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Partly persuaded by the zeal of his lieutenant, and partly by the wavering and doubtful attitude of the Jaalin, the Khalifa determined early in June to send the Kordofan army to occupy Metemma, and thereby either to awe the tribe into loyalty, or force them to revolt while the Egyptian troops were still too distant to assist them.

They affirmed that they had left the former camp, three days before, with the intention of proceeding to Gedid; where Fadil was to join the Khalifa with captured grain, when the whole Dervish force was to march north. The troops slept during the afternoon, and in the evening set out for Gedid, which they reached at ten o'clock the next morning.

Perceiving this, the IXth Soudanese, who were the regiment in column on the right of the original front, wheeled to the right from column into line without waiting for orders, so that two battalions faced towards the Khalifa and two towards the fresh attack.

It was these qualities that enabled him to make that astounding railway which brought Cairo almost into touch with the Khalifa, who, with his predecessor, the Mahdi, and with his tragically potent ally, the hungry and all-devouring desert, had beaten back so many other attempts to reach and to beat him.

He understood Arabic better than he had admitted, and he saw in this three months' respite, if it were granted, the chance to carry out a plan that was in his mind. The Khalifa held out a hand to him, and Macnamara, boiling with rage inwardly and his face flushing which the Khalifa mistook for modesty kissed it.

Under him were men who had proved their worth in years of desultory fighting against the Khalifa Broadwood, Hunter, Lewis, Macdonald, Maxwell, and many others. The training had been so long and severe as to weed out all weaklings; and the Sirdar himself was the very incarnation of that stern but salutary law of Nature which ordains the survival of the fittest.

The steamers went no further than Merawi. The iron road stopped at Kerma. Why had they not followed up their success? Obviously because they feared the army that awaited them at Omdurman. At this the Khalifa took fresh courage, and in January 1897 he began to revolve schemes for taking the offensive and expelling the invaders from the Dongola province.

"I wish I had come straight to you, Sidi, when I first set foot in Africa," he said at last, while the fragrant smoke uncurled from under the droop of his long, pendent mustaches. "Truly it had been well," answered the Khalifa, who would have given the best stallions in his stud to have had this Frank with him in warfare, and in peace. "There is no life like our life." "Faith!

Mulai Idrees "My Lord Enoch" in English a direct descendant of Mohammed, was among the first of the Arabian missionaries to arrive, with one or two faithful adherents, exiles fleeing from the Khalîfa of Mekka.

Colonel Martin got his four squadrons together as the dervishes drew in towards him. The enemy's right was now thrown forward, facing straight for the angle of the camp where the British division stood. At a swinging gait came the vast army of Mahdism. I was still near Surgham and believed that I could discern the Khalifa himself in the centre of a jostling, excited throng of footmen and horsemen.