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Through the aid of the wily Abyssinian scouts, information was sent to and received from Colonel Parsons and a plan arranged for catching Fadl and his men between two attacking columns. Seventeen hundred men of the Omdurman force attacked the dervishes on one side, whilst Colonel Parsons' garrison assailed them from the other. The enemy were completely routed and scattered in all directions.
We shall want it, if we have to walk thirty-five miles over the sand." "It will not be all sand," Zaki said; "there is grass for the last fifteen miles, near the river; and there were cultivated fields about ten miles out, before the Dervishes came." "That is better. Now we will be moving."
Right in the middle of the tents the first shell burst. The dervishes struck their camp instantly, and mounted men and footmen ran to the hills, their flight quickened by the gunboats' Maxims. Their zereba was burned. South Kerreri village was found unoccupied.
At one place a whole family had been crushed by a projectile. Dead Dervishes, already in the fierce heat beginning to decompose, dotted the ground. The houses were crammed with wounded. Hundreds of decaying carcasses of animals filled the air with a sickening smell.
Colonel Lewis, determined to turn the left flank of the Dervishes, kept along the river's edge until he reached the required position; then wheeled the battalion into line, and advanced across the bare shingle against the sand hills. Major Ferguson, with one company, was detached to attack a knoll on the right, held by two hundred Dervishes.
The ground being now cleared, the gunboats opened with Maxim and cannon upon the rear of the Dervishes. The camel corps coming up, each man dismounted and added his fire to the turmoil; and, finally, three of Wauchope's battalions arrived, and the Lincolns, doubling to the right, opened a terrible flank fire.
As a boy, I grew up among the last wars of the world, when Nicaragua was taken and the dervishes wiped out. And I adopted it as a hobby, sir, as you might adopt astronomy or bird-stuffing. I had no ill-will to any one, but I was interested in war as a science, as a game. And suddenly I was bowled out.
Fortunately, at this time the main force of the Dervishes was beginning to waver, unable to withstand the steady fire of the defenders of the hill; and as they drew back a little, the Egyptian and Arab battalions rushed forward. Shaken as they were, the Dervishes were unable to resist the attack; and broke and fled, pursued by the Arab battalion.
The Soudanese were evidently well fed and cared for; not even the haughty Baggara held their heads so high. Especially admired were the artillery, battery following battery, in perfect order. These were the guns that had carried death into the ranks of the Dervishes, against whose fire even the fanatical bravery of the followers of the Khalifa was unable to stand.
Under the projecting eyebrows his old frostily-blue eyes had a scared look. But if he had been in such a passion as he had shown on a certain historic occasion when the regiment had nearly scattered before the approach of screaming Dervishes a passion which had rallied the men and won Sir Denis his V.C. it would have been all the same to Nelly. "All that is perfectly immaterial," she said.
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