi, hauling boats over the Fourth Cataract.
They reached Abu Ilanied by the beginning of
August. The 5th was half at Berber and half on
the march across the desert from Suakim. The
Third Brigade was at various points up-river, cutting
wood for the steamers.

The two Egyptian battalions (2nd and 8th) attached
to the First and Second Brigades were at Nasri I.sland,
ten miles or so from the foot of the Sliabhdva Cata-
ract, forming a depot for supi)lies and stores. Tiie
six black battalions left IJerbur on July 30, and ar-
rived at the Atbara in the small hours of August 1.
Taking the strength of an Kgypiian battalion at 750,
the division would number 12,000 men.

182

THE FIRST STEPS FORWARD.

Major - General Gatacre commanded the British
Division. Of its two bri^'ades the First — the Ih'itish
Brigade of the last campaign, now under Colonel
Wauchope — was still in siunnier quarters. Head-
qnarters, Camerons, Seaforths, and Maxim battery at
Darmali; Lincolns and Warwick's at Essillera. The
last two had changed commanding odicers — Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Louth now had the Lincolns, Lieu-
tenant - Colonel Forbes the AVarwicks. The latter
officer had arrived at Umdabieh two days before the
Atbara fight to relieve Lieutenant - Colonel Quale
Jones, ordered home to command the 2nd Battalion of
the regiment; with rare tact and common -sense it
was arranged that Colonel Jones should lead the bat-
talion he knew. Colonel Forbes went into the fight
as a free-lance, and I saw him enjoying himself like
a schoolboy with a half - holiday. The "VVarwicks
rejoiced once more in the possession of their two
companies from the Merawi garrison. Casualties in
action, and deaths and invalidings from sickness, had
brought down the strength of this brigade, though
officers and men had stood the climate exceedingly
well. The sick-rate had never touched 6 per cent.
There were not fifty graves in the cemetery ; and most
of the faces at the mess- tables were familiar. The
Lincolns, who had come up over 1100 strong, still had
980 ; the other three battalions were each about 750
strong, and the Warwicks were expecting a draft of
sixty men. With the Maxims, A.S.C., and Medical

THE BRITISH DIVISION.

183

Service the strength of tlic brin[ade would come to
nearly 3500. The Second Brigade had not yet come
up from Egypt. Colonel Lyttelton was to command.
The four battalions com])osing it were the 1st
Northumberland Fusiliers (5th, Lieutenant-Colonel
Money) and 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers (20th, Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Collingwood) from the Cairo garrison,
the 2nd Eifle Brigade (Colonel Howard) from Malta,
and the 1st Grenadier Guards from Gibraltar. Each
battalion was to come up over 1000 strong. The 1st
Eoyal Irish Fusiliers, from Alexandria, were sending
up a Maxim detachment with four guns, so that the
whole division would number well over 7500.

Broadwood Bey's nine squadrons of cavalry had
concentrated during the last week of July on the
western bank opposite Fort Athara. They were to
march up, starting on August 4, and to be joined
at Metemmeh by a squadron from Merawi. The 21st
Lancers (Colonel Martin) were expected up from Cairo
about 500 strong ; the total of the cavalry would be
abf Mt 1500. British and Egyptian were to be separate
commands.

The whole of the artillery, on the other hand, was
under Long Bey, of the Egyptian Army. The arrival
of Bimbashi Stewart's battery from Merawi had com-
pleted the strength of the Egyptian artillery ; both
this battery and Bimbashi Peake's had been re-armed
with 9-pounder Maxim-Xordenfuldts, so that all the
field guns were now the same. These, with the horse

184

TUE FIRST STEPS FORWARD.

battery, began to go up the Nile at the beginning of
August — the pieces by boat, the horses and mules
marching. The 32nd Field Battery RA. (Major Wil-
liams), the 37th Field Battery with 5-inch howitzers
and Lyddite shells and two 40-pounder siege guns,
were coming up from Cairo. This would give a total
of forty- four guns, besides twenty British and Egyp-
tian Maxims.

Two companies of camel corps were at the Atbara,
timed to march on August 2. One was coming over
from Suakim. The other five, under Tudvvay Bey,
commandiug the whole corps, were to start with the
Merawi squadron of cavalry, about the same time,
and march by Sir Herbert Stewart's route across the
Bayuda Desert to Metemmeh. The strength would
be about 800. The land force was thus over 22,000
men.

The three new gunboats — Malik, Sheikh, and Sultan
— were put together at Abeidieh, the work beginning
immediately after the battle of the Atbara, as soon
as the railway reached that place. They carry two
12J-pounder Maxim-Nordenfeldt quick-firers fore and
aft, and three Maxims, two on the upper deck and
one on a platform above. They are lightly armoured,
being bullet-proof all over, and the screw is protected
by being sunk in a plated well a few feet forward of
the stern. As fighting boat? they might be expected
to show superior qualities to tlie vessels of the Zafir
class ; but as beasts of burden with barges they were

IF THE KHALIFA REFUSED BATTLE!

185

ling of
mules
.r Wil-
svitzers
I guns,
a total
Egyp-

A.tbara,
ig over
y Bey,
ith the
e time,
OSS the
I would
22,000

Sultan
ginning
as soon
Ty two
ore and
ck and
noured,
otected
ward of
xpected
le Zafir
ey were

inferior to tliese. Drawing only 18 inches against the
older boat's 30 inches, they could not get grip enough
of the water to make good headway against the full
Nile.

From the disposition of the force, extended along
the Nile from Shabluka to Alexandria, and across the
desert from Korti to Suakim, it was evident that the
campaign had not yet opened by the beginning of
August. The army was only entering on the move-
ments preparatory to concentration. The point of
concentration was Wad Habashi, a dozen miles or so
south of Shabluka; the time was as yet uncertain.
Transport was so far forward tliat we might easily get
to Omdurman the first week in September. All de-
pended on the weather. Up to now there had been
hardly any rain. But the real rainy season — said
Slatin Pasha, who is the only white man with real
opportunity of knowing — runs from August 10 to
September 10. It might be sooner or later, heavier
or lighter. A swollen river, a flooded, torrent-riven
bank, malaria and ague, would hold us back. A dry
season would pass us gaily through.

And when we advanced from Wad Ilabashi? It
was utterly impossible to say what would befall. If
the Khalifa wanted to give us trouble, he would leave
without fighting. That would probably mean that he
would get his throat cut by one of the innumerable
enemies he has made; certainly it would mean the
collapse of his empire. But it would also mean a

186

THE FIRST STEPS FORWARD.

costly expedition with no finality at the end of it;
it would mean years of anarchy, dacoity from Khar-
tum to the Albert Nyanza, from Abyssinia to Lake
Chad. Only there was always the relieving thought
that Khalifa AbduUahi would aim not so much at
giving trouble to us as at avoiding it for himself.
With Mahmud's experience before his eyes he might
think it safest to be taken prisoner. He might, just
possibly, even decide to die game.

Granting that he fought, it was still hopelessly un-
certain where and how he would fight. It might be
at Kerreri, sixteen miles north of his capital ; it might
be inside his wall. "We could speculate for days; we
did ; but to come to any conclusion more likely than
any other was beyond any man in the army.

187

XXIII.

IN SUMMER QUARTERS.

Scene of the dialogue, a mess-room in a village on
the Nile. Time, nearly luncli-time. A subaltern is
discovered smoking a cigarette under the verandah.
Enter I.

Suhaltern. Hallo, Steevens ! when did j'ou come up?
Get down and have a drink. Hi, you syce! Take
this hawaga's hoosan and take tlie sarr/ and bridle off
and dim a drink of moyyah. Wliat'U you drink ? . . .
Oh no: this isn't so bad- -better than IJas Iludi, any-
how. You're looking at our pictures — out of the
'Graphic,' you know — coloured them ourselves— helps
you through the day, you know : that's a well-developed
lady, isn't it? Have a ci.narctte, will you? We're
all getting pretty well fed up with this place by now.

Enter a Captain. Hallo, Steevens! when did you
come up? Have you got anything to drink? I
suppose you've been at home all this time. No, I
haven't been farther north than Berber. Had a very
jolly ten days up the Atbara, though. Two parties

188

IN SUMMER QUAIITERS.

went — one with the General, one afterwards. Seven
guns got a hundred and sixty-five sand-grouse in one
day. Went up riglit beyond our battlefield. High ?
Never smelt anytliing like it in my life. The bush
gets very tliick above. No; no lions.

Suhaltcrn, We got a croco down here, though, and a
bally great fish with a head on him three feet six long,
the head alone. No, I liaven't been down either. I
went down with a boat party to Geneineteh, though —
ripping. There was a grass bank just six inclies above
the water, and you could bathe all day. The men
loved it, if they were pretty fit to begin with ; if they
weren't, you see, what with bully beef and dirty
water

Cajitain. But we're all getting fed up, as the
Tommies say, with this place by now.

Enter a Senior CajHain. Hallo, Steevens ! I heard
you'd come up. In this country it isn't "Have a
drink," but " What'll you drink ? " Well, here we are
still in this filtliy country. Yes, I got ten days in
Cairo, but T was at the dentist's all the time. Gad,
what a c untry ! Wlicn I think of all the lives that
have been lost for this miserable heap of sand they
call tlie Soudan — ugli ! — it's — it's

Suhaltcrn. lvip})ing sport: everybody was wondering
how the Pari Mutuel was done so well. The truth
was, it was run by the same men of the Army Pay
Department that do it at the races in Cairo. Devilish
good race, too, the Albara Derby. We thouglit we

THE UNIVEKSAL QUESTION.

189

Seven
36 in one

High ?
'he bush

;h, and a
six long,
ither. I
;hough —
les above
Che men
; if they
ad dirty

, as the

I heard
'Have a
re we are

days in
le. Gad,
ives that
and they

ondering
'he truth
rmy Pay
Devilish
►ught we

hadn't got a chaice against all these Egyptian army
fellows, and If air won it by a head, Sparkes second, a
bad third.

Enter a Major, Well, Steevens, how are you ? Been

up loug ? Have a I see you've got one. Good

to see all you fellows coming out again ; means busi-
ness. River's very full to-day, isn't it ?

Captain. Eisen three feet and an inch since yester-
day. The Atbara flood, I suppose. You were at
Atbara ; did you see it ?

/. Eather. It came down roaring, hit the Nile, and
piled up on end. Brought down trees, beams, dug-
outs

Major. Well, now, shall we go in to lunch ? You
didn't see the First British Brigade field-firiug to-day,
did you? Nothing will come within 800 yards of that
alive. Do you think we shall have a figlit ?

Enter a Colonel. Good morning, Mr Steevens: have
you been up long ? Are you being attended to ? Yes,
now ; shall we have a fight ? What will he do now ?
I can't bear to think we aren't going to have a fight.

Senior Captain. Fi<j;]it ? \vh

Major. If he'd only come out into the open

Caiifain. No; lio'll stick behind liis

Sahaltcrn. Wall: then we shall have

Mnjor. Two days' bonibaidment ; but then, you
know

Colonel. Well, I wish we'd another brigade in re-
serve to stay at

190

m SUMMEIl QUAllTEKS.

Senior Captain. Another brigade, sir? "WI17, it
makes me sick to see all tliis prepaidtion against
such an enemy. We had 1500 men at Abu Klea,
and now we've got 20,000. Fanatics ? Look at those
men we fought at the Atbara, those miserable scally-
wags. Do you call these fanatics ? Sell their lives ?
give 'em away. Despise the enemy ; yes, I do despise
them ; I despise them utterly. Ititles are too good for
them. Sticks, sir, we ought to take to them — sticks
with bladders on the end. Why, the moment we
came to their zariba they got up and ran — got up like
a whit3 cloud and ran. And then all these prepara-
tions and all this force ? They're a contemptible
enemy — a wretched, despicable enemy. Why won't
the Sirdar let the gunboats above Shabluka ? Because
Beatty would take Khartum.

Colonel. Come, come now. But what'll you have to
eat now ?

General Conversation. Going to the Gymkhana this
afternoon. . . . Squat on his hunkers inside his
wall . . . won't sell you a drop of milk, the surly
devils, when we're saving their country . . . the
houses at Omdurman are outside the wall, you know
. . . not a bad notion of jumping, that bay pony . . .
street-to-street fighting, we should lose a devil of a lot
0^ men . . . did you hear the Guards cabled to ask
what arrangements had been made for ice on the cam-
paign ? . . . but then he can't defend his wall ; it
hasn't got a banquette, and it's twelve feet high . . .

THE iiECiiuiT a:;d the mirage.

191

Hij, it
Rfjainst
I Klea,
it tiiose
scally-
' lives?
despise
;ood for
-sticks
ent we
up like
repara-
iiptible
' won't
Because

have to

na this
lide his
e surly
. the
1 know
ay . . .
of a lot
to ask
le cam-
'all; it
^h . . .

gave the recruit their water-bottles to fill at the lake.
"Here, Jock," they said, "take mine too." So the
wretched man started off with the water-bottles of
the whole half-company to fill them at the mirage . . .
have another drink . . . rather ; fed up with it ; rail-
way fatigues, too, and field-days twice a-week ... it
was their Colonel kept them from coming up, they
Bay : damned fine regiment all the same . . . weakest
Government of this century, sir . . . stowasser gaiters
. . . go under canvas a couple of days before we
etart . . . ripping sport . . . fed up . . . drink . . .

Colonel {risimj). Well, now, will you have a cigarette?

Senior Captain. A miracle of mismanagement. , , ,

Voice of Tommy (outside). Whatcher doin' ?

Second voice. Gaucher see ? stickin' *oods on these
'ere cacolets.

Voice of Tommy. Whatcher doin' that for ?

Second voice, Doncher know ? To kerry the bleed'n*
Grenadier Gawds to Khartum.

192

XXIV.

DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS.

On the 3rd of August the six Sudanese battalions
left Fort Atbara for the point of concentration at
Wad Habashi. Most people who saw them start
remarked that they would be very glad to hear they
had arrived.

You may have seen sardines in tins ; but you
will never really know how roomy and comfortable
a tinned sardine must feel until you have seen blacks
packed on one of the Sirdar's steamers. Nothing
but the Sirdar's audacity would ever have tried it;
nothing but his own peculiar blend of luck and
judgment would have carried it through without
appalling disaster.

Dressed in nothing but their white Friday shirt
and drawers, the men filed on to the boats. Every
man carried his blanket, for men from the Equator
have tender chests, but it was difficult to see how
he was ever to get into it. On each deck of each

A MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT.

193

steamer they squatted, shoulder to shoulder, toe to
back, chin to knee. Fast alongside each gunboat were
a couple of double-decked roofed barges, brought out
in sections from England for this very purpose. Both
decks were jammed full of black men till you could
not have pushed a walking-stick between them: ihr
upper deck bellied under their weight like a ham
mock. At the tail of each gunboat floated a gyassa
or two gyassas: in them you could have laid your
blanket and slept peacefully on the soldiers' heads.
Thus in this land of impossibilities a craft not quite
so big as a penny steamer started to take 1100 men,
cribbed so that they could not stretch arm or leg,
100 miles at rather under a mile an hour.

The untroubled Nile floated down brim-full, thick
and brown as Turkish coffee, swift and strong as an
ocean. The turbid Atba^a came down swishing and
rushing, sunk bushes craning their heads above the
flood, and green Sodom apples racing along it like
bubbles, and flung itself upon the Nile. Against the
double streams the steamers — seven in all, bigger and
smaller, with over 6000 men — pulled slowly, slowly
southward. The faithful women, babies on thuii
hips, screamed one more farewell: their life is a
string of farewells, threaded with jewels of victori-
ous return. The huddled heaps of white cotton and
black skin began to blend together in the blurring
sunlight. They started before breakfast; by lunch-
time all but one had vanished round the elbow a

194

DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS.

mile or two iip-stream. The blacks were gone out
to conquer again.

Blacks gone, whites came. The Headquarters and
first four companies of the Piifle Brigade were in camp
before the steamers were under way. These things
fit in like the joints of your body till you take them
for the general course of things ; only when you go
to Headquarters and see Chiefs-of-Statl' and D.A.A.G.S.
and orderly-officers and aides-de-camp calculating and
verifying and countersigning and telegraphing and
acknowledging, do you realise that the staff-work of
an army is the biggest and most business-like busi-
ness in the world.

The Rifles' firso morning of Sudan was not endear-
ing. They were shot out on to a little hillock or plat-
form at half-past one in the moj;ning, in the middle
of one of the best dust-storms of the season. Through
the throttled moonlight they might have seen, if they
had cared to look at anything, the correspondent of
the 'Daily Mail' hammering at his uptorn tent-pegs
with a tin of saddle-soap, and howling dismally to a
mummified servant to bring him the mallet. Tack,
tack, tack went the mallets all over camp. But
the Rifles had neither tents nor angarebs nor bags:
they were dumped down among their baggage and sat
down for five hours to contemplate the smiling Sudan.
Then they disinterred themselves and their belongings
and marched into camp.

But this n°w brigade was to have a Cook's tour by

TWO FAVOUEED KEGIMENTS.

195

ine out

313 and
n camp
things
;e them
you go
LA.G.S.
ing and
ng and
tvork of
:e busi-

endear-
or plat-
middle
'hrough
if they
dent of
nt-pegs
dly to a
Tack,
). But
)r bags:
and sat
Sudan,
longings

tour by

comparison with the other. They had abundant kit
and abundant stores. From the sea to Shabluka they
hardly needed to put foot to the ground : thence it was
a matter of half-a-dozen marches to Khartum and Om-
durman. Fight there — then into boats again and down
to the rail-head at the Atbara ; train to Haifa, boat to
Assuan, train to Cairo or Alexandria — the two new
battalions, Eifles and Guards, might be up and down
again, in and out of the country inside a couple of
months. The sarcastic asked why they were not
brought up in ice, unpacked at Omdurman to fight,
and then packed in ice again. But that was unjust.
Either you must give a regiment time to get fit and
weed out its weaklings, or else you must cocker it all
you can till you want it. The Eiiles and Guards
would never be as hard as the splendid sun-dried
battalions of the First Brigade — there was not time
to harden them. The next best thing was to keep
them fresh and fit by sparing them as much as
possible.

So the Eifles made their camp on the Atbara bank
— cool, airy, and relatively free from dust-drift. Next
day — the 4th — the second half of the battalion came
in; next day Brigadier-General Lyttelton with his
staff and the 32nd field battery ; next day the first half
of the Grenadier Guards. So they were timed to go on
— half a battalion or a battery or a squadron nearly
every morning till the whole second brigade was on
the Atbara. Before the tail of it had arrived the head

196

DEPARTUKKS AND AKRIVALS.

would be ofiP again — men and guns by boat, beasts by
road — to Wad Habashi.

To transport 5000 men, 600 horses, two batteries
with draught cattle, and two siege-guns some 1300
miles along a line of rail and river within four weeks is
not, perliaps, on paper, a very astounding achievement.
But remember last time we came the same way. IJe-
member 1884 — the voyageurs and the Seedee boys, the
whalers and the troopers set to ride on camels and
fight on foot, and all the rest of the Empire-ballet
business — the force that left Cairo about the time of
year these were leaving, that began to leave Haifa at
the opening of September and struck the Nile at
Metemmeh late in January, while most of it never got
beyond Korti. It is exactly the difference between
the amateur and the professional.

Kemember, furthermore, that 'he railway from Luxor
to Assuan and the railway from Haifa to the A^tbara
are both quite new : at home, with every engineering
facility which is lacking in the Sudan, a new line is
allowed a few months' trial to settle and mature before
heavy traffic is run over it. The track is single, the
engines are many of them old, the native officials are
all of tliem incapable. The steamers are few and in
great part old. The wind for the sailing boats was
mostly contrary. The country is a howling red-hot
deiKjpuhuion. Yet every arriving vessel was not
merely up to its time but a little before it. It wanted
for nothing by the way, and when it arrived found

TUE PERFECTION OF METHOD,

197

provision for just three times as long as it was likely
to need it.

And all the time, remember, just the same thing
was going on up the river. While the trains were bring-
ing the British, the boats were taking the blacks. The
gy asses sank their low waists awash with the Nile-
flood under groaning loads of supplies : the streets of
boxes and sacks at the Atbara never seemed to grow
less, but similar streets were rising at Nasri Island.
Above us the bank was being stacked with wood for
the steamers ; below us Egyptian battalions were haul-
ing at more boats to take more supplies forward. AU
one steady pull along a rope 1300 miles long — a pull
without a stumble, without a slack. And the Sirdar
ran his eye along the whole tension of it, knowing
every man's business better than he did himself.
Only furious because the wind was south or west in-
stead of north. He was not accustomed to such luck,
and he did not i ;serve it. But neither did he succumb
to it. The sailing boats went south all the same. The
Sirdar told them to go south ; and somehow, tacking,
towing, punting, Allah knows how, south it was.

198

XXV.

THE PATHOLOGY OF THIRST.

If it had not been for the drink I should never have
come twice to the Sudan.

It is part of the comprehensive uselessness of this
country that its one priceless production can never
be exported. If the Sudan thirst could be sent home
in capsules, like the new soda-water sparklets, it would
make any man's fortune in an evening. The irony
of it is, that there is so much thirst here — such a
limitless thirst as might supply the world's whole
population richly: on the other side there are millions
of our fellow - creatures, surrounded by every liquor
that art can devise and patience perfect, but wanting
the thirst to drink withal. Gentlemen in England
now abed will call themselves accursed they were
not here. And even the few white men who vainly
strive to do justice to these stupendous depths and
intensities, these vast areas and periods of thirst —
how utterly and pitiably inadequate we are to our
high opportunity.

THE TRUE SUDAN TlIIllST.

199

ir have

of this
1 never
it home
t would
e irony
such a

whole
iiillions

liquor
•vanting
^^ngland
y were
) vainly
ths and
ihirst —

to our

I wonder if you ever were thirsty ? Probably not.
I never had been till I came to the Sudan, and that
is why I came again. If you have been really thirsty,
and often, you will be able to distinguish many vari-
ations of the phenomenon. The sand-stonn thirst I
hardly count. It is caused by light soil forming in
the gullet; wash the soil away and the thirst goes
with it: this can be done with water, which you do
not even need to swallow.

The desert thirst is more legitimately so called : it
arises from the grilling sun on the sand, from the
dancing glare, and from hard riding therein. This
is not an unpleasant thirst : the sweat evaporates on
your face in the wind of your own galloping, and
thereby produces a grateful coolness without, while
throat and gullet are white-hot within. The desert
thirst consists in this contrast : it can be satisfied by a
gulp or two of really cool water which has also been
evaporating through a canvas bottle slung on your
saddle.

But in so far as it can be satisfied, it is no true
Sudan thirst. The true Sudan thirst is insatiable.
The true Sudan thirst — whi^h, to be sure, may bo
found in combination with either or both of the
others, and generally is — is born of sheer heat and
sheer sweat. Till you have felt it, you have not
thirsted. Every drop of liquid is wrung out of your
body: you could swim in your clothes; but, inside,
your muscle shrinks to dry sponge, your bom^s to dry

200

THE PATHOLOGY OF THIBST.

pith. All your strength, your substance, your self is
draining out of you ; you are conscious of a perpetual
liquefaction and evaporation of good solid you. You
must be wetted till you soften and swell to life again.

You are wetted. You pour in wet, and your self
sucks it in and swells — and then instantly it gushes
out again at every pore, and the self contracts and wilts.
You swill in more, and out it bubbles before you even
feel your inside take it up. More — and your pores
swish in spate like the very Atbara* Useless: you
must give it up, and let the goodness sluice out of
you. There is nothing of you left; you are a mere
vacuum of thirst. And that goes on from three hours
after sunrise till an hour before sundown.

You must not think that we are idle all this while
— not even correspondents. The real exercise ot your-
self and your ponies you have begun before breakfast,
and intend to continue after tea. For the rest, at Fort
Atbara, you can go down to the railway station. If
there is a train there, there will be troops getting out
of it ; if there is not, you can ask when one is expected,
and read chalked on a notice-board the latest bulletin
of the health of every engine on the road between there
and Haifa. On the platform, too, is the post-office. You
can ask when the next post goes out or comes in : the
dirty Copt boy they call postmaster will answer, " To-
morrow." The postal service is not good at Fort Atbara.
They say the Sirdar does not allow it room enough;
as the room he does ellow is entirely filled with the

HARD WORK AND NO REST.

201

self is
•petual
You
again,
ar self
gushes
I wilts,
u even
' pores
j: you
out of
I mere
) hours

3 while
[ your-
akfast,
kt Fort
)n. If
og out
pected,
uUetin
1 there
You
n: the
•, " To-
\.tbara.
DOugh ;
th the

angareba of the officials, and as they seldom arise from
them, there is doubtless much justice iu tlie complaint.
There are other diversions for the correspondent in the
heat of the day. He may walk in the nuzl, or station
yard. Nitzl is the Arabic for a place where things are
dumped down — and dumped down in this nuzl they
certainly are. Streets and streets and streets of them,
— here a case of pepper, there the spare wheel of a gun,
there jars of rum, there piles of Eemington rifles for
issue to more or less friendly tribes — everything that
an army should or would or could want. There you see
the men who do the real hard work of the army — not
the men who work hard and then rest, but the men who
work hard and never rest — the Director of the Water
Transport, the Staff Officer for Supplies and Stores, the
Director of Telegraphs. And there, with the hardest
worked, you see the tall white-clad Sirdar working —
now breaking a man's heart with curt censure, now
exalting him to heaven with curt praise. Now ante-
dating a movement, now hastening an embarkation,
now increasing the load of a barge — for where the
Sirdar is there every man and every machine must
do a little better than his best.

All this you may see, and sweat, between the hour
before sunrise and the hour before sunset. It goes
on always, but usually after sunset you look at it no
more.

For then the Sudan thirst has spent itself and it is
at your mercy. You begin with a bombardment of

202

THE PATHOLOGY OF THIEST.

hot tea. The thirst thinks its conquest assured; it
takes the hot tea for a signal of surrender, and hurls
the first cup arrogantly out again through your skin.
You fire in the second cup — and you find that you
have gained some ground. It may be that tea is nearer
the temperature of your body than a merely tepid
drink ; it may be some divine virtue in the herb; but
you feel the second cup of tea settle within you.
Yon feel yourself a degree less torrid, a shade more
substantial.

If you are wise you will rest conttut for the moment
with this advantage. Order your pony and gallop an
hour in the desert. You will sweat, of course; you
need not expect to escape that at any time. But the
sweat cools off you, and you ride in with a fresh skin.
Take your tub in your tent : the Nile cools faster than
the land, and oh the deliciousness of the cold water
licking round you !

Now comes the sweet revenge for ail the torments
of the day. It is quite dark by now, unless the moon be
up, leaning to you out of a tender blue immensity, silver,
caressing, cool. Or elf the sprightly candles beckon
from your dinner-table, spreaa outside the tent, a halo
of light and white in the blackness, alert, inviting,
cool. You, too, by now are clean and cool. You
quite forget whether the day was more than warm
or no.

But you remember the thirst. You are cool, but
within you are still dry, very dry and shrunken. Take

THE MOMENT OF THE DAY.

203

ired; it
d hurls
ir skin,
lat you
3 nearer
y tepid
rb; but
in you.
le more

moment
lUop an
se ; you
But the
sh skin,
ter than
d water

orments
noon be
f, silver,
beckon
t, a halo
nviting,
.. You
a warm

ool, but
Take

a long mug and think well what you will have poured
into it ; for this is the moment of the day, the moment
that pays for the Sudan, You are very thirsty, and
you are about to slake your thirst. Let it be alcoholic,
for you have exuded much life in the day ; let it above
all be long. Whisky-and-soda is a friend that never
fails you, but better still something tonic. Gin and
soda ? Gin and lime-juice and soda ? Gin and bitters
and lime-juice and soda? or else that triumphant
blend of all whetting flavours, an Abu Hamed — gin,
vermouth, Angostura, lime-juice, soda ?

Mix it in due proportions ; put in especially plenty
of soda — and then drink. For this is to drink indeed.
The others were only flushing your body with liquid
as you might flush a drain. But this ! This splashes
round your throat, slides softly down your gullet till
you feel it run out into your stomach. It spreads
blessedly through body and spirit — not swirling
through, like the Atbara, but irrigating, like the Nile.
It is soil in the sand, substance in the void, life in
death. Your sap runs again, your biltong muscles
take on elasticity, your mummy bones toughen. Your
self has sprung up alive, and you almost think you
know how it feels to rise from the dead.

Thenceforward the Sudan is a sensuous paradise.
There is nothing like that first drink after sunset, but
you are only half irrigated yet: the first drink at
dinner — yes, and the second and the culminating
whisky-and-soda — can give rich moments. Then

204

THE PATHOLOGY OF THIRST.

your angareb stands ready, the sky is your bed-
chamber, and the breath of the desert on your cheek
is your good-night kiss. To-morrow you will begin to
sweat again as you ride before breakfast. To-morrow
— to-night even — there may be a dust-storm, and you
will wake up with all your delicious moistness furred
over by sand. But that is to-morrow.

For to-night you have thirsted and you have drunk.
And to-morrow will have an evening alsa

205

XXVI.

BY ROAD, RIVER, AND RAIL.

Gradually Fort Atbara transformed itself from an
Egyptian camp to a British.

Parts of the Fourth Egyptian Brigade came in from
the north, but started south again almost immediately.
The steamers which had taken up the blacks began
to drop down to the Atbara ; as soon as they tied up,
new battalions were packed into them, and they
thudded up-river again.

Of the four battalions of Collinson Bey's command,
the 1st left in detachments on August 8, and the first
instalment of the 17th had preceded them on August
7. Three companies of the 5th, with a company of
camel corps, reached Berber from Suakim on August
3 ; they had marched the 288 miles of desert in fifteen
days. This was fha record for marching troops, and
it is not likely that anybody but Egyptians will ever
lower it. One day, after a thirty-mile stage, the half-
battalion arrived at a well and found it dry. The
next was thirty miles Tarther. Straightway the men

206

BY ROAD, RIVER, AND RAIL.

got up and made their march sixty miles before they
camped. They say that when, as here, native officers
are in command of a desert march, they put most of
their men on the baggage-camels : no doubt they do,
but the great thing is that the troops get there.

The oth joined its oti 3r half in Berber and marched
in to Fort Atbara on August 6 ; on August 7 it was
packed into steamers and sent up to Wad Habashi.
On August 9 arrived the first half of the newly-raised
18th and two companies of the 17th. These had been
pulling steamers and native boats up from Merawi;
they too had broken a record, doing in twenty days
what last year had taken twenty-six at the least and
forty at the most. Among their steamers was the
luckless Teb, which had run into a rock just before
Dongola, and in '97 had turned turtle in the Fourth
Cataract. The Sirdar had now taken the precaution
of renaming her the Hafir.

The four steamers had, of course, arrived days be-
fore, and were already broken to harness. The gyassas
were still behind, fighting with the prevailing south
wind ; between Abu Hamed and Abeidieh the trees
on the bank were sunk under the flood, so that it was
almost impossible to tow. One day the wind would
be northerly, and that day the boats would sail forty
miles ; the next it would be dead contrary, and,
sweating from four in the morning to ten at night,
they would make five. But it had to be done, and it
was done. The first arrivals of the 17th and 18th

THE CAMP BJilCOMEti BKITISH.

207

)re they

officers

most of

they do,

'•

Marched
7 it was
labashi.
y-raised
lad been
Merawi ;
ity days
east and
was the
t before
Fourth
ecaution

lays be-
s gyassas
ig south
he trees
t it was
d would
lil forty
ly, and,
Lt night,
e, and it
nd 18th

were picked up by train south of Abu Hamed ; on
August 11th and 13th the rest came in to find their
comrades already gone. This completed the Fourth
Brigade, and with its completion the whole strength
of the Egyptian army was at the Atbara or forward.

So that the camp became British. The two halves
of the liifle Brigade, the first half of the Guards, and
the 32nd Battery had come up on successive days;
alter that there was a lull. But on Auc^ust 9 we had
an exciting day — exciting, at least, by the standard of
Fort Atbara. Late the night before had come the
balance of the British artillery — the 37th Field Bat-
tery, with six howitzers, a detachment of the 16th
Company, Eastern Division, Garrison Artillery, with
two 40-pounders, and a detachment of the Koyal Irish
Fusiliers, with four Maxims.

They were getting the 40-pounders into position for
shipment on the bank. All gunners are fine men, and
garrison gunners are the finest men of all gunners ;
these were pushing and pulling their ungainly dar-
lings in the tire-deep sand as if they were a cou])le of
perambulators. They are old guns, these 40-pounders ;
their short barrels tell you that. They were in their
second decade when they first came to Egypt in 1882,
and, once in Khartum, they are like to spend the rest
of their lives there. But for the present they were
the heaviest guns with the force, and they must be
nursed and cockered till they had knocked a hole or
two in the Khalifa's wall. So tiie gunners had laid

208

BY ROAD, RIVKR, AND RAIL.

out ropes, and now solid figures in grey flannel shirts,
khaki trousers, and green -yellow putties — braces
swinging from their waists, according to the ritual of
cavalry and gunners and all men who tend beasts —
were hammering away at their pegs and establishing
their capstan with which the enormous babies were to
be lowered into their boats. Before they breakfasted
all was in order ; before they dined the guns were in
the boats specially made to tako them ; before they
supped they were well on the waterway to Khartum.

The Irish Fusiliers were picked from a fine regiment
which had very hard luck in not being brought up in
the Second Brigade. Set faces, heavy moustaches,
necks like bulls, the score or so of men were the
admiration of the whole camp. But most curiosity
went naturally to the howitzers. They were hauling
them out of the trucks when I got down — little tubby
5-inch creatures, in jackets like a Maxim's, on car-
riages like a field-gun's, carriage and gun-jacket alike
painted pea-soup colour. The two trucks full of them
were backed up to a little sand platform; the gun-
ners wheeled out gun and limber and limbered up ; a
crowd of Egyptians seized hold, and — hallah hoh !
hallah hoh ! — they tugged away with them. The cry
of the Egyptian when doing combined work is more
like that of Briinnhilde and her sisters in the " Wal-
kiire" than any civilised noise I can remember to
have heard.

The howitzers were to fire a charge of lyddite whose

ARRIVAL OF THE GUARDS,

209

I shirts,
- braces
itual of
easts —
Dlishing
were to
kfasted
were in
re they
irtum.
jgiment
it up in
staches,
jre the
uriosity
hauling
3 tubby
on car-
et alike
)f them
le gun-
1 up; a
h hoh!
rhe cry
is more
" Wal-
iber to

3 whose

bursting power is equal to 80 lb. of gunpowder.
"With a very high trajectory the effect would be some-
thing like that of bombs dropped from a balloon.
Lyddite appears to be an impartial as well as an ener-
getic explosive ; if you stand within 800 yards behind
it, it is as like as not to throw back a bit of shell into
your eye ; after which you will use no other When
they tried it in Cairo at knocking down a w£ill, it did
indeed knock down a good deal of it, but left a good
deal standing. That, however, was because ptircussion
fuses were used ; the delay fuses were all sent up the
Nile. By delaying the explosion the smallest fraction
of a second, till the shell has penetrated, its lievilish-
ness, thoy trusted, would be increased a hundredfold.
This was lyddite's first appearance in war; we all
looked forward to it with keen anticipation. The
further forward I looked, personally, the better I
should be pleased.

On the afternoon of this same less-uneventful-than-
usual 9th, a train snorted in with the second four
companies of the Guards. The Guards paraded in
their barrack square fill the beholder with admiration,
tempered with a sense of his own unworfchiness ;
emerging from roofed trucks they were less imposing.
Of course it was the worst possible moment to see
them, and the impression formed was less good than
that of other corps. Falling in beside the train they
were certainly taller than the average British soldier,
but hardly better built. They weio mostly young,

210

BY ROAD, RIVEK, AND EAIL.

mostly pale or blotchy, and their back pads — did you
know before that it was possible to get sunstroke in
the spine? — were sticking out all over them at the
grotesquest angles. Many of the officers wore thick
blue goggles, and their back pads were a trifle restive
too. The half -battalion marciied limply. Only re-
member that they had hardly stretched their legs since
they embarked at Gibraltar just three weeks before.
The wonder was that they could march at all.

A very different show was that of the 10th, when
the first half of the Northumberland Fusiliers came
in. To be sure, they appeared with advantages. The
Guards' band played in three companies, and you
do not know how a band drives out limpness until
you have tried. But allowing for that, the 5th still
made a very fine entry. The mien were not tall, but
they were big round the chest, and averaged nearly
six years* service. They swung up in a column of
dust with their stride long, heads up, shoulders squared,
soldiers all over. The officers were long-limbed, firmly
knit, straight as lances. There are not many more
pleasing sights in the world than the young British
subaltern marching alongside his company, his long
legs moderating their stride to the pace of the laden
men, his wide blue eyes looking steadily fc^^ard,
curious of the untried future, confident in the tra i-
tions of his service and his race. From the look of
the 6th Fusiliers you might guess with safety that

ONE MORK INCARNATION.

211

iid you
roke in

at the
B thick
restive
nly re-
Ts since

before.
!1.

I, when
s came
5. The
id you
IS until
th still
all, but

nearly
imn of
quared,
, firmly
Y more
British
is long
3 laden
orxrard,

the young soldier's confidence was not likely to be
abashed.

So that now the camp was all but English. A few
Egyptians remained behind, indispensable for fatigues.
But the Northumberland men were woiking away at
their ammunition and baggage all the next morning.
Tommy luoging at the camel's head-rope and adjuring
him to " Come on, ol' man," and the old man, unac-
customed to friendly language, only snarling the more
devilishly and tipping his load on to tb j sand. But
Tommy had his revenge when he rode back to the
station for another load; the baggage- camel had to
trot, which he had never done before except to escape
being saddled.

Englishmen working with camels, squads of shirt-
sleeved Englishmen tramping to and fro on fatigues,
Englishmen putting up hospital -tents, forty or fifty
Englishmen with mild sun-fever in hospital, English
bands, the crisp voice of the English sergeant, above
all, silver-throated English bugles— reveille waking the
dawn and last post floating up the silent night — Eort
Atbara had seen one more incarnatioik.

i tr

look of
ty that

S12

XXVII.

THE LAST OF FORT ATBABA.

Thus at Fort Atbara we sat, and sat, and sat. When
there were any troops to see, coming in or going out,
we went to see them. When there were not, we
galloped about in the desert, ate, drank, slept, and
generally fulfilled the whole duty of correspondents.
Why did you not make a dash for the front? the
guileless editor will ask. But the modem war
correspondent is not allowed to make unauthorised
dashes, and the man who should commend the claims
of his newspaper by slapping a British General's face
would righteously be shot.

Besides, there was no front to speak of worth
dashing for. The camp at Wad Habashi, we heard,
had been encroached on by the ever-rising Nile, and
it had been moved four miles up-stream to a spot
in full view of the gorge of Shabluka. A Bimbashi
of cavalry, who returned thence one day, pronounced
the scenery finer than anything in Switzerland ; but
then you must remember that since seeing Switzer-

TWO SOFT B/irrALIONS.

213

When
ng out,
lot, we
pt, and
ndents.
it? the
n war
horised

claims
I's face

worth
heard,
ile, and
a spot
mbashi
ounced
id; but
Switzer-

land he had seen the desert railway and Berber and
Fort Atbara and all the other dry dead levels of
the blank Sudan. More practical was the news that
as yet there had been only one storm of rain with
thunder and lightning. At Fort Atbara we had
cloudy days and rainy sunsets, whereas in the spring
we had never seen anything but hard blue for
weeks together. On the whole, too, it was cooler :
115° in the shade on one or two clear afternoons,
but often not so much as 100° all day. And the
farther south you went, they said, the cooler it be-
came.

Indeed, the nearer we actually got to the beginning
of operations, the softer task the expedition seemed.
The only people who did not seem to find it so were
the two battalions that had the softest task of all —
the Eifles and the Guards. These came into hospital
in dozens. Both regiments had a bad reputation
for going sick — the Eifles because they are mostly
cockneys without constitutions, the Guards because
they are too much pampered. Anyhow, they de-
veloped more sickness between them in a week than
the whole of the First Brigade. Their faihire to
stand the sun and the dust-storms was not for want
of officers* example — certainly in the Eifles, whose
officers were keen sportsmen, riding out to stalk
gazelle after lunch on the hottest afternoons. It was
not for want of amusement, as amusement goes in
standing camp, for the Eifles were alive with vocal

214

THE LAST OF FORT ATBARA.

talent. Almost every night, drifting down from their
camp, you might hear the familiar chorale —

Jolly good song, jolly well sung,
Jolly good comrades ev-ery one.
II" you can beat it you're welcome to try;
Always n^member the singer is dry.
Suopl

The Eifles were keeping their spirits up, and they
were as smart and keen as you could wish. But they
were not acclimatised, nor were the Guards, so that
they sent nearly a hundred cases — mostly mild sun-
fever — into hospital in a week.

The first squadron of the 21st Lancers — they were
travelling as three squadrons to be re-formed into four
in the field — arrived on the 11th. The second half of
the 5th Fusiliers came in on the 13th. Everything
seemed strolling on satisfactorily and sleepily. Then
suddenly the Sirdar aroused us with one of his light-
ning movements. You will have formed an idea of
the sort of man he is — all patience for a month, all
swiftness when the day comes. The day came on
August 13. At eleven I saw him, grave as always,
gracious and courteous, volunteering facilities. At
noon he was gone up the river to the front.

The waiting, the sudden start, the caution that
breathed no word of his intention, yet dictated an
official explanation of his departure before he left — it
was the Sirdar all over. And with his departure

THE SIRDAUS IDIOSYNCilASY.

215

n their

d they
it they
10 that
d sun-

ly were
to four
half of
[•ything
Then
5 light-
idea of
nth, all
ime on
always,
s. At

<n that
ted an
left— it
parture

Fort Atbara took on yet another metempsychosis.
It became all at once the deserted hase-cump, a
caravanserai for reinforcements, a forwarding dipot
for stores. True, most of the staff remained — nobody
pretending to know what had taken the Sirdar away
so astonishingly, unless it was merely his idiosyncrasy
of sudden and rapid movement. If anybody had
been told any other reason, it was just the man or
two that would not tell again.

But curiosity is a tactless futility when you have
to do with generals. It was enough that the advance
had come with a rush. The detachments of the ITih
and 18th Egyptian, sitting about on the bank till
steamers arrived to let them complete the brigade,
disappeared magically in the Sirdar's wake. With
them went their Brigadier, CoUinson Bey. On tliat
same evening the leading steamers passed up with
parts of the First British Brigade from Darniali.
Four days' voyage to below Shabluka and then they
would come down in one day for the Second. Then
we should be complete and ready for Omdurman.

Meanwhile there was hardly a fighting man in Fort
Atbara. The three battalions of the Second Brigade
were in camp just south of it, on the Atbara. The
first third of the Lancers were across the river ; the
second came in on the afternoon of the 14th. It
wanted only the third squadron and the Lancashire
Fusiliers to complete the force. The cavalry was
to start on the 16th with every kind of riding

216

THE LAST OF FOET ATBARA.

and baggage animal to march up, and the more
able-bodied of the correspondents were going with
them.

So on the torrid Sunday morning of the 14th we
filled the empty fort with a dress rehearsal of camels.
In the Atbara campaign I had been part of a mess of
three with nine camels : now it was a mess of four
with twenty. We marched them all up solemnly
after breakfast and computed how much of our multi-
tudinous baggage would go on to them. Fourteen of
them were hired camels: a hired camel is cheaper
than a bought one, but it generally has smallpox,
carries much less weight, and is a deal lengthier to
load.

The twenty gurgling monstrosities sat themselves
down on the sand and threw up their chins with the
camel's ineffable affectation of elegance. The men cast
a deliberate look round and remarked, " The baggage
is much and the camels are few." Next they brought
out rotten nets of rope and slung it round the boxes
and sacks. That is to say, one man slung it round
one box and the others stood statuesque about him
and suggested difficulties. That done, the second man
took up hhe wondrous tale, then the third, then the
fourth. This took about two hours. Then they sug-
gested that a camel could not without danger to its
health carry more than two dozen of whisky, whereas
anything worthy the name of a camel can carry four
hundredweight Altogether they made some fifty

PREPARING FOR TARDY VENGEANCE.

217

) more
y with

ith we

camels,
ness of
of four
lemnly
multi-
teen of
jheaper
lallpox,
hier to

nselves
ith the
len cast
)aggage
3ro light
i boxes
; round
ut him
ad man
len the
ey sug-
r to its
vhereas
•ry four
le fifty

camel -loads of the stuff. And when we said we
woulihi't have it, all the men stood round and gabbled,
and half the cao)els girned and gnashed their teeth,
and the neighbouring donkeys lifted up their voices
and brayed like souls in torment, and when you moved
to repulse an importunate Arab you kicked a com-
paratively innocent camel. Allah was their witness
that the camels — which, when we hired them two
days before, were very strong — were very weak.

But little we cared. We were going up to Omdurman
and Khartum. Camel -loads adjust themselves, but
war and the Sirdar wait for nobody. We were march-
ing into lands where few Englishmen had ever set
heel, no Englishman for fifteen years. We were
to be present at the tardy vengeance for a great
humiliation.

218

XXVII I.

THE DESERT MARCH TO OMDURMAN.

The column was to move out of camp at five in the
morning. But at half-past, when our tardy caravan
filed up to join it, dim bulks still heaved themselves
up in the yellow smoke, half-sunrise, half-dust-cloud
— masses of laden camels, strings of led horses pro-
claiming that the clumsy tail of our convoy was still
unwinding itself. Threading the patchy mimosa scrub,
we came out into a stretch of open sand; beyond
it, straight, regular, ominous of civilisation, appeared
the telegraph wire which crosses the Nile at Fort
Atbara, and now ran on to beyond Metemmeh.

In two black bars across the sand, as straight as
the wire itself, the flat rays of sunrise shadowed the
21st Lancers. Two travelling or nearly three cam-
paigning squadrons, they were the first British cavahy
in the Sudan since 1885. On their side it was their
first appearance in war. They were rehitively a young
regiment, and the only one in the British army which

A LECTURE IN CAVALRY.

219

hag never been on active service. You may imagine
whether they were backward to come.
- To tell truth, at this first glimpse of British cav-
alry in the field, they looked less like horsemen than
Christmas-trees. The row of tilted lances, the swing
of heavy men in the saddle when they moved, was
war and chivalry. The rest was picketing pi^gs
lashed to carbines, feeds of corn hanging from sad-
dles, canvas buckets opposite them, waterproofs behind,
bulky holsters in front, bundles of this thing and that
dangling here and there, water-bottles in nets under
the horses' bellies, khaki neck screens flapping from
helmets, and blue gauze veils hooding helmets and
heads and all. The smallest Syrian — they had left
their own big hungry chargers in Cairo — had to carry
18 stone; with a heavy man the weight was well
over 20.

But though each man carried a bazaar, the impres-
sion of clumsiness lasted only a moment.

When they moved they rode forward solidly yet
briskly, — weighty and light at the same time, each
man carrying all he wanted as behoves men going to
live in an enemy's countr3\ The sight was a better
lecture in cavalry than many text-books. It is not
the weapons that make the cavalryman you saw, but
the mobility ; not the gallop, but the long, long walk ;
not the lance he charges with, but the horse that
carries him far and fast to see his enemy in front and
screen liis friends behind. So much if you wished to

220

THE DESERT MAECH TO OMDURMAN.

theorise ; if it was enough merely to look and listen,
there was a fine piquancy in the great headpiece, the
raking lance, all the swinging apparatus of the free-
booter — and then, inside the casque, a round-faced
English boy, and the reflection, " If I was to go and
see my brother now, as keeps a brewery, it'd be just
right." Masterpit^3e of under-statement, more telling
than a score of superlatives — "just right!" But we
must not hurry on too fast. Before the cavalry were
well observed, before even tliirst became appealing, it
was necessary to wait for the whole force — column,
or convoy, or circus, or whatever is the technical name
for it— to form up in the open. By degrees it did.
Leading, the cavalry with its scouts and advanced
guard and flanking parties. Then a line of tarbushes
on grey horses — Egyptian gun-teams, and with them
a couple of Maxims scoring the desert with the first
ruts of all its immemorial years. Then a ragged line
of khaki and helmets, of blue and crimson and gold
and green turbans and enibroidered waistcoats — the
officers' chargers and transport mules of the two
British brigades Mome with soldier-grooms, some with
Berberi syces. Is noli the waistcoat of the groom the
same radiant marvel whether he be of Newmarket or
Kalabsheh ? Likewise there were British Maxim
mules and the miscellaneous donkeys of all the army.
Lastly, lolloping their apathetic two and a half miles an
hour, the baggage camels lumbered up the plain — well-
furnished Government beasts, with new sound saddles

THE NILE - METEMMEH TO KHARTUM

A NOAH'S ARK.

221

and little sun-bonnet pads over forehead and pate;
scraggier private camels with boxes of stores and
green trunks and baths; starveling, hired camels
banging v/hisky cases against their bare ribs. Add
to all a few goats already trailing stiff legs behind
them, a few sheep trampling their little flesh into
whipcord, a drove of brindled bdls at the same task
— and you have the caravan.

Every four-footed beast that was to go to Khartum
— saving only one- third of the 21st troop horses —
must march with this convoy or not at all. Every
man that went with it went simply as in charge of
a beast; every man was supposed to ride, and the
marches were cut out at nearly twenty miles a-day.
Horses, mules, donkeys, sheep, goats, oxer:, camels —
the monstrous caravan sprawled over the desert, jost-
ling and swaging and bumping, jerking off in dif-
ferent directions at different rates, neighing and low-
ing and braying and bleating and grunting, — Military
Tournament, Lord Mayor's Show, Sanger's Circus, and
Noah's Ark all jammed into one. Then the multitud-
inous chaos straightened itself for a second, swayed,
crooked itself again, and began to totter towards
Khartum.

We tottered for five hours through sparse camel-
thorn, over ground mostly once flooded or once rained
on, a sieve of lurking holes. By that time many
thought we should be near the end of the thirteen miles
which was our day's ration, and I, who had idiotically

222

THE DESERT MAllCH TO OMDURMAN,

started witliout breakfast, wished that I had ne^^er
seen a horse or the Sudan or the light of day. At
last, when it was g itting on for one, the head of the
cohinin — by now a reeUug ruin — turned Nilevard.
We shook up our horses and licked our split lipc.
Tiien we issued on to an old cotton-field — dry stalks,
rd between them the earth wrinkled with foot-deep
ora-"^ ;h as close-grained as the back of your hand.
The crucks were just big enough for a horse to break
his leg in, and the islands between were just big
enough to collapse into the cracks when a horse put
his foot on them. Over this v/e crawled timidly till
we came to a shallow yellow-ochre puddle. There
we learned that this was our water, and the cracka
were our camp.

The cracks proved full of scorpions, and the respec-
tive legs of your table or angareb inclined themselves
at angles of 45° to the horizontal and to each other.
However, we pretended we were at sea going home
again, and consumed tinned spiced beef and peaches
and beer — may 1 never want a meal more or deserve
it less ! — and slept. The feature of next day's march
was a new form of vegetation — a bush with leaves
something like those of a canariensis, and really green,
a phenomenon hitherto not met in the Sudan. And
whether we marched twenty-two miles that day as
was intended, or thirty-two as was asserted, or some-
thing in between as was concluded, I do not know
nor then cared: at eight I had called up a camel.

THE VAGARIES OF THE NILE.

223

and breakfasted on tinned spiced beef and peaches
and beer.

• But the important point that emerged wa:^ 'his: the
unusually high and ever-rising Nile flood was playing
the very deuce with us. The river was pushing up
what they call " khors " — broad, shallow depressions
which look like tributaries, only whose water runs
the wrong way. These planted themselves across the
track, and we had to fetr' circuits round tlicm. This
second day we arrived at a ^.cond puddle, which was
a second klior, and watered there. But the distressing
point in the situation Wi* that the force was to draw
rations and forage c Ty second day from depots on
the bank. This was the second day, and the depot
was duly on the bank ; only the khor had flooded up
in between. The Lancers had watered their horses,
and fed them — and then they had to saddle up at four
or so, and file off round the khor three miles to get
their rations. Some of the mules had not yet come
in; without even off- saddling they had to follow;
which made a march of nearly twelve hours on end.
You could not blame anybody for the vagaries of
the Nile, but it was natural that somebody would
suffer from them. Already at the first halting-place
four Egyptians carried in a comrade in a blanket with
a rude splint on his leg. The same day a trooper of
the Lancers went down. He had been advised not to
try the Sudan sun at all, but insisted on his chance
of service : after this first march he just got his

22-i

THE DESERT MARCH TO OMDURMAN.

horse watered and fed, and then dropped insensible
with sunstroke. He was but just conscious next
morning. Four Egyptian gunners carried him on an
upturned angareb to Kitiab, the second halting-place.
Here he was left with others. Next day and the
next there were others.

The horses, too, suffered. Those of the squadron
which came up first, and the horses from Darmali
and Essillem, stood the marching almost perfectly.
Those which had started to tramp the morning after
the rail-river journey went down with fever in the
feet. Twelve days* standing had sent all the blood to
their feet ; the red-hot sand did the rest.

We left a dozen on the shore at Kitiab to be picked
up by a passing boat, if so it might befall. The third
day we marched on through a park-like country, thick
with tall, spreading, almost green mimosa-trees; in
one place, where a khor lapped up, if sand were grass
you might almost have cried " The Serpentine." We
camped at a ruined village on a sandhill — name un-
known and uncareJ — and for the first time saw the
Nile, which we were supposed to be drinking. He
was lying at the far end of a three-mile tan^e of
bush. The fourth day, guided by the brown-faced
cliffs on his farther bank, we came down on the
pleasanLest camp I had yet seen on Nile or Atbara —
Magawieh. There was no village but mud ruins ; but
iliere were clusters and groves of real palms — date-
palms with yellow and scarlet clusters of ripe fruit.

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE.

225

insible
1 next
on an
-place.
id the

aadrou
larmali
rfectly.
ig after
in the
ilood to

picked
le third
Lr, thick
ees ; in
re grass
" We
ime un-
saw the
jg. He
Lng]e of
?n- faced
on the
.tbara —
ns ; but
— date-
)e fruit.

We sat down on the very lip of the river, which came
up flush with the grass bank, like a full tide. And
there, on August 20, we halted to rest the horses.
Half-p dozen were sent down with fever in the feet;
also a few soldiers, some bad, some not so bad as they
said. The rest of us were very hard and sound by
now, with the skin well peeled off our noses.

By now we had marched about halfway to Wad
Habashi. And of population we had seen hardly a
soul, lluined villages we passed in plenty — so far
back from the river that they must have lived from
wells. Now, since Mahmud killed out the Jaalin, they
did not live at all. We found evideuvies of some poor
prosperity — the dry runnels of old irrigation, the little
chequers of old fields, old, round, mud granaries, old
crackling zaribas, old houses rocking on their mud
foundations, old bones white in the sun. All the rest
was killed out by the despot we were marching to try
to kill. The fighting force of the Jaalin was ahead
of us on the same errand, and with two more motives
— revenge and loot. Behind us straggled the return-
ing families — one man with a spear, a bevy of plum-
bloom girls and old women and infants on donkeys,
a goat or two for sole sustenance. They were re-
turning; their ruins were their own again.

226

XXTX.

METEMMEH.

" GooM I " The hideous crj^ broke on to the night,
and jarred on the white stars. "Mohammed! Ali!
Hassan ! Goom, goom ! " I sat up on my angareb and
groaned. Do not be frightened; "goom" is not the
cry of a beast of prey. It is worse ; it is the Arabic
for "Wake," and it was three in the morning. "We
were moving out of our pleasant palm - shade at
Magawieh on August 21, and taking the road south

again.

The clumsy column formed up after its clumsy
wont, and threaded sleepily desertward through the
mimosa-thorns. After a few minutes we came, to our
wonder, on to a broad flat road embanked at each side.
It could hardly have been built by scorpions, and there
were no other visible inhabitants. Then, at a corner,
we came to a sign-post — a sign-post, by all that's
astounding — with "To Metemmeh" inscribed there-
on. We learned afterwards that the fertile -minded
Hickman Bey, finding himself and his battalion

THE MASSACRE OF THE JAAUN.

227

night,
! All!
•eb and
lot the

Arabic
y. We

ade at

. south

clumsy
igh the
, to our
ch side,
d there
corner,
11 that's
:1 there-
- minded
x'lltalion

woodcutting in the noighhourliood, had used \ip
some of his spare energy and of his men's spare
muscle in making the road and setting up the sign,
the only one in the Sudan. At the time the thing
was like meeting an old friend after a long parting,
and the caravan set out at least half a mile an hour
the better for it.

We trudged through the sand and scrub for the best
part of five hours. Then suddenly it sank and diiid
away. We had noticed already more than the usual
number of mummied camels and donkeys by the road-
side. The sun had tanned the skin and bleached tlie
bones ; hawks and vultures had seen to the rest ; they
might have been lying there days or years. The
camels lay with their heads writhed back till the
ears brushed the hump, the attitude in which a
camel always dies. But all the donkeys had their
throats cut — and that told us we were reaching
Metemmeh.

Last year, about this time or a little earlier, the
main force of the Egyptian army lay at Merawi,
preparing to advance on Abu Hanied. The Khalifa
ordered the Jaalin to advance against it ; but the
Jaalin had been in the fore - front of every dervish
disaster since Abu Klea, and they P<jnt secretly to
the Sirdar for arms. But it was too late, and
Mahnuid fell upon the Jaalin as Hui er fell upon
Abu Hamed. They fought hard, but lalnnud had
too many rifles fur them. Metemmeh was made

228

METEMMEH.

even as Khartum and old Berber ; the branch of
Jaalin whose headquarters were Metemmeh was
blotted out of existence. The carcasses we saw were
the beasts that had dropped or been overtaken in
their flight.

The scrub sank and died away. We came on to a
bare level of oid cultivated land, sparsely dotted with
dry twigs, seamed with rents and holes, and covered
thick with bones. Bones, skulls, and hides of camels,
oxen, horses, asses, sheep, goats — the place was car-
peted with them, a very Golgotha. A sickening smell
came into the air, a smell heavy with blood and fat.
We otl'-saddled at a solidary clump of tall palms on the
bank, turned round, and across a mile of treeless desola-
tion saw a forlorn line of black mud wall. The look
of the wall alone was somehow enou^'h to tell you
there was nobody inside. That was the corpse of
Metemmeh.

Before we went in we looked at the forts and
trenches with which they had lined the bank against
the gunboats. It was to be presumed that they had
done the same at Omdurman, so we looked at them
out of more than idle curiosity. They were rude
enough, to be sure. Circular, of some 120 feet radius,
the forts were mud emplacements fur a ::'iiigle gun with
three embrasures looking to front, half right and half
left; the guns — captured since at the Atbara — could
only be tired as they bore on a boat in line with one of
these. Ytt, rough and crumbling as they were, it was

mahmud's camp.

229

nrh of
:h was
,w were
ken in

on to a
ed with
covered
camels,
vas car-
ig smell
and fat.
IS on the
s desola-
?he look
tell you
^rpse of

)rts and
c against
they had
at Ihem
iVQ rude
t radius,
gun with
and lialf
—could
th one of
-e, it was

plain that the boats' fire had done them little harm.
The embrasures were chipped about a good deal,
and with very accurate shooting anybody trying to
serve the guns would probably luive gone down.
But the mud work could shelter any man who
sat close enough under it, and connnon shell or even
shrapnel would do him little harm. The trenches
were not wholly contemptible either — deep and with
traverses.

The next thing was to ride over to Mahmud's old
camp. He had placed it behind the ridge on which
Metemmeh stands, in the open desert and out of
range, as he thought, of the boats; the time-fuse of
a 12J-pounder shell, picked up in the very centre of
the camp, seemed to suggest a subsequent disillusion-
ment. As you rode up you first saw nothing but four
mud huts. Then the soil looked redder than that of
the desert behind it ; presently you saw that it had
been turned up in shallow heaps; the place looked
like a native cemetery. And when we got a little
nearer we found that this was his fortified ramp. One
of the huts appeared to have been his dwelling-house;
another was a sort of casemate — mud walls 4 feet
thick and an arranjirement of loijs that looked as if it
had been meant as a stockade to shield ritlemen.
But the rest of the position was merely childish — as
planless as his zariba on the Atbara, without any of
its diificulties. It was just a number of shelter-
trenches scattered anyhow over the open sand. Some

230

METEMMKH.

could have hold twenty men, some two. They must
have spread over nearly a square mile, but they were
quite rare and discontinuous ; in the circle of the camp
there was about twice as much firm ground as trench.
Add that the whole could have been shelled from the
Metemmeh ridge at half a mile or so, and that you
could thence have seen almost every man in tlie place
— well, if Omdurmau was to be no harder nut than
this

Now turn back to Metemmeh — poor, blind-walled,
dead IMetemmeh. And first, between camp and town,
stand a couple of crutched uprights and a cross-bar.
You wonder what, for a moment, and then wonder
that you wondered. A gallows ! At tlie foot of it a
few strands of the brown palm - fibre rope they use
in this country, and one, two, four, six, eight human
jaw-bones. Just the jaw - bones, and again you
wonder why ; till you remember the story that when
Sheikh Ibrahim, of the Jaalin, came here a week
or two ago he found eight skulls under the gallows
in a rope - netting bag. "When he took them up
for burial the lower jaws dropped off, and lie here
still

If the jaws could wag in speech again — but we must
try not to be sentimental. If we are, we shall hardly
stand the inside of IMetemmeh. So blank and piteous
and empty is the husk of it. Tlu'se are not mere mud
hovels, but town houses as the Sudan understands
houses — mud, certainly, but large, lofty rooms with

pa
is
th.
Th

STILLNESS AND STENCH.

231

' were
camp
rench.
m the
\t you
! place
t than

walled,
I town,
)ss-bar.
wonder
of it a
ley use
human
in you
it when
week
gallows
icm up
lie here

;ve must
1 hardly
piteous
ere mud
iTstanda
us with

wide window-holes and what once were matting roofs.
Two that I went into were even double-storieil ; no
stairs, of course, but a sort of mud inclined plane
outside the walls leading to the upper rooms. Another
house had a broad mud-bank forming a divan round
its chief room. Now the beams were cracked and
broken, and the divan had been rained on througli
the broken roof ; shreds of what once may have
been hangiugs were dangling limply in the breeze.
At the gateway of this house — once an arch, now
a tumble of dry mud — was a black handful of a
woman's hair.

In every courtyard you see the miserable emblems
of panic and massacre. Eide throu,f:^h the gate — there
lies a calabash tossed aside; a soiled, red, peak-toed
slipper dropped from the foot that durst not stop to
pick it up again ; the broken sticks and decayed cords
of a new angareb that the butchers smashed because
it was not worth taking away. And in every court-
yard you see great patches of black ashes spreading
up the wall. Those monuments are recent; tliey are
the places where, only days ago, thoy turned the
bones of the Jaalin. The dead camels and donkeys
lie there yet, across every lane, dry, but still stinking.
A parrot-beaked hairy tarantula scrambles across th.e
path, a lizard's tail slides deeper into a hole; that
is all 1 le life of Melemmeh. Everything steeped in
the shadele.ss sun, everything dry and silent, silent.
The stillness a?ul the stench merge together and soak

232

METFMMExi;

into youi' soul, exuding from every fcot of this melan-
choly graveyard -- the cenotaph of a whole tribe,
fifteen years of the Sudan's history read in an hour.
Sun, squalor, stink, and blood: that is Mahdism.

Press your bridle on the drooping pony's neck;
turn and ride back to tlie river, the palms, and the
lances. God send he stays to fight ua.

233

[nelan-
tribe,

I hour.

I.
neck;

id the

XXX.

A correspondent's diary.

Wad Ramedy Aug. ^2. — The concentration of the
force here is all but complete.

The British regiments have all arrived, whole or
in part, with the exception of the Eifles and the
21st Lancers, of whom two squadrons are marching
by the road. They are expected at mid -day to-
morrow.

With almost the full strength of 'Z!'.*^ p4.',yptian
army added, the force is the largest t^^r reen in
the Sudan, the composition of every arm b'-^ng at
least half as strong again as at the Atbara,

The cavalry and the convoy are going very well
now. The beasts and men are hardened by marching,
which is an invaluabl ■ training. We came twenty-
five miles to-dav in one march without etiort.

Wad Earned, Aug. 23. — The camp here is both
compact and commodio^iSc Though there are but
little short of 20,000 mtn, in a zareba barely more

234

A correspondent's diaby.

than a mile long, nobody is crowded, and everywhere
there is easy access to water.

The blacks are encamped at the south end in ter-
races of straw huts ; next are the Egyptians under
shelters extemporised from their blankets ; at the
north end the British are installed in tents. Their
quarters are far more comfortable than at Atbara,
though officers and men have to sleep in their boots
for the sake of practice.

There is but little shade from the trees, but the
camp is covered with tufts of coarse yellow grass,
which keep down the dust.

The steamers lying along the shore, the guns, horses,
mules, and -^amels, the bugle-calls, and the cries in
English and Arabic, make up a little world full of
life in the desert.

The concentration will not actually be efTected here
as Goneral Hunter, with two Egyptian brigades, v/ill
march to-morrow to Haiir at the head of the Shab-
luka cataract, where there wih bo a new concentra-
tion within a few days. He will be followed in the
evening by his other two brigades, which will march
to various points up the river, and cut wood for the
steamers ascending the rapids.

The Lancers will arrive here this evening, and the
llilles will come prol)al)ly by boat early to-morrov/.
The force will then be complete. There was an im-
posing parade of the forces here this morning. The
1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Egyptian lirigades and the

A SUDAN STORM.

235

2nd and let British Brigades paraded in the above
order, counting from the Hght. The fcrce advanced
in columns of companien then turned half-right on
the extreme right brigade. It was difficult to get
a full impression of the manoeuvT'^iS in consequence
of the dust.

News from Omdurman is abundant, and recon-
naissances show that the top of the Shabluka cat-
aract is definitely abandoned. It is rumoured that
the Khalifa intends to meet our force in the open ;
but this story, as the story of the blowing-up of the
Khalifa's steamer in an attempt to lay a mine, must
be taken with the greatest caution. The Khalifa
probably does not know his own intentions yet.

The Egyptian troop: and the seasoned British bri-
gade are in splendid condition. The 2nd British
Brigade is naturally not so inured to the climate.
Everybody is straining on the tiptoe of expectation.

Wad Earned, Aug. 2^ (4 p.m.) — Last night brought
us the best storm of the season.

It began, as its way is, savagely and without a
second's warning.

A flicker of silver lightning, a bloated drop of rain,
then the wind rushed down snorting and tearing at
the tent-ropes like an angry stallion.

It tore up the tent?, and left them flapping in
agony, while the rain came down and completed the
conquest by drenching our kits at its leisure.

236

A cokkespondent's diary.

What was worse, the gyassa, ladiin with stores and
spare kits, belonging to an Egyptian battalion which
was just about to start forward, was blown clean
over, and everything shot into the river.

At daylight you could see the disconsolate fatigue-
party, which was left behind to tow the gyassa,
wearily salvaging, with chocolate legs na\ed be-
low the waist, but with irreproachable uniform
above.

The lightning flared and the wind bombarded us
till the morning, when we reaped oec consolation —
the dust was all gone, except that which had formed
layers on our faces.

The morning was grey, gusty, and nipping; it
might have been a summer morning at home.

General Hunter left this morning at daybreak, with
the 1st «] d 3rd Egyptian Brigades, for Hajir, a two
days' march for them.

The 2nd and 4th Brigades followed this after-
noon.

If the rain had soaked thsir kits, at least it afiforded
cool, clean going.

The baggage of the Egyptian Infantry started in
gyassas up the Sixth Cataract early this morning.

The second half of the Eifles and the Irish Fusi-
liers* Maxim detachment arrived during the night,
completing the British division.

The cavalry and guns will leave to-morrow, the
for^y-pounders and the howitzers going by water.

THE DESEKIED CAMP.

237

The stafif will follow, and then, as the Sirdar says,

" We shall be in the straight."

Wad Hamed, Aug. ^5 (^ 'p.m.) — Rumours from
Omdurman continue to add vastly to the eager curi-
osity wherewith we advance to lift the veil from
Khartum.

A trustworthy report asserts that Ali Wad Helu,
the Mahdi's second Khalifa and titular heir to the
present ruler, has fallen from his horse while drilling
the dervish cavalry, and suffered severe injuries.

This, if true, presumably delights the Khalifa, who
is jealous of Helu, but will tend to discourage the
superstitious Sudanese, who hold that a fall from a
horse when entering on an enterprise is the worst of
omens.

Yesterday morning this camp was the most popu-
lous centre in the Sudan after Omdurman. This
afternoon it is all but raw scrub again.

Out of the tangle of yellow halfa-grass the Sirdar's
tent rises like an island, and except for the head-
quarters and the artillery and cavalry in the extreme
north, the camp is completely deserted.

The Egyptian infantry division, which left yesterday
morning, should reach Hajir — officially called Gebel
Eoyan — to-day.

The 2nd British Brigade left here at daybreak this
morning, and the 1st follows this afternoon.

The Ivilles are remaining with deti'-ciiinents of other

238

T.i>'r

A COllliESPONDENT S DIARY.

battalions dolayed on the journey up ; they will prob-
ably ])roceed to Gebel Koyan by boat, doing the dis-
tance in one day instead of two.

Perhaps even more striking than the disappearance
of the troops is the diminution of the vast accumula-
tion of supplies and st-^res.

The little town of casts and sacks ha-i had street
after street lifted away and sent up to Shabluka.

Seeing the process thus in miniature, we can ap-
proach an adequate idea of the labour, promptness, and
system which brought all the necessaries for 25,('00
men from Atbara, Alerawi, Haifa, Egypt, and England
without a break or hitch.

Last night the whole upward course of the river
was fringed with the taper spars of the gyassas, and
festooned with the smoke from the camp-fires of the
towing-parties.

Everything has gone on in proper time and proper
order, and the weight of tiie material shifted is
enormous.

Multiply all this a hundredfold, and you appreciate
the standing miracle of Egyptian transport.

Wad named, Aug. S5 (6 p.m.) — The march out of
the 1st British Brigade this afternoon was a most
imposing spectacle.

The four battalions had all their baggage packed to
the minute, and at the sound of the bugle moved off
and took the road in four parallel columns.

A MAGNIFICENT BRIGADE.

239

I prob-
lie dis-

sarance
uiiiula-

[ streiit

an ap-

:!ss, and

25,000

Ingland

e river

las, and

of the

proper
fted is

Dreciate

out of
a most

eked to
)ved off

The Warwicks were on the left; next to them
the Soaforths, then the Camerons, and on the right
the Lincohis — the three last carrying battalion
flags, a new elenient of colour since the Atbara
campaign.

The ground just outside the camp was broken, but
the men struck along with an easy swing from the
loins, ignoring the weight of their kits.

Many of the men were bearded, and all were
tanned by the sun, acclimatised by a summer in the
country, hardened by perpetual labours, and con-
fident from the recollection of victory — a magnifi-
cent force, which any man might be proud to
accompany into the held.

Wad named, Aug. S6 {11. 4S a.m.) — The camp
this morning shows even an emptier desolation than
yesterday.

At the north end the Lancers are disembarking
their last horses, preparatory to the march to Hajir
to-morrow, the gunners are readying the 40-pounders
and liowitzers for the steam-up to-day, the rest of
the artillery marches.

The medical staff is just leaving, having sent the
sick down to Nasri yesterday.

The rest of the camp is a wilderness of broken
biscuit-boxes and battered jam-tins, dotted with the
half-naked Jaalin scallywags, male and female, once
the richest slave-dealers in the Sudan, now glad to

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240

A COUKESrONDENT'S DIARY.

collect empty bottles and winnow the dust for broken
biscuit.

With the departure of headquarters to - morrow
the whole force will have shifted camp to Hajir.

Thence it is under forty miles to Omdurman.

For the first half of the distance the bank is flat
with cultivation.

On nearing Kerreri, the ground becomes broken
with thick low thorn scrub.

Thence to Omdurman rises a cluster of sandstone
hills inland, 300 feet to 500 feet high.

In the present state of the Nile the river forms
numerous khors, or small tributaries, flowing out
instead of into the river, and many such on approach-
ing Omdurman will perhaps necessitate detours on the
line of march.

To the north-west of the town there is rising ground
which is said to offer a favourable artillery position.

Wad Earned, Aug. 26 {240 p.m.) — Major Stuart-
Wortley, who went up to Khartum two days after
Gordon's death, leaves to-night by the right bank with
the friendlies, Jaalin and other tribes.

They will advance parallel with the Sirdar.

It is reported that a dervish force is on the right
bank, under the Emirs Zeki and Wad Bishara.

A few dervish scouts are reported on this bank,
near Gebel Koyan, opposite our new camp and depot
also patrols on the left bank.

THE khalifa's BLUNDER.

241

broken

norrow
ajir.

is flat

broken

idstone

• forms
ng out
proach-
i on the

ground
ition.

Stuart-
s after
ik with

8 right

a.
bank,
depot

The Khalifa bhmdered heavily when he abandoned
the Shabluka rapids, as even a small force among the
rocks might have been troublesome, whereas now the
Sirdar has been able to convey all his transport to the
open water above without pause.

Gehel Boyan, Aug. S8 (8.5 a.m.) — We are now
within four marches of Khartum. From the brown
shoulder of Royan mountain, which overlooks and
gives its name to the camp, you can see long stretches
of green - lipped desert, blinking in the sun, and
cutting the blue ribbon of open water to Omdur-
man.

In the distance hangs a white speck of haze, which
may be the Mahdi's tomb.

Yesterday I came up with the main force.

This morning it has gone forward again, and the
four marches are becoming three.

General Hunter, with the Egyptian Division, began
to move out before sunrise, and as I write — eight
o'clock — their last drums are throbbing faintly in the
distance.

The Egyptian cavalry, horse battery, camel corps,
and galloping Maxims had preceded them before
dawn.

Cavalry contact with the dervishes hes been pos-
sible at any moment since Friday.

The patrols saw a few dervish horse, who, however,
fell back rapidly, lighting alarm beacons.

242

A CORRESPONDENT S DIARY.

Spies and deserters report that the adv.mced dervish
force is near Kerreri, but it is impossible to tell at
present if this be so.

Hitherto the Dervishes have made no attempt to
raid convoys or to alarm the camp by night; they are
simply falling back on the main positions.

Everybody observes that the farther you advance
into their country, the more desirable, or rather the
less undesirable, it becomes.

I marched here from Wad Hamed, so I cannot
depict fully the beauties of the Shabluka catarart,
but I have seen enough from above and below and
from various points of the road to understand how
grateful it is to eyes seared with burning plains.

The rapids are gemmed with green wooded islands
and waist-high bush grass, and the rocky heights on
either side are bathed in violet by the morning and
evening lights.

At the gorge the cliffs close in, and the river nar-
rows from 2000 to 200 yards.

Here are dervish forts, three on the left bank and
one on the right.

They are now flush with the water, which is actually
running into the embrasures.

Having had to march with the artillery, I had to
content myself with the beauties of the Maxim-Nor-
denfeldt gun.

The Egyptian field artillery you can either draw
with two mules or take the pieces and carry them on

A GUNBOAT LOST.

243

I dervish
D tell at

empt to
they are

advance
Lher the

cannot
cataract,
low and
11(1 how
lains.
I islands
ii^hts on
ling and

ver nar-

ank and

actually

had to
im-Nor-

jr draw
>hem on

four — a vast advantage, as shown on yesterday's march,
which was an alternation of stones and wallowing
sand.

On entering the camp I came on the tail of the
British Division, which had made four marches of
twenty miles.

The Egyptians took two, but the going is exception-
ally bad ; natives and British alike fell out somewhat
freely.

The massed black bands welcomed the British, thun-
dering out the march past of each of the regiments.

The Eifles, though soft, were commended for
smartness in marching, as were the Northumberland
Fusiliers.

The flood has formed a khor across the original
camp, and the British are in detached zariba to the
southward, which is lined nightly with a living ram-
part of soldiers, alert, eager, and tingling in anticipa-
tion of a fight.

GeM Eoyan, Aug. S8 ( 1^.W j9.m.)— The " Zafir," the
flagship of the gunboat flotilla, Captain Keppel, with
General Bundle, chief of the staff, on board, sprang a
leak the day before yesterday off Shendi.

The boat was headed for the shore, but sank within
a few yards of the bank.

Only her funnel and mast are above water.

The barges in tow were cut adrift, and everybody
behaved with the greatest coolness.

244

A CORRESPONDENTS DIARY.

Captain Keppel was the last man to leave.

All lives were saved, but a quantity of kit was
lost.

Considering that the navy has been two years at
work, that the steamers are of light drauglit, and that
there is a tremendous head of water in the river, it
is wonderful that this is the first serious mishap.

Everybody sympathises with Captain Keppel, and
deplores this stroke of bad luck at the end of mouths
of splendid work.

He transfers his flag to the Sultan.

The whole force advances this afternoon about
eight miles.

Wady Abid, Ang. £9 (8.4O a.m.) — The whole army
is camped here, the British division having left
Royan in the cool of the evening and marching in
by moonlight.

The camp is estimated to be twenty-eight miles
from Omdurman and eighteen from Kerreri, where
there is every reason to believe that the Dervishes
are collecting.

The army will halt here at least till evening.

Meanwhile a reconnaissance, consisting of the
Egyptian cavalry, with the Maxims and camel corps,
is patrolling ten miles to the southward, and a gun-
boat has been despatched to patrol the stream.

A dervish patrol of ten men was seen yesterday
evening. It fell back.

ANOlilER STORM.

245

kit was

years at
and that
river, it
lishap.
ppel, and
: mouths

)TL about

ole army
dng left
ching in

ht miles
ri, where
)ervishes

g-
of the

lel corps,

d a gun-

yesterday

Deserters are now beginning to arrive in swarms,
and a sifting of their reports shows that it may be
considered certain that the Dervishes mean to fight.

The weather till now has been magnificent, and
beyond the most optimistic expectations.

The heat is now extreme in the daytime, but the
niglits are cool and dry.

This morning was overcast, and there were furious
gusts of wind from the north-east, which are supposed
to be precursors of rain.

So far we have had only three rainstorms.

Violent and tempestuous weather at this slw*ge might
breed discomfort but not delay.

The correspondents would find the chief disadvan-
tage of rain in the possible interruption of the field
telegraph, which has been brought here, and will prob-
ably advance farther, though it is only poled as far as
Nasri Island, and wet ground might cause a break-
down of communications.

10.15 a.m. — The reconnaissance has returned, hav-
ing seen only a few fresh tracks of dervish horsemen,
owing to the dust blown off the alluvial land into the
desert having covered up their traces.

The fewness of the tracks confirms the conjecture
that the Dervishes have resolved to retire to ground
of their own choosing.

The cloudy morning turned to the opaquest dust-
storm of recent experience.

246

A CORRESPONDENT S DIARY.

The rushing south wind swishes through the camp,
whirling the dust of the old cultivation in yellow
clouds before it, and the desert outside the zariba
forms a half -solid curtain of flying earth.

Riding round the camp to-day, the dust of which
clung to my eyelashes and formed dangling screens
of accumulated Sudan before my eyes, I was much
struck by the advantage which experience in cam-
paigning here gives the Egyptian over the British
troops.

All alike are under blanket shelters, but the
Egyptians rig up all the blankets of one company
into a continuous shed on high poles, which gives an
airy shelter, leaves the camping-ground clearer, and
economises blankets, so that enough are left to hap
round the rifles.

The British, contrariwise, fix one or two blankets
on low sticks, and their ground is less thoroughly
cleared of scrub to begin with.

Dotted promiscuously over the ground are tiny
booths, beneath which the men swelter, with the
back flaps of their helmets turned over their faces
to screen off the sun. Even through the veil of
dust he presses on to the blanket so close that the
men cannot uncover their heads.

This is not a white man's country.

1.15 p.m. — There is abundant evidence that the spot
where we are now camp(^d was in the recent occiipa-

he camp,
1 yellow
le zariba

of which
I screens
as much
in cam-
3 British

but the
company

gives an
iarer, and
It to hap

[7
t-

•e
o
e

blankets
loroughly

are tiny
with the
rieir faces
le veil of
I that the

it the spot
it occupa-

KHARTUM AND OMDURMAN

THK MAZBS (r TIIK ARAB MIND.

247

tion of the enemy — angarebs and women's trinket-
boxes being littered all over the place.

The Dervishes are almost certainly falling back be-
fore us on to positions determined beforduind, where
they expect advantage from scrub, and it would be no
surprise here if a decisive battle were fought some
distance north of Omdurman.

The Intelligence Department naturally keeps its own
counsel, since a daily interchange of spies between the
hostile headquarters is now easy.

It is safe to say that all the advantage of informa-
tion is on our side, all the stories of the deserters being
carefully sifted by men accustomed to thread the tor-
tuous mazes of the Arab mind.

The Intelligence Department camp is to-day strewn
with plum-coloured, thin-cheeked dervishes squatting
in groups on the ground munching biscuit, the first
earnest of the renewed blessings of civilised rule.

It must not, however, be inferred from this that
the Khalifa's trusted fighting men are deserting.

These are so detested on account of half a gen-
eration of barbarities that they know there is no
asylum left them in all Africa: they will die
resolutely.

Wady Ahid, Aug. 30 {940 a.m.) — We ^re again on
the march, the army advancing ten miles to Sayal —
another stride towards Omdurman.

Major Stuart -Wortley's friendlies have captured

^-•.

248

A correspondent's durt.

five prisoners, together with a barge laden with grain,
after a brush with some dervishes on the right bank
of the Nile.

During the storm which continues to rage here
the British outposts last night heard the pntter of
hoofs, and suddenly a dervish horseman rode up,
shouting " Allah ! " and hurled his spear over their
heads; then, wheeling round, he galloped away
unhurt.

th grain,
'ht bank

249

age here
pntter of
rode up,
ver their
5d away

XXXI.

THE RECONNAISSANCES.

Eeveille at four had forestalled daybreak ; at five we
were between dawn and sunrise. Inside the swarming
zariba of camp Sayal impatient bugles were hurrying
whites and blacks under arms. Outside it the desert
dust threw up a sooty film before the yellow east ; the
cavalry and camel -corps were forming up for the
day's reconnaissance. Four squadrons of British
21st Lancers on the left, nine squadrons of Egyptian
horsemen on the right with the horse guns, they
trotted jangling into broad columns of troops, and
spread fan-wise over the desert.

The camel-corps stayed a moment to practise a bit
of drill of their own. One moment they were a huge
oblong phalanx of waving necks and riders sillioueLted
against the sunrise; a couple of words in Turkish
from their Bey and the necks were waving alone with
the riders in a square round them ; an instant more
and camels and men had all knelt down. The camel-
corps was a flat field of heads £iid humps hedged with

250

THE RECONNAISSANCES,

a shining quickset of bayonets. That rehearsed, they
loped away to the extreme right : they can wait longer
for their water than the horses, so that their portion is
always the outer desert.

One instant we were with the main army by the
zariba. The next — so it seemed after a few days of
marching with the infantry- -we were off and clear
away. The screen was spread far out before the
toiling infantry, and the enemy who would harass
or even look at them must slip through us or break
us if he could. It looked little enough like either.
As soon as our scouts were off the country was full
of them.

It was the last day of August — above a month since
the first battalions had left the Atbara, two days
before we were to take Omdurman, and the first shot
of the campaign was yet unfired. But before us rose
cliff-like from the river, and sloped gently down to the
plain, the outline of Seg-el-Taib hill ; from that were
only a dozen miles to Kerreri; from Kerreri were
only ten to Omdurman. From the hill we should
surely see.

So hoofs pattered, and curb-chains jingled, and stir-
rups rang, and behold we were round the inland base of
Seg-el-Taib and scrambling up its shaly rise. From the
top we looked out at the ten-mile reach of river and the
hundred-mile stretch of plain, rejoicing in the young
sunlight. On our left, four gunboats — two while of

DERVISHES AT LAST!

251

led, they
it longer
ortion is

T by the •
days of
nd clear
fore the
d harass
or break
e either,
was full

nth since
,wo days
first shot
e us rose
Yn to the
that were
reri were
re should

, and stir-
[id base of

From the
2r and the
blie young

white of

the new class, two black of the old — trudged deviously,
slowly, surely up under the right bank. Across
the shining steel ribbon of Nile lay a vast tangle of
green — only a fifth funnel and MLixira-platforms crawl-
ing along its horizon revealed it an island. On our
right, the brilliant mimosa-scrub — in this rainy coun-
try mimosa grows real leaves and the leaves are gr^en
— stretched forward to a dim double hill, a saddle in
the middle, gentle ridges dipping down at each end to
river and desert. At our feet, round a sandy creek,
clustered white and brown cavalry like bees, lances
planted in the sand, men bent over bits, horses down
on their knees for the water. In the desert a slowly
advancing lozenge under a cloud of dust stood for the
camel corps. Over our shoulders a black tide licked
yet more slowly southward; that was infantry and
guns. Sun, river, birds, green ; grim, stealthy gun-
boats and that awfully advancing host; it combined
into the most heart-winning, most heart-quakiiig pic-
ture of all the war.

But we were looking for somebody to kill. Mud-
walled villages, as everywhere, friui^ed the river-bank;
by one the cavalry were watering; another further on
focussed the landscape with the conical-pointed tomb
of some sheikh or holy man. And — wl ;t? — the
glasses, quick ! — yes, by George it is ! One, two,
three, four, five — our scouts ? impossible ; there are
our scouts a mile this side of them. No : Dervishes —

252

THE RECONNAISSANCES.

dervish horse ; the first sight of them, for me, in the
campaign. Dervish horse three miles this side of
Kerreri.

Stand to your horses ! Prepare to meant ! Mount !
This time the plain was fuller, the jingling merrier,
the bobbing lance-points more alert than ever. On
and on — a troop through the dense bush, a couple of
squadrons in line over the open gravel, scrambling
through a rocky rent in the ground, halting to breathe
the horses and signal the scouts — but always on again.
Always, by comparison with infantry, we seemed to
fly, to spread out by magic, to leave the miles behind
us in a flash.

But the Dervishes seemed to have vanished, as their
wont is, swallowed up by dervish-land. We had already
passed the spot chosen for the night's camp ; we were
to go on a mile or two beyond " to make it good," as
they say. At last we halted. " We shall water here,"
said the Colonel, " and then go home." Then suddenly
somebody looked forward through his glasses. "By
Gad, the Gippy cavalry are charging!"

" That's not the Gippy cavalry," sings out somebody
else; "that's our advanced squadron." Mount and
clatter off again. I didn't see them, but it was good
enough to gallop for ; and now, sure enough, we plunge
through the mimosa and find the advanced squadron
pressing on furiously, and the best gentleman rider
in the army with a dervish lance in his hand. The
squadron found them in the bush, and galloped at

THE LINKS OF KEKREia.

253

le, in the
i side of

Mount !

merrier,
ver. Ou
couple of
gambling
breathe
on again,
eemed to
es behind

d, as their

id already
we were
good," as

,ter here,"
suddenly
es, " By

somebody
ount and
was good
we plunge
squadron
nan rider
md. The
illoped at

them, but they were too quick away. We scrambled
on, round that bush, down and up that gully, and
presently came out again into a rising swell of gravel.
And there were the lines of Kerreri.

Behind another stretch of thicker bush, perhaps a
mile through, under the twin hills, was a flutter of
something white — white splashed with crimson. Ker-
reri lines beyond a doubt ; only what was the white ?
Loose garments of horsemen riding through the bush ?
Tents ? Flags ? Yes ; it must be flags. Already a
subaltern was picking his way through the bush with
an officer's patrol. Immediately another strolled away
to the left ; already one white gunboat had almost out-
flanked the lines. The whole regiment was now up,
and dismounted in columns of squadrons in the open.
When the saddle alone weighs eight stone it is always
useful to relieve a horse of the man. Colonel and
majors, captains and adjutants and subalterns, sergeant-
major and privates to hold the horses, grouped on a
little knolL Popular the man who had a good field-
glass.

Tap, tap, tap, floated down the wind. They were
beating their war-drum. " Where's Montmorency ? "
" Gone into the bush, sir." Pop ! Very faint and
muffled, but all hearts leaped : it was the first shot of
the campaign. And then through the bushes galloped
a bay horse riderless. Tap, tap, tap : they were still
beating the war -drum. "What's that to right of
the flags ? " " Men, sir," says the sergeant - major,

254

THE RECONNAISSANCES.

taking his pipe out of his mouth. " I can see them
with the naked eye." Tap, tap, tap. " Where's Mont-
morency ? " " In the there he is, sir, coming

back." " Very well ; send i man to recall that patrol
on the left. We've seen where they are : we'll go
home now, quietly."

Then in came the smiling subaltern. One man had
thrown a spear at him and one had loosed off an
elephant gun ; but he had dropped one man off the bay
horse. There were thirty flags or so : it might mean
perhaps 3000 men. The patrol from the left reported
some 200 horsemen striking away to their right rear.
It mi<2;ht mean retreat : it might mean a flank attack.
It did not matter which. We had seen ; the recon-
naissance had succeeded : we walked home quietly

The next day, — the army had marched eight miles
to Wady Suetne — it was the Egyptian cavalry, — nearly
twice as many of them, and the camel -corps and
horse-battery besides. This time we started only five
miles or so from Kerreri, and before we had gone an
hour the 21st were in the lines. It had been a retreat
we had seen the day before ; anyhow, it had become
so later, when the gunboats shelled the position ; the
place was empty. We crossed over to the left and
cantered up expectant, but there was nothing to see.
Only a few miserable tukls twisted out of bushes:
Jonah had a better house under his gourd. Kerreri
had been a fable — a post of observation never meant
to be held.

▲ CITY WORTH CONQUERINO.

255

see them
;'s Mont-
coming
at patrol
we'll go

man had

d ofif an

f the bay

ht mean

reported

ght rear.

k attack.

le recon-

lietly

jht miles

, — nearly

orps and

only five

gone an

a retreat

1 become

tion; the

left and

g to see.

bushes :

Kerreri

er meant

But the lines mattered little: it was to the hill
behind it that eyes turned. Now we were on the
very brink, and could look over it to forecast the
great day. Should we see dervishes coming on, or
should we see dervishes streaming away ? We must
see something, and we scrambled up, and at last, and
at last, we saw Omdurman. We saw a broad plain,
half sand, half pale grass; on the rim by the Nile
rose a pale yellow dome, clear above everything.
That was the Mahdi's tomb, divined from Gebel
Eoyan, now seen. It was the centre of a purple
stain on the yellow sand, going out for miles and
miles on every side — the mud-houses of Omdurman.
A great city — an enormous city — a city worth con-
quering indeed!

A while we looked ; but this was a reconnaissance.
The thing was to look nearer and see if there were
any enemy. The Lancers had gone on towards some
villages along the river, between our hill and aiiother
three or four miles on. The Egyptian mounted troops
turned south-westward, inland. We did not altogether
know what we were going to do or see : perhaps it was
that dark patch halfway between our line of advance
and the British, which might be trees or might be
men. But Broadwood Bey knew very well where
we were going, and what we were going to see. W e
began to march towards a clump of hills that drew in
north-westward within three miles of the outskirts of
Omdurman ; the maj. calls it Gebel Feried. We came

256

THE RECONNAISSANCES.

into swamps deepened by the last night's rain; we
crossed soft-bottomed streams; it would have been
desperate ground to be attacked in, but still the leader
rode on and the heavy columns rode behind him. At
last we came behind the south-easternmost hill, and
the squadrons halted and the guns wheeled into line
and the camels barracked. We went up the hill and

agam we saw.

Omdurman was nearer, more enormous, more worth
conquering than ever. A gigantic tract of mud-
houses; the Mahdi's tomb rising above them like a
protecting genius ; many other roofs rising tall above
the wont of the Sudan, one or two with galvanL-ed
iron roofs to mirror the sunlight. "With its hug^-^
extent, its obvious principal buildings, its fostering
cathedral, the distant view of Omdurman would have
disgraced no European capital: you might almost
expect that the hotel omnibus would meet you at the
railway station.

But once more we were on reconnaissance; we
were theia to look for men. In front of the city
stretched a long white line — banners, it might be;
more likely tents ; most likely both. In front of that
was a longer, thicker black line — no doubt a zariba or
trench. Then they did mean to fight after alL Only
as we sat and ate a biscuit and looked — the entrench-
ment moved. The solid wall moved forward, and it
was a wall of men.

Whew ! What an army ! Five huge brigades of it

THB khalifa's ARMY.

257

n; we
e been
leader
n. At
11, and
ito line
lill and

! worth
mud-
like a
1 above
i^anL^ed
s huga
•stering
d have
almost
L at the

ce; we
le city
;bt be;
of that
iriba or
Only
trench-
, and it

[es of it

— a 'iree-mile front, and parts of it eight or ten men
deep. It was beginning to move directly for our hill,
and — turn, turn, tum — we heard the boom of a war-
drum of higher calibre than yesterday's. Now they
seemed to halt; now they came on. The five corps
never broke or shifted, the rigid front never bent ;
their discipline must be perfect. And they covered
the ground. The three miles melted before them;
our scouts and the Lancers* and theirs were chasing
each other to and fro over the interval; we saw a
picket of the Lancers fire. " We'll go back now,"
said the serene voice of the leader. The force formed
up, and we started on the eight-mile walk between
ourselves and support.

The sun had hardened the swamp underfoot, but
the guns and camels still made heavy going of it.
We had not been moving twenty minutes before we
saw a black mass of the enemy watching us from the
hill whence we had watched them. And their line
was still coming on, black over a ridge not a mile
behind us. Tum, tum, tum — they were getting
nearer; now we heard their shouts, and saw their
swords brandishing in the sun. Tum, tum, turn — roar
— brandish — how slowly the camels moved! The
troopers in the long column of our outside flank were
beginning to look over their shoulders. Then the doc-
tor came galloping like mad from behind. "Where's
Broad wood ? " — and we saw the rear-guard squadron
faced about and galloping towards the enemy. The

258

THE RECONNAISSANCES.

bugle snapped out and the troops of the flanking
regiment whipped round and walked towards the
enemy too. They were within a thousand yarda
Now —

It was only a dismounted trooper they were fetch-
ing back. The troops turned again, and we walked
into camp. It was a perfect reconnaissance, — not a
man lost, not a shot fired, and everything seexL

lanking

'ds the

yards.

B fetch-
walked
—not a
ien.

XXXII

THB BATTLE OF OMDXTBMAlf.

Our camp, for the night of September 1, was in the
village of Agaiga, a mile south of Kerreri Hill. On our
left front was another hill, higher, but single-peaked
and rounder — Gebel Surgham. In front the ground
was open for five miles or so — sand and grass broken
by only a few folds — with a group of hills beyond.

The force had formed up in position in the after-
noon, when the Dervishes followed the cavalry home,
and had remained under arms all night ; at half-past
five in the morning, when the first howitzer-shell from
opposite Omdurman opened the day's work, every
man was in his place. The line formed an obtuse
angle ; the order of brigades and battalions, counting
from the left, was the following : Lyttelton's 2nd Bri-
tish (Rifle Brigade, Lancashire Fusiliers, Northumber-
land Fusiliers, Grenadier Guards); Wauchope's 1st
British (Warwicks, Seaforths, Camerons, Lmcolns) j
Maxwell's 2nd Egyptian (14th, 12th, 13th Sudanese,

260

THE BATTLE Ot OMDURMAN.

and 8th Egyptian in support). Here came the point
of the angle ; to the right of it were : Macdonald's
Ist Egyptian (11th, 10th, 9th Sudanese, 2nd Egyptian
supporting); Lewis's 3rd Egyptian (4th, 15th, and
3rd and 7th Egyptian, in column on the right flank).
Cullinson's 4th Egyptian Brigade (Ist, 5th, 17th, and
ISth Egyptian) was in reserve in the village. All
the P^gyptian battalions in the front were in their
usual formation, with four companies in line and two
in support. The British had six in line and two in
suj)i)ort.

On the extreme left was the 32nd Field Battery ;
the Maxims and Egyptian field-guns were mounted at
intervals in the infantry line. The cavalry had gone
out at the first streak of grey, British on the left,
as usual, Egyptian with camel-corps and horse-battery
from tlie right moving across our front. The gunboats
lay with stuam up off the village.

Liglit stole quietly into the sky behind us; there
was no sound from the plain or the hills before us;
there was hardly a sound from our own line. Every-
body was very silent, but very curious. Would they
be so mad as to come out and run their heads into our
fire? It seemed beyond hoping for: yet certainly
they had been full of war the day before. But most
of us were ex[)ecting instantly the order to advance
on Omdurman.

A trooper rose out of the dimness from behind the
shoulder of Gebel Surgham, grew larger and plainer,

e point
lonald's
^ryptian
bh, and
flank),
'th, and
e. All
n their
ind two
I two in

Jattery ;
inted at
id gone
he left,
-battery
uuboats

j; there
fore us;
Every-
Id they
into our
ertainly
ut most
advance

lind the
plainer,

K
V.

<1
K

THE FIEST ATTACK.

263

spurred violently up to the line and inside. A couple
more were silhouetted across our front. Then the
electric whisper came racing down the line; they
were coming. The Lancers came in on the left ; the
Egyptian mounted troops drew like a curtain across
us from left to right. As they passed a flicker of
white flags began to extend and fill the front in their
place. The noise of something began to creep in upon
us ; it cleared and divided into the tap of drums and
the far-away surf of raucous war-cries. A shiver
of expectancy thrilled along our army, and then a
sigh of content. They were coming on. Allah help
them ! they were coming on.

It was now half-past six. The flags seemed still very
distant, the roar very faint, and the thud of our first
gun was almost startling. It may have startled them
too, but it startled them into life. The line of flngs
swung forward, and a mass of white fl}'ing linen swung
forward with it too. They came vary fast, and tlu*y
came very straight ; and then presently they came no
farther. With a crash the bullets leaped out of the
British rifles. It began with the Guards and Warwicks
— section volleys at 2000 yards ; then, as the Dervishes
edged rightward, it ran along to the Highlanders, the
Lincolns, and to Maxwell's Brigade. The British stood
up in double rank behind their zariba ; the blacks lay
down in their shelter-trencli ; both poured out death
as fast as they could load and press trigger. Shrapnel
whistled and Maxims growled siivagely. From all the

264

THK BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

line came perpetual fire, fire, fire, and shrieked forth
in great gusts of destruction.

And the enemy ? No white troops would have
faced that torrent of death for five minutes, but the
Baggara and the blacks came on. The torrent swept
into them and hurled them down in whole companies.
You saw a rigid line gather itself up and rush on
evenly ; then before a shrapnel shell or a Maxim the
line suddenly quivered and stopped. The line was
yet unbroken, but it was quite still. But other lines
gathered up again, again, and yet again ; they went
down, and yet others rushed on. Sometimes they
came near enough to see single figures quite plainly.
One old man with a white flag started with five
comrades; all dropped, but he alone came bounding
forward to within 200 yards of the 14th Sudanese.
Then he folded his arms across his face, and his limbs
loosened, and he dropped sprawling to earth beside
his flag.

It was the last day of Mahdism, and the greatest.
They could never get near, and they refused to hold
back. By now the ground before us was all white
with dead men's drapery. Rifles grew red-hot; the
soldiers seized them by the slings and dragged them
back to the reserve to change for cool ones. It was
not a battle, but an execution.

In the middle of it all you were surprised to find
that we were losing men. The crash of our own fire
was so prodigious that we could not hear their bullets

"BEARER TARTY THERE!"

265

red forth

uld have
, but the
nt swept
)mpanies.
rush on
axim the
line was
her lines
ley went
nes they
5 plainly,
yith five
hounding
Sudanese,
his limbs
th beside

greatest.
I to hold
ill white
hot; the
[ed them
It was

i to find
own fire
r bullets

whistle ; yet they came and swooped down and found
victims. The Dervishes were firing at their extreme
range, and their bullets were many of them almost
spent ; but as they always fire high they often hit So
that while you might have thought you were at a
shoot of rabbits, you suddenly heard the sharp cry,
" Bearer party there, quick," and a man was being
borne rearward. Few went down, but there was a
steady trickle to hospital Bullets may have been
spent, and Captain Caldecott, of the Warwicks, was
one of the strongest men in the army ; but that
helped him nothing when the dropping ball took
him in the temple and came out through the jugular.
He lay an hour unconscious, then opened his eyes
with " For God's sake, give me water ! " and died as
he drank. All mourned him for a smart officer and
a winning comrade. Most of all the two Highland
battalions dropped men. The zariba behind which
they were unwisely posted obliged them to stand, be-
sides hampering them both in fire and when it came
to movement ; a little clump of enemy gathered in a
hole in front of them, and by the time guns came
up to shell them out, the Camerons had lost some
twenty-five and the Seaforths above a dozen.

But loss on this scale was not to be considered
beside the awful slaughter of the Dervishes. If they
still came on our men needed only time and ammuni-
tion and strength to point a rifle to kill them ofT to
the very last man. Only by now — small wonder—

266

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

they were not coming on. They were not driven
back ; they were all killed in coming on. One section
of fire after another hushed, and at eight o'clock the
village and the plain were still again. The last shell
had burst over the last visible group of Dervishes;
now there was nothing but the unbending, grimly
expectant line before Agaiga and the still carpet of
white in front.

We waited half an hour or so, and then the sudden
bugle called us to our feet. "Advance," it cried; "to
Omdurman ! " added we. Slowly the force broke up,
and expanded. The evident intention was to march
in echelon of brigades — ihe Second British leading
along the river, the First British on their right rear,
then Maxwell's, Lewis's, and Macdonald's, with
Oollinson's still supporting. Lewis and Macdonald
had changed places, the latter being now outermost
and rearmost ; at the time few noticed that. The
moment the dervish attack had died down the 2l3t
Lancers had slipped out, and pushed straight for the
Khalifa's capital.

Movement was slow, since the leading brigades had
to wait till the others had gone far enough inland to
take their positions. We passed over a corner of the
field of fire, and saw for certain wluit awful slaughter
we had done. The bodies were not in heaps — bodies
hardly ever are; but they spread evenly over acres
and acres. And it was very remarkable, if you
remembered the Atbara, that you saw hardly a black;

t driven
e section
ilock the
last shell
^rvishes;
;, grimly
jarpet of

B sudden
ied; "to
roke up,
;o march
leading
gilt rear,
's, with
icdonald
uterinost
at. The
the 2l3t
t for the

ides had
iland to
r of the
laughter
— bodies
er acres
if you
a black ;

0: ^

.t>n

v?^<=;?"'

,.!>^!^

*0,

Q
O

^5','

THE SECOND ATTACK.

269

nearly all the dead had the high forehead and taper
cheeks of the Arab. The Baggara had been met at
last, and he was worth meeting. Some lay very com-
posedly, with their slippers placed under their heads
for a last pillow ; some knelt, cut short in the middle
of a last prayer. Others were torn to pieces, ver-
milion blood already drying on brown skin, killed
insiantly beyond doubt. Otl<ers, again, seemingly as
dead as these, sprang up as we approached, and
rushed savagely, hurling spears at the nearest enemy.
They were bayoneted or shot. Once again the plain
seemed empty, but for the advancing masses and the
carpet of reddened white and broken bodies underfoot.
It was now twenty minutes to ten. The British
had crested a low ridge between Gebel Surgham and
the Nile; i^Iaxwell's brigade was just ascending it,
Lewis's just coming up under the hill. Men who
could go where they liked were up with the British,
staring hungrily at Omdurman. Suddenly from rear-
ward broke out a heavy crackle of fire. We thouglit
perhaps a dozen men or so had been shamming dead ;
we went on staring at Omdurman. But next instant
we had to turn and gallop hot -heeled back again.
For the crackle became a crashing, and the crashing
waxed to a roar. Dervishes were firing at us from
the top of Gebel Surgham, dervishes were firing be-
hind and to the right of it. The 13th Sudanese were
bounding up the hill ; Lewis's brigade had hastily faced
to its right westward, and was volleying for life ; Mac-

270

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

donalcl's beyond, still facing northward, was a sheet of
flashes and a roll of smoke. What was it ? Had they
come to life again ? No time to ask ; reinforcements
or ghosts, they were on us, and the battle was begun
all again.

To understand, you must hear now what we only
heard afterwards. The dervish army, it appeared,
had not returned to Omdurman on the night of the
1st, but had bivouacked— 40,000 to 50,000 of them—
behind Gebel Surgham, south-westward from Agaiga.
The Khalifa had doubtless expected a sudden attack
at daybreak, as at Firket, at Abu Hamed, on the
Atbara; as we marched by night to our positions
before Omdurman he must have designed to spring
upon our right flank. When day broke and no
enemy appeared he divided his army into three
corps. The first, under Osman Azrak, attacked the
village ; the second, with the green banner of Ali
Wad Helu — with him Abdullahi's eldest son, the
Sheik-ed-Din — moved towards Kerreri Heiglits to
envelop our right ; the third, under Abdullahi hi.xiself
and his brother Yakub, remained behind Surgliam,
ready, as need might be, to envelop our left, or to act
as reserve and bar our road to Omdurman.

What befell the first you know ; Osman Azrak died
with them. The second spread out towards our right,
and there it fell in with the Egyptian cavalry- horse-
battery, and camel-corps. When Broadwood Bey fell
back before the attack, he sent word of its coming to

BROADWOOD IN DIFFICULTIES.

271

sheet of
lad they
•cements
IS begun

we only
ippeared,
it of the
'. them —

Agaiga.
n attack

on the
positions
spring

and no
to three
±ed the
r of Ali
son, the
eiglits to
li hi.nself
Surgham,
or to act

zrak died
3ur right,
ryj horse-
[ Bey fell
joming to

the Sirdar, and received orders to remain outside the
trench and keep the enemy in front, instead of letting
them f,'et round the right. Accordingly he occupied
the Heights of Kerreri. But the moment he got to the
top he fuund himself in face of Wad lielu's unsuspected
army-corps — 12,000 to 15,000 men against less than
2000 — and the moment he saw them they began
swarming up the hill. Tiiere was just a moment for
decision, but one moment is all tliat a born cavalry
general needs. The next his galloper was flying with
the news to the Sirdar, and the mounted troops were
retreating northward. The choice lay between isola-
tion, annihilation, or retreat on Agaiga and envelop-
ment of the right. Broadwood chose the first, but
even for that the time was short enough. The camels
floundered on the rocky hillside; the guns dragged;
the whole mass of dervishes pursued them with a
pelting fire. Two guns lost all their horses and were
abandoned ; the camel-corps alone had over sixty men
hit. As for the cavalry, they went back very hard
pressed, covering their comrades' retreat and their own
by carbine fire. If the Egyptian army but gave
Victoria Crosses, there were many earned that day.
Man after man rode back to bring in dismounted
officers, and would hardly be dissuaded from their
endeavour when it was seen the rescued were plainly
dead. It was the great day of trial — the day the pick
of our cavalry officers have worked for through a weary
decade and more — and the Fayum fellah fought like a

272

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

hero and died like a man. One or two short of forty
killed and wounded was the day's loss ; but they came
off handsomely. The army of the green tlag was now
on Kerreri Heights, between them and the camp ; but
with Broadwood's force unbroken behind it, it paused
from the meditated attack on the Egyptian right. In
the pause three of the five gunboats caught it, and
pepper-castored it over with shell and Maxim fire. It
withdrew from the river towards the centre again : the
instant a way was cleared the out-paced camel-corps
was passed back to Agaiga. The cavalry hung upun
the green flag's left, till they withdrew clean west-
ward and inland ; then it moved placidly back to the
infantry again.

Thus much for the right ; on the left the British
cavalry were in the stress of an engagement, less per-
fectly conducted, even more hardily fought out. They
left the zariba, as you heard, the moment the attack
burned out, and pricked eagerly oft' to Omdurmau.
Verging somewhat westward, to the rear of Gebel
Surgham, they came on 300 Dervishes. Their scouts
had been over the ground a thousand yards ahead of
them, and it was clear for a charge. Only to cut them
off it was thought better to get a little west of them,
then left wheel, and thus gallop down on them and
drive them away from their supports. The truuij)els
sang out the order, the troops glided into squadrons,
and, four squadrons in line, the 21st Lancers swung
into their first charge.

THK LANCERS CHARGE.

273

of forty
ey came
vas now
up; but
t paused
[jht. In
, it, and
fire. It
ain : the
lel-corps
rig upun
in west-
3k to the

3 British

less per-

t. They

le attack

durmau.

bf Gebel

ir scouts

ahead of

cut them

of them,

hem and

trumpets

[^uadroiis,

rs swung

Knee to knee they swept on till they were but 200
yards from the enemy. Then suddenly — then in a
flash — they saw the trap. Between tiiem and the 300
there yawned sud.lenly a deep ravine; out of the
ravine there sprang imstantly a cloud of dark heads
and a brandished lightning of swords, and a thunder
of savage voices. Mahmud smiled when he heard the
tale in prison at Haifa, and said it was their favourite
stratagem. It had succeeded. Three thousand, if there
was one, to a short four hundred ; but it was too late
to check now. Must go through with it now ! The
blunders of British cavalry are the fertile seed of
British glory : knee to knee the Lancers whirled on.
One hundred yards — fifty — knee to knee

Slap ! " It was just like that," said a captain, bring-
ing his fist hard into his open palm. Through the
swordsmen they shore without checking — and then
came the khor. The colonel at their head, riding
straight through everything without sword or revolver
drawn, found his horse on its head, and the swords
swooping about his own. He got the charger up again,
and rode on straight, unarmed, through everything.
The squadrons followed him down the fall. Horses
plunged, blundered, recovered, fell ; dervishes on the
ground lay for the hamstringing cut ; officers pistolled
them in passing over, as one drops a stone into a
bucket; troopers thrust till lances broke, then cut;
everybody went on straight, through everything.

And through everything clean out the other side

•274

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

tiloy came — those that kept up or got up in time.
The others were on the ground — in pieces V)y now, for
tlie cruel swords shore through shouhler and thigh,
and carved the dead into fillets. Twenty-four of
these, and of those that came out over fifty had
felt sword or bullet or spear. Few horses stayed
behind among the swords, but nearly 130 were
wounded. Lieutenant Robert Grenfell's troop came
on a place witli a jump out as well as a jump in; it
lost oflicer, centre guide, and both flank guides, ten
killed, and eleven wounded. Yet, when they burst
straggling out, their only thought was to rally and
go in agaisi. "Rally, No. 2!" yelled a sergeant, so
mangled across the face that his body was a cascade
of blood, and nose and cheeks flapped hideously as he
yelled. ** Fall out, sergeant, you're wounded," said the
subaltern of his troop. " No, no, sir ; fall in ! " came
the hoarse answer ; and the man reeled in his saddle.
" Fall in, No. 2 ; fall in. Where are the devils ? Show
me the devils!" And No. 2 fell in — four whole men
out of twenty.

They chafed and stamped and blasphemed to go
through them again, though the colonel wisely forbade
them to face the pit anew. There were gnashings
of teeth and howls of speechless rage — things half
theatrical, half brutal to tell of when blood has cooled,
yet tilings to rejoice over, in that they show the fight-
ing devil has not, after all, been civilised out of Britons.

THREE AGAINST TIICEE THOUSAND.

276

in time,
now, for
1(1 thigh,
-four of
ifty had
s stayed
30 wero
)op came
up in ; it
lides, ten
ley burst
rally and
rgeant, so
a cascade
Lisly as he
," said the
n!" came
lis saddle.
s ? Show
diole men

ficd to go
y forbade
trnashings
luigs half
las cooled,
the fight-
of Britons.

Also there are many and many doeds of self-abandon-
ing heroism; of wliich tale the half will »»over be
told. Take only one. LicHitonant de Mo lorency
missed his troop-sergeant, and rode back ar ong the
slaslies to look for him. There he found the hacked
body of Lieutenant Grenfell. He dismounted, and
put it up on his horse, not seeing, in his heat, that
liiC had drained out long since by a dozen chan-
nels. The horse bolted under the slackened muscles,
and De "Montmorency was left alone with his revolver
and 3000 screaming fiends. Captain Kenna and
Corporal Swarbrick rode out, caught his horse, and
brought it back; the three answered the fire of the
3000 at fifty yards, and got quietly back to their
own line untouched.

Forbearing a second charge, the Lancers dismounted
and opened fire ; the carbines at short range took an
opulent vengeance for the lost. Back, back, back they
drove them, till they came into the fire of the 32nd
Battery. The shrapnel flew shrieking over them ;
the 3000 fell all ways, and died.

All this from hearsay; now to go back to what
we saw. When the Sirdar moved his brigades
southward he knew what he was doing. He was
giving his right to an unbeaten enemy ; with his
usual daring he made it so. His game now was to
get between the dervishes and Omdurman. Perhaps
he did not guess what a bellyful of beating the un-

276

THE BATTLE OF OxMDURMAN.

beatea enemy would take ; but he trusted to his
generals and his star, and, as always, they bore him
to victory.

The blacks of the 13th Battalion were storming
Gebel Surgham. Lewis and Macdonald, facing west
and south, had formed a right angle. They were
receiving the fire of the Khalifa's division, and the
charge of the Khalifa's horsemen; behind these the
Khalifa's huge black standard was flapping raven-
like. The Baggara horsemen were few and ill-
mounted — perhaps 200 altogether — but they rode to
get home or die. They died. There was a time
when one galloping Baggara would have chased a
thousand Egyptians, but that time is very long past.
The fellaheen stood like a wall, and aimed steadily at
the word ; the chargers swerved towards Macdonald.
The blacks, as cool as any Scotsmen, stood and
aimed likewise ; the last Baggdia fell at the muzzles
of the rifles. Our fire went on, steady, remorseless.
The Eemington bullets piped more and more rarely
overhead, and the black heads thinned out in front.
A second time the attack guttered and flickered out.
It was just paat ten. Once more to Omdurman I

Two minutes' silence. Then once more the howling
storm rushed down upon us ; once more crashed forth
the answering tempest. This time it burst upon Mac-
donald alone — from the north-westward upon his right
flank, spreading and gathering to his right rear. For
all their sudden swiftness of movement the Dervishes

THE THIRD ATTACK.

277

to his
re him

:oriniRg

ig west

y were

and the

lese the
raven-

and ill-
rode to
a time

shased a

)ng past.

iadily at

icdonald.

ood and
muzzles

lorseless.
e rarely
in front,
sred out.
an I

howling
led forth
ion Mac-
his right
ar. For
ervishes

throughout this day never lost their formation ; their
lines drove on as rigidly as ours, regiment alongside
regiment in lines of six and eight and a dozen ranks,
till you might have fancied the Macedonian phalanx
was alive again. Left and front and right and rear
the masses ate up the desert — 12,000 unbroken fast
and fearless warriors leaping round 3000.

Now began the fiercest fight of that fierce day. The
Khalifa brought up his own black banner again ; his
staunchest die-hards drove it into the earth and locked
their ranks about it. The green flag danced encourage-
ment to the Allah-intoxicated battalions of Wad Helu
and the Sheikh-ed-Din. It was victory or Paradise
now.

For us it was victory or shredded flesh and bones
unburied, crackling under the red slippers of Baggara
victors. It was the very crux and crisis of the fight.
If Macdonald went, Lewis on his left and CoUinson
and the supporting camel-corps and the newly re-
turned cavalry, all on his right or rear, must all go
too. The Second British and Second Egyptian Brig-
ades were far off by now, advancing by the left of
Surgham hill ; if they had to be recalled the Khalifa
could walk back into his stronghold, and then all our
fighting was to begin anew. But Hunter Pasha was
there and Macdonald Bey was there, born fighting
men both, whom no danger can flurry and no sudden
shift in the kaleidoscope of battle disconcert. Hunter
Bent for Wauchope's first British Brigad"*. to fill the

278

THE BATTLE OF 0MDUR:\IAN.

gap between Macdonald and Lewis. The order went
to General Gatarre tirst instead of to the Sirdar: with
the soldier's instinct he set the brigade moving on the
instant. The khaki columns faced round and edged
riglitward, rightward till the fighting line was backed
with 3000 Lee-Metfords, which no man on earth
could face and live. Later the Lincolns were moved
farther still on to Macdonald's right. They dispute
with the Warwicks the title of the best shotjting
regiment in the British army ; the men they shot at
will dispute no claim of the Lincolns for ever.

But the cockpit of the fight was Macdonald's. The
British might avenge his brigade ; it was his to keep
it and to kill ofif the attack. To meet it he turned his
front through a complete half-circle, facing succes-
sively south, west, and north. Every tactician in
the army was delirious in his praise : the ignorant
correspondent was content to watch the man and his
blacks. " Cool as on parade," is an old phrase ; Mac-
donald Bey was very much cooler. Beneath the
strong, square -hewn face you could tell that the
brain was working as if packed in ice. He sat
solid on his horse, and bent his black brows towards
the green flag and the Eemingtons. Then he turned
to a galloper with an order, and cantered easily up to
a battalion-commander. ^Magically the rilles hushed,
the stinging powder smoke wisped away, and the
companies were ra])idly threading back and forward,
round and round, in and out, as if it were a figure

der went
ar : with
ig on the
nd edged
,s backed
on earth
re moved
y dispute
si looting
y shot at

d's. The
I to keep
urned his
g succes-
tician in

ignorant
I and his
Lse ; Mac-
leath the

that the
He sat
s towards
lie turned
5ily up to
:s hushed,
, and the
I forward,
3 a figure

H
»

MACDONALD AND HIS BLACKS.

281

of a dance. In two minutes the brigade was to-
gether again in a new place. The field in front
was hastening towards us in a whitey-brown cloud
of dervishes. An order. Macdonald's jaws gripped
and hardened as the flame spurted out again, and
the whitey-brown cloud quivered and stood still.
He saw everything ; knew what to do ; knew how
to do it ; did it. At the fire he was ever brooding
watchfully behind his firing-line; at the cease fire
he was instantly in front of it : all saw him, and
knew that they were being nursed to triumph.

His blacks of the 9th, 10th, and 11th, the historic
fighting regiments of the Egyptian army, were worthy
of their chief. The 2nd Egyptian, brigaded with them
and fighting in the line, were worthy of their com-
rades, and of their own reputation as the best dis-
ciplined battalion in the world. A few had feared
that the blacks would be too forward, the yellows
too backward: except that the blacks, as always,
looked happier, there was no difference at all between
them. The Egyptians sprang to the advance at the
bugle ; the Sudanese ceased fire in an instant silence
at the whistle. They were losing men, too, for though
eyes were clamped on the dervish charges, the dervish
fire was brisk. Man after man dropped out behind
the firing-line. Here was a white officer with a red-
lathered charger; there a black stretched straight,
bare-headed in the sun, dry -lipped, uncomplaining,
a bullet through his liver; two yards away a dead

282

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

driver by a dead battery mule, his whip still glued
in his hand. Tlie table of loss topped 100 — 150 —
neared 200. Still they stood, fired, advanced, fired,
changed front, fired — firing, firing always, deaf in the
din, blind in the smarting smoke, hot, dry, bleeding,
bloodthirsty, enduring the devilish fight to the end.

And the Dervishes ? The honour of the fight must
still go with the men who died. Our men were per-
fect, but the Dervishes were superb — beyond perfec-
tion. It was their largest, best, and bravest army
that ever fought against us for Mahdism, and it died
worthily of the huge empire that Mahdism won and
kept so long. Their riflemen, mangled by every kind
of death and torment that man can devise, clunjr
round the black flag and the green, emptying their
poor, rotten, home-made cartridges dauntlessly. Their
spearmen charged death at every minute hopelessly.
Tneir horsemen led each attack, riding into the bullets
till nothing was left but three horses trotting up to
our line, heads down, saying, " For goodness' sake, let
us in out of this." Not one rush, or two, or ten— but
rush on rush, company on company, never stopping,
though all their view that was not unshaken enemy
was the bodies of the men who had rushed before
them. A dusky line got up and stormed forward:
it bent, broke up, fell apart, and disappeared. Before
the smoke had cleared, another line was bending and
storming forward in the same track.

It was over. The avenging squadrons of the Egyp-

TKK LAST DERVISH.

283

ill glued
—150—
ed, fired,
if in the
bleeding,
:he end.
jht must
veie per-
l perfec-
ist army
I it died
»7on and
ery kind
e, clung
ng their
\ Their
pelessly.
e bullets
ig up to
sake, let
:en— but
'topping,
1 enemy
1 before
'orward :
Before
ing and

tian cavalry swept over the field. The Khalifa and
the Sheikh-ed-Din had galloped back to Omdurman.
Ali Wad Helu was borne away on an angareb with
a bullet through his thigh-bone. Yakub lay dead
under his brother's banner. From the green army
there now came only death-enamoured desperadoes,
strolling one by one towards the rifles, pausing to
shake a spear, turning aside to recognise a corpse,
then, caught by a sudden jet of fury, bounding for-
ward, checking, sinking limply to the ground. Now
under the black flag in a ring of bodies stood only
three men, facing the three thousand of the Tliird
Brigade. They folded their arms about the staff and
gazed steadily forward. Two fell. The last dervish
stood up and filled his chest; he shouted the name
of his God and hurled his spear. Then he stood quite
still, waiting. It took him full; he quivered, gave
at the knees, and toppled with his head on his arms
and his face towards the legions of his conquerors.

6 Egyp-

aS4

XXXIIL

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

Oveh 11,000 killed, 16,000 wounded, 4000 prisoners/
— that was the astounding bill of dervish casualties
officially presented after the battle of Omdurman.
Some people had estimated the whole dervish army
at 1000 less than this total: few had put it above
50,000. The Anglo -Egyptian army on the day of
battle numbered, perhaps, 22,000 men : if the Allies
had don-* the same proportional execution at Waterloo,
not one Frenchman would have escaped.

How the figures of wounded were arrived at I
do not know. The wounded of a dervish army ought
not really to be counted at all, since the badly
wounded die and the slightly wounded are just as
dangerous as if they were whole. It is conceivable
that some of the wounded may have been counted
twice over — either as dead, when they were certain
to perish of their wounds or of thirst, or else as
prisoners when they gave themselves up. Yet, with
all the deductions that moderation can suggest, it was

AH APPALLINO SLAUQHTKB.

285

)nsoners,
sasualties
idurman.
sh army
it above
day of
le Allies
Vaterloo,

ed at I

ny ought
le badly
i just as
aceivable

counted
3 certain

else as
Yet, with
st, it was

a most appalliig slaughter. The dervish army was
killed out as hardly an army has been killed out in
the history of war.

It will shock you, but it was simply unavoidable.
Not a man was killed except resisting — very few
except attacking. Many wounded were killed, it is
true, but that again was absolutely unavoidable. At
the very end of the battle, when Macdonald's brigade
was advancing after its long fight, the leading files of
the 9th Sudanese passed by a young Baggara who
was not quite dead. In a second he was up and at
the nearest mounted white officer. The first spear
flew like a streak, but just missed. The officer
assailed put a man-stopping revolver bullet into him,
but it did not stop him. He whipped up another
spear, and only a swerve in the saddle saved the
Englishman's body at the expense of a wounded
right hand. This happened not once but a hun-
dred times, and all over the field. It was impossible
not to kill the dervishes: they refused to go back
alive. At the very finish — the 11,000 killed, the
Khalifa fled, the army hopelessly smashed to pieces
— a band of some 3000 men stood firm against the
pursuing Egyptian cavalry. " They were very sticky,"
said an officer simply, " and we couldn't take 'em on."
Later they admitted they were beaten, and came in.
But except for sheer weariness of our troops, that 3000
would have been added to the eleven. As it was, they
outmarched our advance, sli^jped into Omdurman

286

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

before us, changed their gibbas, and looted the
Khalifa's dhurra.

Nor was that the end of the sullen resistance of the
Baggara. Even after they realised that they were
hopelessly beaten in the field, they relaxed but little of
their sullen hostility. Probably they were encouraged
by the Sirdar's moderation in sparing indiscriminately
all the inhabitants of Omdurmau : whether that or
no, it is certain that from the day of the fight to
the 8th, the day I came down, it was not safe for
any white man to go into the city unarmed. I do
not think any white man was actually attacked, —
certainly none was killed. But wandering Egyptian
soldiers were, and it was not until a batch or two
of francs - tirailleurs had been taken out and shot
that decent order could be maintained in the town.
That was natural enough. Omdurman's only idea
of maintaining order was massacre : how could it
appreciate mercy ?

By the side of the immense slaughter of dervishes,
the tale of our casualties is so small as to be almost
ridiculous. The first official list was this. British
troops : 2 officers (Captain Caldecott and Lieut. Gren-
fell) killed, 7 wounded ; 23 non-commissioned officers
and men killed, 99 wounded. Egyptian army : 5
British officers and 1 non - commissioned officer
wounded ; 1 native officer killed, 8 wounded ; 20 non-
commissioned officers and men killed, 221 wounded.
Total casualties: 131 British, 256 native — 387.

OUR LOSSEd.

287

ted the

36 of the

ey were

little of

:ioura<'ed

uiinately

that or

fight to

safe for

d. I do

acked, —

Egyptian

I or two

md shot

he town.

nly idea

could it

ervishes,
almost

British
it. Gren-
1 officers
.rmy : 5
I officer

20 non-
vounded.
87.

But this estimate, like all early estimates, was under
the mark. Some of the wounded died — among them a
private of the Liiiculus not j)n;viuusly reported ; others
were late in reporting themselves. Tlie Egyptian casu-
alties among n.ni-commiosioned ofiicers and men rose
to 30 killed and 279 wounded. Among the British
many slight wounds were never reported at all. The
21st Lancers, especially, according to the testimony of
their own officers, lost 24 killed or died of wounds, and
74 wounded. Of the latter, hardly more than half
came under surgical treatment at all. Such wounds,
of course, were very slight, and were properly omitted
from the official list. Still, if you count every scratch,
the British casualties go up to nearly 200, and the
Egyptian to over 300. Of the British infantry, the
Camerons, with a total of 2 killed and 25 wounded,
lost most severely, as they did at Atbara ; and they
were again followed by the Seafortha with 2 killed
and 16 wounded.

Putting it at its highest, however, the victory waa
even more incredibly cheap than the Atbara. But for
the rash handling of the 21st Lancers, the mistake of
putting the British infantry behind a zariba instead of
a trench, and the curious perversity which sent the
slow camel-corps out into the open with the Egyptian
cavalry, the losses would have been more insignilicant
still. The enemy's fire, as always, was too high, and
the Egyptians in their shelter-trench hardly sufi'ered
from it at all. Perhaps the heaviest fire of the first

288

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

part of the action was borne by CollinFion's supporting
brigade and by the hospitals. In the second action,
Macdonald's four battalions suffered most severely of
any in the field — again, as at the Atbara.

Among correspondents, the Hon. Hubert Howard,
acting for the ' Times ' and the ' New York Herald ' in
conjunction, was killed by a chance shot at the gate
of the Mahdi's tomb at the very end of the day. From
Oxford onward his one end in life had been the woo-
ing of adventures. He had found them with the Cuban
insurgents and in the Matabele rebellion, where he
was wounded in leading a charge of Cape boys. He
was foredoomed from the cradle to die in b^s boots,
and asked no better. Earlier in the day he had ridden
with the Lancers through their charge ; earlier still he
had been out with the pickets and jumped his horse
over the zariba as the dervishes came on to attack it.
No man ever born was more insensible to fear. Ten
minutes before he was killed he said, " This is the best
day of my life*."

Colonel Frank PJiodes, the formally accredited cor-
respondent of the 'Times,' was shot throu-h the flesh
of the right shoulder very early in the fight. From
the very beginning no Sudan campaign has been com-
plete without Colonel Rhodes, and it must have been
a keen disappointment to him to miss Omdurman ;
but he bore that and the wound with his usual hum-
orous fortitude. Mr Williams, of the 'Daily Chron-
icle/ had his cheek abraded by a bullet or a chip

THB khalifa's (.iEXEKALSUlP.

289

pporting
1 action,
merely of

Howar(^,
erald* in
the gate
y. From
the woo-
lie Cuban
jvhere he
loys. He
his boots,
ad ridilen
Br still he
his horse
attack it.
ear. Ten
s the best

dited cor-
the flesh
it. From
been coin-
have been
ndurman ;
sual hu in-
ly Chron-
or a chip

of masonry from a ricochet: it was nothing, and he
made of it even less than it was. Mr Cross, of the
'Manchester Guardian,' died afterwards of enteric
fever at Abeidieh. Years ago he had rowed in the
Oxford Eight, but enteric delights in seizing the most
powerful frames. Quiet, gentle, patient, brave, sin-
cere — Mr Cross was the type of an English gentleman.

However, the battle of Omdurman was almost a
miracle of success. For that thanks are due, first,
to the Khalifa, whose generalship throughout was a
masterpiece of imbecility. Had he attacked us at
night with the force and impetuous courage he showed
by day, it was not at all impossible that he might have
got inside our position. Nothing could have come
alive up to the Lee-Metfords ; but the Martinis might
have proved less irresistible — and once in^.ide in the
dark his death-scorning fanatics would have punished
us fearfully. At close fighting they would have been
as good as we, and far more numerous : if they had
been met with rifle -fire, we must Imve inevitably
shot hundreds of our own men.

If he had stood in Omdurman and fought as well as
he fought in the open, our loss must needs have been
reckoned in thousands instead of hundreds. Instead,
he chose the one form of fight which gave him no
possibility of even a partial success. "We heard he
boasted that his men always had broken our squares,
and he would see if they could not do it again. They
would have broken us if valour could have dune it

290

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

but he forgot that the squares were bigger than
before, were better armed, so far as the British went,-
and especially that men like the Sirdar and Himterl
and Macdonald knew every turn and twist of dervish'
tactics, and are not in the habit of giving points away'
to the enemy.

The Khalifa, therefore, came to utter grief as a
general. As a ruler he fought harder than many bad
expected of him ; even when the mass of his army
was dead or yielded, he was ready for one throw
more. "W'len that failed, he rode for it: suicide
would have been more dignified, as well as simpler for
us, but besides suicide there was only flighc open to
him. Perhaps suicide would have been simpler for
him too in the end. As a ruler he finished when he
rode out of Omdurman. His own pampered Baggara
killed his herdsmen and looted the cattle that were to
feed him. Somebody betrayed the position of the
reserve cameLj that were to carry his reserve wives :
the camel -corps brought them in, and with them
Fatima — the Sheikh -ed- Din's mother — an enormous
lady, his faithful and candid chief partner from the
days when he could carry all his property on a
donkey. Other wives, less staunch, voluntarily de-
serted him; his followers took to killing one another.

He is no more Khalifa. He evaded the pursuit of
the cavalry, however, joined the Sheikli-ed-Din, who
had flod by a dilFerent route, and struck south-west-
ward. He may reach his own country, and if, from

THE BATTLE OF GEDAREF.

291

ger than
Ish went,-
l Hunter!
f dervish'
ints away'

fief as a
nany had
his army
ue throw
, : suicide
iinpler for
c open to
mpler for
when he
I Baggara
it were to
on of the
ve wives:
ith them
enormous
from the
;rty on a
tarily de-
e another,
pursuit of
J3ui, who
)uth-west-
d if, from

un Emperor, he Hkes to pnss into a petty bandit, he
may possibly liave a few months yet before liim. But
his following is too smnll even for successful brigan-
dage ; and he has earned too general detestation.
Any day his head may be brought into Omdurmari.
Last month he was the arbitrary master of one of
the greatest dominions' — looking only to extent of
country — in the whole world. To-day he is merely
a criminal at largo.

The remainder of his forces took little reduction,
^lajor Stuart Wortley had cleared the right bank up
to the r)lue Nile. Luckily for him, the opposition was
not severe, for most of the friendlies bolted at sight
of a Baggara, as everybody knew they would. The
Jaalin, however, behaved well.

There now remained only one dervish force in the
lield — the garrison of Gedaref, up the Blue Nile and
on the Abyssinian bonier. Tt numbered 3000 men,
under Ahmed Fadil, the Khalifa's cousin. The reduc-
tion of this body was left to Parsons Pasha, Governor
of Kassala, and he executed his task brilliantly. The
details of the action are not yet known ; perhaps
nobody will ever take the trouble to ask them. The
main fact is, that Parsons, with the IGth Egyptian
battalion, the Arab Kassala Begulars (under two
British liinibashis), some camel-corps and irreguh^-s
—in all 1300 men— attacked Ahmed Fadil's 30U0, and
after three hours' fighting dispersed them. They lost
700 killed; Parsons's casualties were 37 men killed,

292

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

4 native officers and 53 men wounded. Osman Digna
was believed to have fled in this direction, but no
word has yet come in about him. We are not likely
to hear much more about Osnmn Digna.

For a point or two of criticism — if the unprofes-
sional observer may allow himself the liberty — the
battle of Omdurman was a less brilliant affair than
the Atbara : on the other hand, it was more com-
plex, more like a modern battle. The Atbara took
more fighting, Omdurman more generalship. Success
in each was complete and crushing. Omdurman was
final ; but it occurred to a good many of us betwei n
10 and 11 that morning that it was just as well we
had put Mahmud's 16,000 out of harm's way at tho
Atbara. That these were not at the Khalifa's dis-
posal on September 2nd was one more of his blunders,
one piece more of the Sirdar's luck.

The Sirdar would have won in any case: that he
won so crushingly and so cheaply was the gift of luck
and the Khalifa. Three distinct mistakes — as has, per-
haps impertinently, been hinted above — were made on
our side. Of these the charge of the 21st Lancers was
the most flagrant. It is perhaps an unfortunate con-
sequence of the modern development of war-correspon-
dence, and the general influence of popular feeling on
every branch of our Government, that what the street
applauds the War Office is comp'^led at least to con-
done. The populace has glorified the charge of the

THE BLUNDER OF THE CHARGE.

293

m Digna
, but no
lot likely

unprofes-
BFty — the
[fair than
lore com-
3ara took
Success
rman was
3 betwem
5 well we
vay at the
ilifa's dis-
blunders,

>: that he
ift of luck
IS has, per-
e made on
ancers was
uuate con-
■corrospon-
fceling on
t the street
ast to con-
Tge of the

21st for its indisputable heroism ; the War Office will
hardly be able to condemn it for its equally indisput-
able folly. That being so, it is the less invidious to
say that lae charge was a gross blunder. For cavalry
to charge unbroken infantry, of unknown strength,
over unknown ground, within a mile of their own
advancing infantij, was as grave a tactical crime as
cavalry could possibly commit. Their orders, it is
believed, were to find out the strength of the enemy
south of Gebel Surgham, report tc the British infantry
behind them, and, if possible, to prevent the enemy
from re-entering Omdurman. The charge implied dis-
regard, or at least inversion, of these orders. Had the
cavalry merely reconnoitred the body of dervishes they
attacked, and kept them occupied till Lyttelton's
brigade came up, the enemy would have been
annihilated, probably without the loss of a man to our
side. As it was, the British cavalry in the charge
itself suflered far heavier loss than it inflicted. And
by its loss in horses it practically put itself out of
action for the rest of the day, when it ought to have
saved itself for the pursuit. Thereby it contributed
as much as any one cause to the escape of the Khalil'a.
For the other two points, General Gatacre, being new
to zaribas, appears to have throughout attached undue
importance to them. At the Atbara he squandered
much of the force of his attack through an over-
estimation of the difficulty of Mahmud's zariba ; here

294

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISSL

)]ed both defence

id readiness of offence
througli overestimating^ the dilticuUy of liis own. A
zariba looks far more formidable than a liglit shelter-
trench such as General Hunter's division employed .
in truth it is as easy to shoot through as a sheet of
paper, and, for Sudanis, almost as easy to charge
through. As for sending out the camel -corps with
the Egyptian cavalry, it is exceedingly diflicult to
understand why this was done the very day after
Broadwood's reconnaissance to Gebel Feried had de-
monstrated their in "nobility. The truth appears to
be that it is very difficult to find a place for such a
force in a general action. When the frontier was
Haifa, and the war was mostly desert raids and counter-
raids, nothing could have replaced this corps ; for other
than desert work it has become something of an
anomaly.

These amateur criticisms are put forward with
diffidence, and will, I hope, be tentatively received.
Turning to what is indisputable, it is impossible to
overpraise the conduct of every branch of the force.
Those of the longest and widest experience said over
and over again tliat they had never seen a battle in
which everybody was so completely cool and set on
his business. Two features were especially prominent.
The first was the shooting of the British. It was per-
fect. Some thouglit that the Dervishes were mown
down principally by artillery and Maxim fire ; but if

THE SHOOTING.

295

f offence
own. A
t shelter-
m ployed .
, sheet of
to charge
orps with
illicult to
day after
i had de-
ippears to
or such a
intier was
.d counter-
; for other
ng of an

vard with
-• received,
possible to
the force.
3 said over
a battle in
md set on
prominent.
X was per-
^ere mown
ire; but if

the gun did more execution than the rifle, it was pro-
bably for the first time in the history of war. An
examination of the dead — cursory and partial, but
probably fairly representative — tends to the opinion
that most of the killing, as usual, was done by rilles.
From the British you heard not one ra^.i^ed volley :
every section fired with a single report. The iiuU\id-
ual firing was lively and evenly maintained. The
satisfactory conclusion is that the British soldier will
keep absolutely 'Steady in action, and knows how to
use his weapon: given these two conditions, no force
e.iisting will ever get within half a mile of him on
open ground, and hardly any will try.

The native troops vindicated their courage, dis-
cipline, and endurance most nobly. The smUlen, un-
foreseen charges might well liave shaken the nerve of
the Egyptians and over-excited the blacks ; both were
absolutely cool. Their only fault was in shooting.
At almost every volley you saw a bullet kick the
sand within fifty yards of the firing-line. Others
flew almost perpendicular into the air. Still, given
steadiness, the mechanical art of shooting can be
taught with time and patience. When you consider
that less than six months ago the equivalent of one
company in each black battalion were raw dervishes,
utterly untrained in the use of fire-arms, the wonder
is they shot as well as thoy did. Anyhow they shot
well enough, and in trying circumstances they shot

296

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

as well as they knew how. That is the root of the
matter.

As for the leading — happy the country which
possessed a Hunter, a Macdonald, a Broadwood, and
had hardly heard of any one of them. It has heard
of them now, and it will be strange if it does not
presently hear further.

297

ot of the

y which
vood, and
las heard
does not

XXXIV.

OMDURMAN,

It was eleven o'clock. Four brigades were passing
slowly to right and left of Gebel Surgham : the Second
British and Second Egyptian were far ahead, filmy
shadows on the eye-searing sand. The dervish dead
and dying were strewn already c /er some thirty square
miles— killed by bullets, killed by shrapnel, killed by
shell from the gunboats, dying of wounds by tne water,
dying of thirst in the desert. But most lay dead in
the fighting line. Mahdism had died well. If it had
earned its death by its iniquities, it had condoned its
iniquities by its death.

Now on to overtake the Sirdar, to see the city of
the Khalifa. Even now, after our triple fight, none
was quite assured of final victory. We had killed a
prodigious number of men, but where there were so
many there might yet be more. Probab]/ the same
thought ran through many minds. If only they fought
as well inside Omdurman ! That would have spelt
days of fighting and thousands of dead.

298

OMDURMAN.

One thing, indeed, we knew by now : the defences of
Onidurman on the river side existed no longer. On
the 1st, from Gebel Feried, we had seen the gun -boats
begin the bombardment, backed by the 37th Battery,
with its howitzers, on the opposite bank. We had
heard since of the effects. " It was the funniest thing
yo\i over saw," said a captain of marines. " The boats
went up one after anotlier ; when we got opposite the
first fort, ' pop ' went their guns. ' Bang, bang, bang,'
went three boats and stopped up the embrasure.
Came to the next fort : ' pop ' ; * bang, bang, bang ' :
stopped up that embrasure. So on all the way up. A
little fort on Tuti Island had the cheek to loose off its
pop-gun ; stopped that up. Then we went on to
Khartum. Forts there thought perhaps the boats
couldn't shoot from behind, so they lay doggo till we
had gone paot. They found we could shoot from
behind."

So far so good. But what should we find on the
land side ? Above all, should we find the Khalifa ?
The only answer was to go and see. Four miles or so
south of Agaiga the yellow streak of Khor Shaniba
marks rouglily the northern limit of Omdurman ;
thence to the Mahdi's tomb, the great mosque, and the
Khalifa's house is a "^ort three miltis. The Second
British Brigade was wat ang at the Khor — men and
horses Inpning up the half solid stufl' till they must
have been as thick with mud inside as they were out.
Beyond it a sprinkling of tumble-down huts refracted

THE WHITE FLAG.

299

efences of
On

iger.

gun -boats
1 Battery,
We had
iest thing
The boats
posite the
mg, bang/
nibrasure.
ig, bang':
ay up. A
)ose off its
3nt on to
the boats
go till we
lOot from

nd on the
Khalifa ?
ailes or so
r Shamba
ndurman ;
e, and the
le Second
-men and
they must
were out.
; refracted

and heated sevenfold tho furnace of the sunlight ;
from amon;' them beckoned tho Sirdar's fln"

It was about two o'clock when the re 1 flag moved
onward towards the Mnhdi's tomb, heaving its torn
dome above the sea of mud walls. The red and white
looked light and gay beside the huge, cuml)rous raven-
banner of the Khalifa, whicli flew sullenly at its side
Before the twin emblems of victory and defeat rodo
the straight-backed Sirdar, General Hunter a head
behind him, behind them the staff. Behind came
the trampling Lnd Egyptian Brigade and the deadly
smooth-glidiiig guns of the 32nd Battery. Through
the spar?;e hovels they moved on ; presently they began
to densen inlo streets. We were on the threshold of
the capital of Mahdism.

And on the threshold came out an old man o" a
donkey with a white flag. The Khalifa — so we
beli(3ved — liad fled to Omdurman, and was at this
very moment within his wall in tlie centre of the
town ; but the inhabitants had come out to surrender.
Only one point the old gentleman wished to be
assured of : were we likely to massacre everybody if
we let them in without resistance? The Sirdar
thought not. The old man beamed at the answer,
and conveyed it to his fellow-townsmen ; on the top
of which ceremony we marched into Omdurman.

It began just like any other town or village of the
mean Sudan. Half the huts seemed left unfinished,
the other half to have been deserted and fallen to

300

OMDURMAN.

pieces. There were no streets, no doors or windows
except holes, usually no roofs. As for a garden, a
tree, a steading for a beast — any evidence of tlirift or
intelligence, any attempt at comfort or amenity or
common cleanliness, — not a single trace of any of it.
Omdurman was just planless confusion of blind walls
and gaping holes, shiftless stupidity, contented filth
and bea^itliuess.

But that, we said, was only the outskirts : when we
come farther in we sliall surely find this mass of popu-
lation manifesting some small symbols of a great
dominion. And presently we came indeed into a
broader way than the rest — something with the rude
semblance of a street. Only it was paved with dead
donkeys, and here and there it disappeared in a
cullender of deep holes where green water festered.
Beside it stood a few houses, such as you see in
Metemmeh or Berber — two large, naked rooms stand-
ing in a naked walled courtyard. Even these were
rare : for the rest, in this main street, Omdurman was
a rabbit-warren — a threadless labyrinth of tiny huts or
shelters, too flimsy for the name of sheds. Oppression,
stagnation, degradation, were stamped deep on every
yard of miserable Omdurman.

But the people ! We could hardly see the place for
the people. We could hardly hear our own voices for
their shrieks of welcome. We could hardly move for
their importunate greetings. They tumbled over each
other like ants from every mud heap, from behind every

A HUGE IIAKE.M.

301

windows
[warden, a

tlirift or
aeiiity or
any of it.
ind walls
iiLed filth

when we
3 of popu-
[ a great
d into a

the rude
with dead
ired in a

festered.
Du see in
lus stand-
lese were
rman was
ly liuts or
ppression,

on every

5 place for

voices for

move for

over each

lind every

dunghill, from under every mat. Most of the men still
wore their gibbas turned inside out; you could see
the shadows of the patches through the sackcloth.
They had been trying to kill us three hours before.
But they salaamed, none the less, and volleyed " Peace
be with you" in our track. All the miscellaneous
tribes of Arabs whom Abdullahi's fears or suspicions
had congregated in his capital, all the blacks his
captains had gathered together into franker slavery —
indiscriminate, half-naked, grinning the grin of the
sycophant, they held out their hands and asked for
backsheesh.

Yet more wonderful were the women. The multi-
tude of women whom concupiscence had harried from
every recess of Africa and mewed up in Baggara
harems came out to salute their new masters. There
were at least three of them to every man. Black women
from Equatoria and almost white women from Egypt,
plum-skinned Arabs and a strange yellow type with
square, bony faces and tightly-ringleted black hair ;
old women and little girls and mothers with babies
at the breast ; women who could hardly walk for dyed
cotton swaLhings, muffled in close veils, and women
with only a rag between themselves and nakedness
— the whole city was a huge harem, a museum of
African races, a monstrosity of African lust.

The steady columns drove through the surge of
people: then halted in lines of ebony statues, the
open - mouthed guns crawling between them to the

002

OMDLKMAN.

front. We had come opposite the corner of a high
wall of faced stones, a higli twenty feet solid vvitliout
a chip or chink. Now ! This was the great wall of
Onidurman, the Khalifa's citadel. And listen ! Boom
— boom — a heavy melancholy note, half bellow, half
waiL It was the great ombeya, the war-horn. The
Khalifa was inside, and he was rallying the malazemin
of liis bodyguard to fight their last fight in their last
stronghold.

Less than 3000 men were standing, surrounded by
ten times their number, within ten feet of this gigantic
wall. But for the moment they were safe enough.
The Khalifa, demented in all he did through these last
days of his perdition, had made no banquette inside
his rampart ; and if it was hard to scale, it was impos-
sible to defend. The pinch would come when we
went inside.

One column moved off along the street ; another —
the 13th Sudanese with four guns of the battery —
away to the left under the wall towards the Nile. The
road was what you already felt to be typical of Mah-
dism — pools of rank stagnation, hills and chasms of
rubble. The guns fell behind to cut their road a bit ;
the infantry went on till they came down to the brim-
ming blue river. Here were the forts and the loop-
holed walls, and here, steiming serene and masterful
to and fro, were the inevitable gunboats. Cr-r-rack !
Three crisp Maxim rounds: the place was tenanted
yet.

TIIROUGH TTIK BREACH.

803

)f a high
I without
,t wall of
n ! Boom
How, half
)ra. The
liihizemiii
their last

unded by
s gigantic
i enough,
these last
Lte inside
^as inipos-
when we

another —
battery —
^ile. The
I. of Mah-
sliasms of
oad a bit ;
the brim-
the loop-
masffrful
C^r-r-rack !
1 tenanted

At tho corner we come upon a breach — 500 cubic
feet or so of fissure — torn by a lyddite shell. Over
the rubble we scrambled, then through a stout double-
leafed gate, pulses leaping: we were inside. But as
yet only half inside — only in a broad road between
another high stone wall on our right and the river
on our left. We saw the choked embrasures and a
maimed gun or two, and walls so clownishly loop-holed
that a man could only get one oblique shot at a gun-
boat, and then wait till the next came up to have one
shot at that. We saw worse things — horrors such as
do not sicken in the mass on the battle-field — a scarlet
man sitting with his chin on his knees, hit by a shell,
clothed from head to foot in his own blood, — a woman,
young and beautii'uUy formed, stark naked, rolling from
side to side, moaning. As yet we saw not one fighting
man, and still we could feel that the place was alive.
We pushed on between walls, we knew not whither,
through breathing emptiness, through pulsing silence.

Eound a corner we came suddenly on a bundle of
dirty patched cloth and dirty, lean, black limbs — a
typical dervish. He was alive and unarmed, and threw
up his hands : he was taken for a guide. Next at our
feet, cutting the road, we found a broad khor, flowing
in from the Nile, washing up above the base of the
wall. Four dervishes popped out, seemingly from
dead walls beyond. They came towards us and pro-
bably wished to surrender ; but the blacks fired, and
they dived into their dead v/ulls again. The guide

304

OMDURMAN.

said the water was not deep, and a crowd of men and
women suddenly shooting up from the rear bore him
out by fording it. Most of these new - reconciled
foes had baskets to take away their late master's loot.
We plashed through the water — and here at last, in
the face of the high wall on our right, was a great
wooden gate. Six blacks stood by with the bayonet,
while another beat it open with his rifle-butt. We
stepped inside and gasped with wonder and disap-
pointment.

For the inside of the Kali fa's own enclosure was
even more squalid, an even more wonderful teeming
beehive than the outer town itself. Like all tyrants,
he was constantly increasing his body-guard, till the
fortified enclosure was bursting with them. From ths
height of a saddle you could see that this was only
part of the citadel, an enclosure within an enclosure.
Past a little guard-house at the gate a narrow path
ran up the centre of it ; all the rest was a chaos of
piggish dwelling-holes. Tiny round straw tukls, mats
propped up a foot from earth with crooked sticks,
dome-topped mud kennels that a man could just crawl
into, exaggerated bird's nests falling to pieces of stick
and straw — lucky was the man of the Khalifa's guard
who could house himself and his family in a mud
cabin the size of an omnibus. On every side, of every
type, they jumbled and jostled and crushed ; and they
sweated and stank with people. For one or two old
men in new gibbas came out, and one or two younger

IMPOSIKG ON THE SAVAGE.

305

men and
bore him
econciled
ter's loot,
it last, in
s a great

bayonet,
utt. We
id disap-

snre was

teeming
[ tyrants,
1, till the
From the
5vas only
nclosure.
•ow path
chaos of
kls, mats
d sticks,
jst crawl

of stick
I's guard

a mud
of every
iud they

two old
younger

men nnked and wounded. When we offered them
no harm the Khalifa's body-guard broke cover. One
second the place might have been an uncouth
cemetery ; the next it was a gibbering monkey-house.
I'rom naked hovels, presto ! it turned to naked bodies.
Climbing, squeezing, burrowing, they came out like
vermin from a burning coat.

They were just as skinny and shabby as any other
dervishes; as the Omdurman Guards they were a
failure. They were all very friendly, the men anxious
to tell what they knew of the Khalifa's movements —
which was nothing — the women overjoyed to fetch
drinks of water. But when they were told to bring
out their arms and ammunition they became a bit
sticky, as soldiers say. They looked like refusing,
and a snap-shot round a corner which killed a black
soldier began to look nasty. There must have been
thousands of them all about us, all under cover, all
knowing every twist and turn of their warren. But a
confident front imposed on them, as it will on all
savages. A raised voice, a hand on the shoulder — and
they were slipping away to their dens and slouching
back with Remingtons and bandoliers. The first
came very, very slowly ; as the pile grew they came
quicker and quicker. From crawling they changed
in five minutes to a trot; they smiled all over, and
informed zealously against anybody who hung back.
Why Lct? Three masterless hours will hardly wipe
out the rest of a lifetime of slavery.

306

OMDURMAN.

Maxwell Bey left a guard over the arms, and went
back : it was not in this compartment that we should
find the Khalifa. We went on through the walled
street along the river-front; the gunboats were still
Maximing now and again a cable or two ahead. So
on, until we came to the southern river corner of the
hold, and here was a winding, ascending path between
two higher, stouter walls than ever. Here was a
stouter wooden gate; it must be here. In this en-
closure, too, was a multitude of dwellings, but larger
and more amply spaced. The Sirdar overtook us
now, and the guns: the gunners had cut their road
and levelled the breach, and tugged the first gate
off its hinges. On; we must be coming to it now.
We were quite close upon the towering, shell -torn
skeleton of the Mahdi's tomb. The way broadened
to a square. But the sun had some time struck
level into our eyes. He went down ; in ten minutes
it would be dark. Now or never! Here we were
opposite the tomb ; to our left front was the Khalifa's
own palace. We were there, if only he was. A sec-
tion of blacks filed away to the left through the
walled passage that led to the door. Another filed
to the right, behind the tomb, towards his private
iron mosque. We waited. We waited. And tlien,
on left and right, they reappeared, rather dragL^iii^ly.

Gone! None could know it for certain till the
place had been searched throuj^h as well as the
darkness would let it. Next morning some of the

LOOTING THE KHALIFA'S CORN.

307

and went
we should
[le walled
were still
head. So
ler of the
[i between
re was a

I this en-
but larger
ertook us
:heir road
first gate
it now.
ihell - torn
broadened
ne struck

minutes

we were

Khalifa's

A sec-

•ough the

)ther filed

is private

Ind tlien,

ig,uiii<il7.

II till the
11 as the
lie of the

smaller Emirs avowed that they knew it. He had
been supposed to be surrounded, but who could stop
every earth in such a spinny ? He had bolted out
of one door as we went in at another.

We filed back. For the present we had mi.^sed
the crowning capture. But going back under the
wall we found a very good assurance that Abudullahi
was no more a ruler. The street under the wall was
now a breathless stream of men and women, all carry-
ing baskets — the whole population of the Khalifa's
capital racing to pilfer the Khalifa's grain. There
was no doubt about their good disposition now. They
salaamed with enthusiasm, and "lued" most genuinely;
one flat-nosed black lady forgot propriety so far as to
kiss my hand. Y/onderful workings of the savage
mind ! Six hours before they were dying in regiments
for their master; now they were looting his corn.
Six hours before they were slashing our wounded
to pieces ; now they were asking us for coppers.

By this time the darkling streets were choked
with the men and horses and guns and camels of
the in[)Ouriijg army. You dragged along a mile an
hour, clamped immovably into a mass of troops.
A hundred good spearmen now — but the Dervishes
were true savages to the end : they had decided
that they were beaten, and beaten they remained.
Soon it was pitchy night ; where the bulk of the
army bivouacked, I know not, neither do they. I
stumbled on the Second British Brigade, which had

308

OMDURMAN.

had a relatively easy day, and there, by a solitary
candle, the Sirdar, flat on his back, was dictating
his despatch to Colonel Wingate, flat on his belly.
I scraped a short hiei'oglypliic scrawl on a telegraph
form, and fell asleep on the gravel with a half-eaten
biscuit in my mouth.

Next morning the army awoke refreshed, and was
able to appreciate to the full the beauties of
Omdurman. When you saw it close, and by the
light of day, the last suggestion of stateliriess vanished.
It had nothing left but size — mere stupid multiplica-
tion of rubbish. One or two relics of civilisation were
found. Taps in the Klialifa's bath ; a ship's chrono-
meter ; a small pair of compasses in a boy's writing-
desk, and a larger pair modelled clumsily upon them ;
the drooping telegraph wire and cable to Khartum ;
Gordon's old " Bordein," a shell-torn husk of broken
wood round engines that still worked marvellously ;
a few half - naked Egyptians, once Government
servants ; Charles Neufeld, the captive German mer-
chant, quoting Schiller over his ankle-chains ; Sister
Teresa, the captive nun, forcibly married to a Greek,
presenting a green orange to Colonel Wingate, tlie
tried friend she had never seen before, — such was the
patlietic flotsam overtaken by the advancing vvave of
Mahdism, now stranded by its ebb.

The ^lalidi's tomb was shoddy brick, and you dared
not talk in it lest the rest of tlie dome should come
on your head. Tlie inside was tawdry panels and

FILTH AND LUST AND BLOOD.

309

I solitary
dictating
his belly,
telegraph
lalf-eaten

and was
an ties of
1 by the
vanished,
lultiplica-
tion were
s chrono-
3 writing-
on them ;
Khartum ;
)f broken
rellously ;
vernment
nan nicr-
LS ; Sister
a Greek,
igate, the
L was the

vvave of

^ou dared
uld come
inels and

railings round a gaudy pall. The Khalifa's house was
the house of a well-to-do-fellah, and a dead donkey
putrified under its window-holes. The arsenal was
the reduplication of all the loot that has gone for half
a dollar apiece these three years. The great mosque
was a wall round a biggish square with a few stick -
and-thatch booths at one end of it. The iron mosque
was a galvanised shed, and would have repulsed
the customers of a third-rate country photographer.
Everything was wretched.

And foul. They dropped their dung where they
listed ; they drew their water from beside green
sewers ; they had filled the streets and khors with
dead donkeys ; they left their brothers to rot and puff
up hideously in the sun. The stench of the place was
in your nostrils, in your throat, in your stomach. You
could not eat ; you dared not drink. Well you could
believe that this was the city where they crucified a
man to steal a handful of base dollars, and sold
mother and daughter together to be divided five
hundred miles apart, to live and die in the same
bestial concubinage.

The army moved out to Khor Shamba during the
3rd. The accursed place was left to fester and fry in
its own filth and lust and blood. The reek of its
abominations steamed up to heaven to justify us of
our vengeance.

310

XXXV.

THE FUNERAL OF GORDON.

The steamers — screws, paddles, stern-wheelers — ping-
plugged their steady way up the full Nile. Past the
northern fringe of Omdurman where the sheikh came
out with the white flag, past the breach where we went
in to the Khalifa's stronghold, past the choked em-
brasures and the Ipcerated Mahdi's tomb, past the
swamp-rooted palms of Tuti Island. We looked at it
all with a dispassionate, impersonal curiosity. It was
Sunday morning, and that furious Friday seemed
already half a lifetime behind us. The volleys had
dwindled out of our ears, and the smoke out of our
nostrils ; and to-day we were going to the funeral of
Gordon. After nearly fourteen years the Christian
soldier was to have Christian burial.

On tlie steamers there was a detachment of every
corps, white or black or yellow, that had taken part
in the vengeance. Every white officer that could be
spared from duty was there, fifty men picked from
each British battalion, one or two from each unit of

THE AVENfJERS.

311

rs — ping-
Past the
sikh came
e we went
oked em-
past the
Dked at it
It was
seemed
lleys had
ut of our
uneral of
Christian

L of every
iken part
could be
ked from
]h unit of

the Egyptian army. That we were going up to Khar-
tum at all was evidence of our triumph ; yet, if you
looked about you, triumph was not tlio note. The
most reckless subaltern, the most barbarous black,
was touched with gravity. We were going to per-
form a necessary duty, which had been put off far,
far too long.

Fourteen years next January— yet even thvough
that humiliating thought there ran a whisper of
triumph. We may be slow; but in that very slow-
ness we show that we do not forget. Soon or late,
we give our own their due. Here were men that
fought for Gordon's life while he lived, — Kitchener,
who went disguised and alone among furious enemies
to get news of him ; Wauchope, who poured out
his blood like watei at Tamai and Kirbekan ; Stuart-
Wortley, who mip^ed by but two days the chance
of dying at Gordon's side. And here, too, were boys
who could hardly lisp when their mothers told them
that Gordon was dead, grown up now and appearing
in the fulness of time to exact eleven thousand lives
for one. Gordon may die — other Gordons may die
in the future — but the same clean-limbed brood will
grow up and avenge them.

The boats stopped plugging and there was silence.
We were tying up opposite a grove of tall palms ; on
the bank was a crowd of natives curiously like the
backsheesh - hunters who gather to greet the Nile
steamers. They stared at us ; but we looked beyond

312

THE FUNERAL OF GORDOX.

them to a large building rising from a cnimbling quay.
You could see that it bad once been a baiidsome edi-
fice of the type you know in Cairo or Alexandria — all
stone and stucco, two-storied, faced with tall regular
windows. Now the upp^^.r storey was clean gone; the
blind windows were filled up with bricks; the stucco
was all scars, and you could walk up to the roof on
rubble. In front was an acacia, such as grow in
Ismailia or the Gezireh at Cairo, only unpruned —
deep luscious green, only drooping like a weeping
willow. At that most ordinary sight everybody grew
very solemn. For it was a piece of a new world, or
rather of an old world, utterly different from the
squalid mud, the baking barrenness of Omdurman. A
facade with tall windows, a tree with green leaves —
the facade battered and blind, the tree drooping to
earth — there was no need to tell us we were at a grave.
In that forlorn ruin, and that disconsolate acacia, the
bones of murdered civilisation lay before us.

The troops formed up before the palace in three
sides of a rectangle — Egyptians to our left as we looked
from the river, British to the right. The Sirdar, the
generals of division and brigade, and the staff stood in
the open space facing the palace. Then on the roof
— almost on the very spot where Gordon fell, though
the steps by which the butchers mounted have long
since vanished — we were aware of two flagstaves. By
the right-hand halliards stood Lieutenant Staveley,
RN., and Captain Watson, K.R.R. ; by the left hand

THE SEAL ON KHARTUM.

313

ing quay,
ome edi-
dria — all
.1 regular
5one; the
he stucco
e roof on

grow in
pruned —

weeping
)ody grew

world, or
from the
rman. A
L leaves —
'ooping to
it a grave,
icacia, the

in three
we looked
Mrdar, the
ff stood in
1 the roof
11, though
have long
:aves. By
Staveley,
left hand

Bimbashi Mitford and his Excellency's Egyptian
A.D.C.

The Sirdar raised - \is hand. A pull on the halliards :
up ran, out flew, the Union Jack, tugging eagerly at
his reins, dazzling gloriously in the sun, rejoicing in
his strength and his freedom. "Bang!" went the
"Melik's" 12J-pounder, and the boat quivered to her
backbone. " God Save our Gracious Queen " hymned
the Guards' band—" bang ! " from the " Meuk " — and
Si: lar and private stood stiff — " bang ! " — to attention,
every hand at the helmet peak in — "bang!" — salute.
The Egyptian flag had gone up at the same instant ;
and now, the same ear-smashing, soul-uplifting bangs
marking time, the band of the 11th Sudanese was
playing the Khedivial hymn. " Three cheers for the
Queen ! " cried the Sirdar : helmets leaped in the air,
and the melancholy ruins woke to the first wholesome
shout of all these years. Then the same for the
Khedive. The comrade flags stretched themselves
lustily, enjoying their own again; the bands pealed
forth the pride of country; the twenty- one guns
banged forth the strength of war. Thus, white men
and black, Christian and Moslem, Anglo-Egypt set her
seal once more, for ever, on Khartum.

Before we had time to think such thoughts over to
ourselves, the Guards were playing the Dead March in
" Saul." Then the black band was playing the march
from Handel's " Scipio," which in England generally
goes with " Toll for the Brave " ; this was in memory

314

THE FUNERAL OF GORDON.

of those loyal men among the Khedive's subjects who
could have saved themselves by treachery, but pre-
ferred to die with Gordon. Next fell a deeper hush
than ever, except for the solemn minute guns that
had followed the fierce salute. Four chaplains —
Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist —
came slowly forward and ranged themselves, with
their backs to the palace, just before the Sirdar. The
Presbyterian read the Fifteenth Psalm. The Anglican
led the rustling wliisper of the Lord's Prayer. Snow-
haired Father Brindle, best beloved of priests, laid his
helmet at his feet, and read a memorial prayer bare-
headed in the sun. Then came forward the pipers
and wailed a dirge, and the Sudanese played " Abide
with me." Perhaps lips did twitch just a little to see
the ebony heathens fervently blowing out Gordon's
favourite hymn ; but the most irresistible incongruity
would hardly have made us laugh at that moment.
And there were those who said the cold Sirdar himself
could hardly speak or see, as General Hunter and the
rest stepped out according to their rank and shook his
hand. What wonder ? He has trodden this road to
Khartum for fourteen years, and he stood at the goal
at last.

Thus with Maxim-Nordenfeldt and Bible we buried
Gordon after the manner of his race. The parade
was over, the troops were dismissed, and for a short
space we walked in Gordon's garden. Gordon has
become a legend with his countrymen, and they all

IN gordom's garden.

315

)jects who
, but pre-
iper hush
guns that
laplains —
ithodist —
.ves, with
dar. The
) Anglican
r. Snow-
iS, laid his
lyer bare-
;he pipers
Bd " Abide
ttle to see

Gordon's
icongruity
t moment.
ar himself
ir and the

shook his
is road to
,t the goal

we buried
he parade
Dr a short
ordon has
i they all

but deify him dead who would never have heard of
him had he lived. But in this garden you somehow
came to know Gordon the man, not the myth, and to
feel near to him. Here was an Englishman doing his
duty, alone and at the instant peril of his life ; yet
still he loved his garden. The garden was a yet more
pathetic ruin than the palace. The palace accepted
its doom mutely ; the garden strove against it. Un-
trimmed, unwatered, the oranges and citrons still
struggled to bear their little, hard, green knobs, as if
they had been full ripe fruit. The pomegranates put
out their vermilion star -flowers, but the fruit was
small and woody and juiceless. The figs bore better,
but they, too, were small and without vigour. Rankly
overgrown with dhurra, a vine still trailed over a low
roof its pale leaves and limp tendrils, but yielded
not a sign of grapes. It was all green, and so far
vivid and refreshing after Omdurman. But it was
the green of nature, not of cultivation : leaves grew
large and fruit grew small, and dwindled away. Re-
luctantly, despairingly, Gordon's garden was dropping
back to wilderness. And in the middle of the defeated
fruit-trees grew rankly the hateful Sodom apple, the
poisonous herald of desolation.

The bugle broke in upon us ; we went back to the
boats. We were quicker steaming back than steaming
up. "We were not a whit less chastened, but every
man felt lighter. We came with a sigh of shame: we
went away with a sigh of relief. The long-delayed

316

THE FUNERAL OF GORDON.

duty was done. The bones of our countrymen were
shattered and scattered abroad, and no man knows
tlieir place; none the less Gordon had his due burial
at last. So we steamed away to the roaring camp
and left him alone again. Yet not one nor two looked
back at the mouldering palace and the tangled gar-
den with a new and a great contentment. We left
Gordon alone again — but alone in majesty under the
conquering ensign of his own peopleu

317

XXXVI.

AFTER THE CONQUEST.

The curtain comes down ; the tragedy of the Sudan is
played out. Sixteen years of toilsome failure, of toil-
some, slow success, and at the end we have fought our
way triumphantly to the point where we began.

It has cost us much, and it has proated us— how
little? It would be hard to count the money, im-
possible to measure the blood. Blood goes by quality
as well as quantity ; who can tell what future deeds we
lost when we lost Gordon and Stewart and Earle,
Burnaby who rode to Khiva, and Owen who rode
Father O'Flynn ? By shot and steel, by sunstroke
and pestilence, by sheer wear of work, the Sudan has
eaten up our best by hundreds. Of the men who
escaped with their lives, hundreds more will bear the
mark of its fangs till they die ; hardly one of them but
will die thb sooner for the Sudan. And what have we
to show in return ?

At first yo' think we have nothing ; then you tliink
again, and se>. we have very much. We have gained

318

AFTER THE CONQUEST.

precious national self-respect. We wished to keep our
hands clear of the Sudan ; we were drawn unwillin<;ly
to meddle with it; we blundered when we suffered
Gordon to go out; we fiddled and failed when we
tried to bring him back. "We were humiliated and
we were out of pocket ; we had embarked in a foolish
venture, and it had turned out even worse than any-
body had foreseen. Kow this was surely the very
point where a nation of shopkeepers should have cut
its losses and turned to better business elsewhere. If
we were the sordid counter-jumpers that Frenchmen
try to think us, we should have ruled a red line, and
thought no more of a worthless land, bottomless for
our gold, thirsty for our blood. We did nothing such.
We tried to; but our dogged fighting dander would
not let us. We could not sit down till the defeat was
redeemed. We gave more money ; we gave the lives
of men we loved — and we conquered the Sudan again.
Now we can permit ourselves to think of it in peace.

The vindication of our aelf-respect was the great
treasure we won at Khartum, and it was worth the
price we paid for it. Most people will hiirdly per-
suade themselves there is not something else thrown
in. The trade of the Sudan ? For now and for many
years you may leave that out of the account. The
Sudan is a desert, and a depopulated desert. North-
ward of Kliartum it is a wilderuess; southward it is
a devastation. It was always a poor country, and it
always must be. Slavl^s and ivory were its wealth in

) keep our
nwilliii*;ly
e suffered
whea we
iated and
n a foolish
than any-

the very
d have cut
where. If
Frenchmen
d line, and
:,omless foi
thing such,
ider would
defeat waa
^e the lives
iidan again,
in peace.

the great
worth the
liudly per-
Ise thrown
d for many
ount. The
't. North-
hward it is
11 try, and it

wealth iu

THE WORTHLESS SUDAN.

319

the old time, but now ivory is all but exterminated,
and slaves must be sold no more. Guni-;iial)ic and
ostrich feathers and Dongola dates will hardly buy
cotton stuffs enough for Lancashire to feel the
difference.

From Haifa to above Berber, where rain never falls,
the Nile only licks the lip of the desert. The father
of Egypt is the stepfather of the Sudan. With the
help of water-wheels and water-hoists a few patches
of corn and fodder can be grown, enough for a dotted
population on the bank. But hardly anywhere does
the area of vegetation push out more than a mile
from the stream ; oftener it is a matter of yards.
Such a country can never be rich. But why not
irrigate ? Simply because every pint of 'vater you
take out of the Nile for the Sudan means a pint less
for Egypt. And it so happens that at this very mo-
ment the new barrages at Assuan and Assiut are
making the distribution of water to Egypt more
precise and scientific than ever. Lower Egypt is to
be enlarged ; Upper Egypt is, in part at least, to
secure permanent irrigation, independent of the Nile
flood, and therewith two crops a-year. This means
a more rigid economy of water than ever, and who
will give a thought to the lean Sudan ? What it can
dip up in buckets fat Egypt will never miss, and that
it may take — no more.

As for the southward lands, they get rain, to be
sure, and so far they are cultivable ; only there is

320

AFTER THE CONQUEST.

nobody left to cultivate them. For three years
now the Egyptian army has been marching past
broken mud hovels by the river - side. Dust has
blown over their foundations, Dead Sea fruit grows
rankly witliin their wails. Sometimes, as in old
Berber, you come on a city with streets and shops —
quite ruined and empty. Here lived the Sudanese
whom the Khalifa has killed out. And in the more
fertile parts of the Sudan it is the same. "Worse
still — in that the very fertility woke up the cupidity
of the Baggara, and the owner was driven out, sold
in the shive-niarket, shipped up Nile to die of Fashoda
fever, cut to pieces, crucified, impaled — anything you
like, so long as the Khalifa's fellow -tribesmen got
his land. In Kordofan, even of old days, lions in
bad years would attack villages in bands : to - day
they openly dispute the mastery of creation with
men. From Abyssinia to Wadai swelters the miser-
able Sudan — beggarly, empty, weed-grown, rank with
blood.

It will recover, — with time, no doubt, but it will
recover. Only, meanwhile, it will want some tend-
ing. Tliere is not likely to be much trouble in the
way of figliting: in the present weariness of slaughter
the people will be but too glad to sit down under any
decent Government. There is no reason — unless it;
be complications with outside Powers, like Franct or
Abyssinia — why the old Egyptian empire should not
be reoccupied up to the Albert Nyanza and Western

THE l''UTUKE nULE.

321

ee years
ing past
Dust has
lit grows
in old
shops —
Sudanese
the more
Worse
cupidity
out, sold
Fashoda
ling you
?men got
lions in
to - day
ion with
le miser-
mk with

t it will
ne tend-
e in the
ihiugliter
ider any
mless it
ranc( or
)uld not
Western

Daiiur. But if tlii.s is done — and done it sun,'lv ^llould
he — two tilings must be remeuibend. First, ii must
be niiiiiarily adiniiiisLered for many years to come,
and that by British men. Take the native JOg\ptian
official even to-day. No words can express his in-
eptitude, his laziness, his helplessness, his dread of
responsibility, his maddening red-tape formalism. His
panacea in every unexpected case is the same. "It
must be put in writing ; I must ask for instructions."
lie is no longer corrupt — at least, no lon^^er so cor-
rupt as he was — but he would be if he dared. The
native officer is better than the civilian official ; but
even with him it is the exception to find a man both
capable and incorruptible. To put Egyjitians, cor-
rupt, lazy, timid, often rank cowards, to rule the
Sudan, would be to invite another Mahdi as soon
as the country had grown up enough to uake him
formidable.

The Sudan must be ruled by military law strong
enougli to be feared, administered by Britisli oflieeis
just enough to be respected. For the second point, it
must not be exijecled that it will pay until many years
have passed. The cost of a military administration
would not be very great, but it must be considered
money out of pocket. The experience of Dongola,
whence the army has been drawing hirge stores of
dliurra, where the number cf waterwheels has multi-
plied itself enormously in less than a coujile of years,
shows well enougli that only patience is wanted. The

322

AFTER THE CONQUEST.

Sudan will improve : it will never be an Egypt, but
it will pay its way. But, before all things, you must
give it time to repopulate itself.

Well, then, if Egypt is not to get good places for
her people, md is to be cut of pocket for administra-
tion — how much does Egypt profit by the fall of Ab-
dullahi and the reconquest of the Sudan ? Much.
Inestimably. For as the master -gain of England is
the vindication of her self-respect, so the master-gain
of Egypt is the assurance of her security. As long as
dervish raiders loomed on the horizon of her frontier,
Egypt v/a3 only half a State. She lived on a perpetual
war-footing. Her finances are pincixed enough at the
best; every little economy had to go to the Sirdar.
Never was general so jealous — even miserly — of public
money as the Sirdar; but even so he was spending
Egypt's all. That strain will henceforth be loosened.
Egypt will have enough work for five years in the new
barrages, which are a public work directly transliter-
able in pounds and piastres. Egypt will be able to
give a little attention to her taxes, which are anomal-
ous ; to her education, which is backward ; to her rail-
ways, which are vile.

Whether she will be able to reduce her army is
doubtful. The occupation of the banks of the Blue and
White Nile, to say nothing of the peaceful reabsorp-
tion of Kordofan and Darfur, would open up some of
the finest raw fighting material in the world. Frankly,
it is very raw indeed — the rawest savagery you can

TITll G,\i:s or EC.YTT.

323

jrypt, but
^ou must

)laces for

ininistra-

ill of Ab-

? Much.

agland is

ister-gain

s long as

' frontier,

perpetual

;h at the

e Sirdar.

of public

spending

loosened.

the new

ransliter-

able to

anomal-

her rail-

arnjy is
Blue and
reabsorp-

some of
Frankly,

you can

well imagine, — but BrL'ob cfricors and sergeants have
made fairly drilled ^ »ops, fairly good shots, superb
marchers and bayon* ^-figliiers out of the same mate-
rial, and they could do it again. To put the matter
brutally, having this field for recruiting, we have too
many enemies in the world to afford to lose it. We
have made the Egyptian army, and we have saved
Egypt with it and with our own : we should now make
of it an African second to our Indian army, and use it,
when the time comes, to repay the debt to ourselves.

"We have saved Egypt, and thereby we have paid
another debt. The Khedive is but half a monarch at
the best : while a hostile force sat on his borders to
destroy him, and every couple of years aciuully cumo
down to do it, he was not more than a quarter. T'nere
was plenty of sneaking synxpathy with Mahdisai in
Egypt — even in Cairo, and not very far from the
Khedive's oiv pittace. But for British help the
sympathise- would long ago, buc yet too late, have
recogjiised ih.MT Toolishress in the obliteration of
Egypt. Egypt p loue could by no miracle have saved
herself from utter destruction by Mahdist invasion.
We have saved her — and therewith we have paid off
the purblind, sincere undertakings of Mr Gladstone.
We undertook to leave Egypt ; we have redeeu.ed the
promise in an unforeseen manner, but we have re-
deemed it amply. If we undertook to evacuate the
old Egypt, we have fathered a new one, saved from
imminent extinction by our gold and our sword.

324

AFTER THE CONQUEST.

Without US there would have been no Egypt to-day ;
what we made we shall keep.

That is our double gain — the vindication of our
own honour and the vindication of our right to go
on making Egypt a country fit to live in. Egypt's
gain is her existence to-day. The world's gain is
the downfall of the worst tyranny in the world, and
the acquisition of a limited opportunity for open trade.
The Sudan's gain is immunity from rape and torture
and every extreme of misery.

The poor Sudan ! The wretclied, dry Sudan ! Count
up all tlie gains you will, yet what a hideous irony it
remains, this tight of half a generation for such an
emptiness. People talk of the Sudan as the East ; it
is not the East. The East has age and colour; the
Sudan has no colour and no age — ^just a monotone of
squalid barbarism. It is not a country ; it has nothing
that makes a country. Some brutish institutions it
has, and some bloodthirsty chivalry. But it is not a
country : it has neither nationality, nor history, nor
arts, nor even natural features. Just the Nile — the
niggard Nile refusing himself to the desert — and for
the rest there is absolutely nothing to look at in the
Sudan. Nothing grows green. Only yellow halfa-
grasa to make you stumble, and sapless mimosa to
tear your eyes ; dom-palms that mock with wooden
fruit, and Sodom apples that lure with flatulent
poison. For beasts it has tarantulas and scorpions
and serpents, devouring white ants, and every kind

A mi'EUUS lUONY.

325

)t to-day ;

m of our
ght to go
Egypt's
's gain is
world, and
3pen trade,
ind torture

m ! Count
lis irony it
>r such an
le East; it
jolour; the
lonotone of
las nothing
titutions it

it is not a
listory, nor
Nile— the
•t — and for
3k at in the
How halfa-

mimosa to
ith wooden
,h flatulent
d scorpions

every kind

of loathsome bug that flies or crawls. Its people are
naked and dirty, ignorant and besotted. It is a
Quarter of a continent of sheer squalor. Overhead
the pitiless furnace of the sun, under foot the never-
easinc' treadmill of the sand, dust in the throat, tune-
less singxUg in the ears, searing tlame in the eye, — the
Sudan is a God-accursed wilderness, an empty limbo
of torment for ever and ever.

Surely enough, "When Allah made the Sudan,"
say the Arabs, " he laughed." You can almost hear
ilie fiendish echo of it crackling over the f^ery sand.

And yet and yet there never was an Englishman

who had been there, but was ready and eager to go
again. "Drink of Nile water," say the same Arabs,
"and you will return to drink it again." Nile water
is either very brown oi very green, according to the
season; yet you do go back and drink it again. Per-
haps to Englishmen — half-savage still on the pinnacle
of their civilisation — the very charm of the land lies
in its empty barbarism. There is space in the Sudan.
There is the fine, purified desert air, and the long
stretching gallops over its sand. There are the things
at the very back of life, and no other to posture in
front of them, — hunger and t.liirst to assuage, distance
to win through, pain to bear, life to defend, and death
to face. You have gone back to the spring water of
your infarcy. You are a savage again — a savage with
Kosbach water, if tliere is any left, and a Mauser
repeating pistol-carbine, if the .^and ha^ not jammed

326

AFTER THE CONQUEST.

it, but still at the last word a savage. You are un-
prejudiced, simple, free. You are a naked man, facing
naked nature.

I do not believe that any of us who come home
whole will think, from our easy-chairs, unkindly of
the Sudan.

THE ENDl

/ .,

)u are un-
lan, facing

ome home
ikindly of