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So many of our white officers have been sent down, with fever, that I am very short-handed, and shall be glad if you will temporarily serve as my assistant." On the 20th, the news came that Fadil was crossing the river at Dakhila, twenty miles farther to the south. He himself had crossed, and the women and children had been taken over on a raft.
But the whole situation was now changed. The Egyptian army was concentrated; the British brigade had arrived; the railway had reached Geneinetti; the miserable hamlet of Dakhila, at the confluence, had grown from a small depot to a fort, and from a fort to an entrenched camp, against which neither Dervish science nor strength could by any possibility prevail.
Colonel Lewis determined to attack what part of Ahmed Fedil's force still remained on the east bank of the river, and on Christmas Day, at five o'clock in the afternoon, he marched with every man he could muster in the direction of Dakhila.
On the 20th of December, however, full though, as was afterwards found, not very accurate information was received. It was reported that on the 18th Ahmed Fedil had reached the village of Dakhila, about twenty miles south of the Rosaires post; that he himself had immediately crossed with his advanced guard, and was busily passing the women and children across the river on rafts.
Moving in single file along a track which led through a dense forest of thorny trees, the column reached Adu Zogholi, a village thought to be half, but really not one-third, of the way to Dakhila, at eleven o'clock on Christmas night. Here they bivouacked until 3 A.M. on the 26th, when the march was resumed in the same straggling order through the same tangled scrub.
A little to the north of Dakhila the Blue Nile bifurcates one rapid but shallow stream flowing fairly straight under the east bank; another very deep stream running in a wide curve under the west bank, cutting into it so that it is precipitous.
As all the Dervishes on the right bank of the Nile had fled to the south of the Atbara, it was found possible to establish a small advanced post of Camel Corps and friendly Arabs in the village of Dakhila, at the confluence of the rivers. From this humble beginning the Atbara fort with its great entrenchment was soon to develop.
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