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She was an excellent vessel, with fine engines much too powerful for her frame. Both Surgeon-General Taylor, on behalf of the British division, and Surgeon-Colonel Gallwey, for the Egyptian troops, completed their arrangements for succouring the sick and wounded upon the march from Shabluka to the attack upon Omdurman.
That steamer went to rescue Sir Charles Wilson's party who were wrecked on their return from Khartoum. Near Shabluka she was attacked by a dervish fort and hulled. Lord Charles Beresford, who was in command, stuck to the vessel after the boiler blew up, and during the night it was repaired.
While the infantry divisions were marching round the heights of Shabluka to the camp opposite Royan island, the steamers and gunboats ascended the stream and passed through the gorge, dragging up with them the whole fleet of barges and gyassas. The northern end of the narrow passage had been guarded by the five Dervish forts, which now stood deserted and dismantled.
With him he trembles for the fate of the 'poor little beast, the Husseinyeh, when she drifts stern foremost on the shoal, 'a penny steamer under cannon fire'; day after day he gazes through the General's powerful telescope from the palace roof down the long brown reaches of the river towards the rocks of the Shabluka Gorge, and longs for some sign of the relieving steamers; and when the end of the account is reached, no man of British birth can read the last words, 'Now mark this, if the Expeditionary Force and I ask for no more than two hundred men does not come within ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country.
They occasionally sent down about a thousand Baggara horsemen to that place, and their riders scouted around the bluff rocks and hills bordering the Nile on either side of the "bab," or water-gateway and rapids of Shabluka. As a rule, only about two hundred of them ever crossed to the east bank.
It was arranged that they were to come by half battalions, by squadrons, and by batteries, each one day behind the other. To make room for them, two Egyptian battalions were sent up to the foot of the Shabluka cataract. The six black battalions left Berber on July 30th, and arrived at Atbara the next day.
The mounted troops, who remained at Wad Hamed till all had gone south, were ordered to move on the 27th of August, and by a double march catch up the rest of the army. Wad Hamed then ceased for the time being to exist except in name. All the stores and transport were moved by land or water to the south of Shabluka, and an advanced base was formed upon Royan island.
On the 28th the gunboat Zafir was steaming from the Atbara to Wad Hamed, intending thereafter to ascend the Shabluka Cataract. Suddenly overtaken now, as on the eve of the advance on Dongola, by misfortune she sprang a leak, and, in spite of every effort to run her ashore, foundered by the head in deep water near Metemma.
It had been given out in general orders one of those gracious niceties of military courtesy never exhibited to the correspondents in these later Soudan campaigns that the Khedivial troops were to proceed that day to the south of Shabluka Cataract. The journey thither was to be made by the army in two stages, and the British division was to follow on Thursday.
In some places, however, it was rough and full of loose stones, and the sand lay deep and soft in several khors and wadies that had to be crossed. The worst bit was in the second day's march into El Hejir, where a détour had to be made to avoid the Shabluka Hills. At 5 in the afternoon of the 25th of August the 1st British brigade, Major-General Wauchope's men, also left for El Hejir viâ Bishari.
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