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Anthony was staking the happiness of his future on the events of the following night. Now that the small cloud of misunderstanding had passed from the clear sky of our friendship, we were one again in confidence, as we had been before the Philae eavesdropping: and I knew the plan he meant to carry out at the Sirdar's ball.
The Sirdar's call for three cheers for the Queen was enthusiastically responded to, every helmet being raised. Similar cheers were then given for the Khedive, the bands again struck up, and twenty-one guns were fired.
In this serious emergency, which threatened to wreck his schemes, the Sirdar's organising talents shone more brilliantly than at any other moment in this account. Travelling swiftly to Moghrat, he possessed himself of the telephone, which luckily still worked. He knew the exact position or every soldier, coolie, camel, or donkey at his disposal.
These wretched creatures had been seen crawling or dragging themselves for miles to get to the Nile for water or into villages for succour. Food and water were sent out to them by the Sirdar's orders on the day after the battle, when it was seen that the natives gave neither heed nor help to other than their own immediate kinsmen upon the field.
Worse still, Sheikhs Ed Din and Khalifa Khalil, returned from chasing the Egyptian cavalry, were hastening with their division at full speed to attack him in rear. Scarcely a soul in the Sirdar's army, from the leader down, but saw the unexpected singular peril of the situation. I turned to a friend and said, "Macdonald is in for a terrible time. Will any get out of it?"
The Sirdar's practice was abundant work for each day and all plans prepared ahead for the next. The submission of sheikhs and their followers had to be received, the pursuit of the Khalifa pressed, wounded dervishes and prisoners provided for, as well as the thousands of poor in Omdurman helped in various ways.
Mahmud had early intelligence of the movement of the Anglo-Egyptian army. His original intention had been to march to Hudi. But he now learned that at Hudi he would have to fight the Sirdar's main force. Not feeling strong enough to attack them, he determined to march to Nakheila. The mobility of the Arabs was now as conspicuous as their dilatory nature had formerly been.
But while his information of the Sirdar's force and movements was uncertain, the British General was better served. What Mahmud failed to derive from spies and 'friendlies, his adversary obtained by gunboats and cavalry. As soon, therefore, as Sir H. Kitchener learned that the Dervishes had left the Nile and were making a detour around his left flank, he marched up the Atbara river to Hudi.
The Sirdar's triumph came just in time to thwart this design and to place in the hands that administered Egypt the control of the waters whence that land draws its life.
For the present we may affirm with some confidence that the tidings of the Franco-Congolese compact of August 1894 and of expeditions sent under Monteil and Liotard towards the Nile basin must have furnished the real motive for the despatch of the Sirdar's army on the expedition to Dongola.
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