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Stanley had no doubt that he was really afraid to go there but, as he did not wish to press them against their will, he said carelessly that it made no difference if they halted there, or close by the road, and a fire being speedily lit, they bivouacked round it. Meinik had procured the necessary dyes from a village, and Stanley was again stained, and covered with tattoo marks, as before.
Most of them had bivouacked in the gardens of the great mansions that line the Rue de Lille; he had had an unbroken night's rest on a grass-plot at one side of the Palace of the Legion of Honor.
Lorries skidded, and double teams of horses could only make slow progress with limbers. Off the road it became almost impossible to move. The ground was a quagmire. On the sodden hills the troops bivouacked without a stick to shelter them. The wind was strong and drove walls of water before it, and there was not a man in the attacking force with a dry skin.
At one o'clock they moved leisurely forward, passed through the rocky defile which led into the valley of Abu Klea and bivouacked. Early the next morning the force moved out in square formation and advanced upon the enemy. The most savage and bloody action ever fought in the Soudan by British troops followed.
The distance to be traversed was but fourteen or sixteen miles, and the column reached the halting-place, Magawiya, about two p.m. We made our way over broken, cracked ground to the river's edge, and there bivouacked under the shade of a magnificent forest of stately date palms. The ripening fruit had been extensively plucked by thieving natives, but there was enough left for our men.
When they halted on the first evening after crossing the frontier they lighted their fires and bivouacked. Wulf and Beorn walked together through the camp. "In spite of the fact that they are all dressed somewhat alike in leather jerkins, it is easy to see which are the trained soldiers," Wulf said.
This, however, only provoked defiance, and it soon became known that the Mahdists were collecting in force at Tamai, about 16 miles to the south-west of Suakin, and accordingly another fight, which proved to be a very severe one, became necessary. This took place on March 13th, the troops having bivouacked on the previous night a mile or two from the enemy's position.
The foot-soldiers, who were bivouacked, suddenly set upon before they could fall into order to repel the attack, were overpowered by the hardy mountaineers, who rushed in among them with their long daggers, and killed all they encountered.
It crossed a pontoon bridge of enormous extent, in the construction of which ninety boats were used, and the length of which was over two thousand feet. Thoroughly exhausted the men bivouacked on the eastern bank of the Chickahominy.
After spending nearly the whole of the day, and knocking up the horses, we found the tracks of the party nearly where we had left them yesterday morning, and, following along them for nine miles, found where they had bivouacked last night; and, it being now two hours after dark, we camped also, having between us for supper an opossum, which Tommy had luckily caught during the day.
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