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Instead of the powerful Lee-Metford rifle, with its smokeless powder, its magazine action, and its absence of recoil, they were armed with the Martini-Henry, which possessed none of these advantages. In place of the deadly Maxim there was the Gardner gun the very gun that jammed at Tamai, and that jammed again at Abu Klea.
There was a collision, but it was the agreeable collision of preparation for a fight, for it was ordained that the Berkshires and the Sikhs should go shoulder to shoulder to establish a post in the desert between Suakim and Tamai. "D'ye hear that, William Connor dear?" said Private Coolin when the orders came.
"He tuk it fer truth an' a warnin', an' he would not be denied," said Coolin to Henry Withers, of the Sick Horse Depot, two hours afterwards, when the Berkshires and the Sikhs and the Bengalese were on the march towards Tamai. "The bloomin' trick is between the Hadendowas and the Subadar," answered he of the Sick Horse Depot. "Ye take it fer a warnin', thin?" asked Coolin uneasily.
Their personal hardihood bravely compared with the days of Tamai and Abu Klea. It was when the fight was nearly over that there were evidences of that of which there was so little in the old days, viz., that a large remnant would accept life at our hands. Again, as the sequel showed, the Sirdar's star was in the ascendant. Everything was in readiness in our camp by 5 a.m.
On the 19th and 20th the new gunboats Fateh, Naser, and Zafir, the most powerful vessels on the river, accomplished the passage. Meanwhile the Metemma and Tamai had already proceeded up stream. On the 23rd the unarmed steamer Dal made the ascent, and by the 29th the whole flotilla reached Abu Hamed safely. After the arrival of the gunboats events began to move at the double.
All hands at once proceeded to form the zareba. The idea was to form a zareba with its north-east corner pointing to Suakin, and its south-west to Tamai, and at each of these corners to form a minor zareba or redoubt to contain two Gardner guns apiece, and to leave these garrisoned by the Berks, the marines, and the bluejackets, who would thus be able to guard the main zareba, all sides of which could be swept by their fire.
With admirable celerity the force took the field. Within a month of the defeat at Teb they engaged the enemy almost on the very scene of the disaster. On the 4th of March they slew 3,000 Hadendoa and drove the rest in disorder from the ground. Four weeks later a second action was fought at Tamai. Again the success of the British troops was complete; again the slaughter of the Arabs was enormous.
Lieutenant Beatty and most of the crew were thrown, or glad to jump, into the foaming water of the cataract, and, being carried down the river, were picked up below the rapids by the Tamai, which was luckily under steam. Their escape was extraordinary, for of the score who were flung into the water only one Egyptian was drowned. Two other men were, however, missing, and their fate seemed certain.
Like Captain Bob, he was, in some things, a gentleman of the old school a stickler for the customs of a past and pagan age. Nowhere else, except in Tamai, did we find the manners of the natives less vitiated by recent changes. The old-fashioned Tahitian dinner they gave us on the day of our arrival was a fair sample of their general mode of living. Our time passed delightfully.
'Hashin, say the paddle-wheels, slowing all of a sudden 'MacNeill's Zareba the 15th Sikhs and another native regiment Osman Digna in great pride and power, and Wady Halfa a frontier town. Tamai, once more; another siege of Suakim: Gemaiza; Handub; Trinkitat, and Tokar 1887.
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