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Updated: June 29, 2025
The effect of the occupation of Berber upon the tribes around Suakin was decisive, and the whole country between these towns became at once tranquil and loyal. Osman Digna's influence was destroyed. The friendly villages were no longer raided. The Governor of the town became in reality, as well as in name, the Governor of the Red Sea Littoral.
"I see Osman Digna's back at Suakin," said he. "There's likely to be some fighting." "Oh," said the other, "he will not do much harm." And he laid down his paper. The quiet English country-side vanished from before his eyes. He saw only the white city by the Red Sea shimmering in the heat, the brown plains about it with their tangle of halfa grass, and in the distance the hills towards Khor Gwob.
I was so sure of every inch of the ground, that I was commissioned to take two men with me and deliver the orders. This made my heart leap with joy it was a relief, an excitement, an opportunity! Osman Digna's men were stealthy.
Although the Khalifa's river steamers, recaptured by the Sirdar, could steam fully as well as ever, their hulls and decks were dreadfully rotten and dilapidated, not a pound of paint nor any fresh timber having been used upon them in all the intervening years. "Is that mean, dirty compound, with those squalid mud-huts, facing the Khalifa's big wall, Osman Digna's house?" I asked.
After this Egypt began to advance; Sarras, beyond Wady Haifa, was reoccupied, and a railway laid between the two places. In February 1891 Colonel Holled Smith, commanding the Egyptian garrison at Suakin, marched out against Osman Digna's men with only Egyptian and Sudanese troops, and defeated them after a good fight and occupied Tokar.
The Arabs defended every bush, every rock, every boulder; but there was no wild firing now, at thirty, twenty, ten paces, and even closer; every bullet had its billet, and the valley was cleared of the living, though every point which afforded cover, and had been tenaciously held by Osman Digna's soldiers, had its groups of corpses behind it.
The Berkshire Regiment had done its work in gallant style up the steep slopes of Dihilbat, had cleared the summit of Osman Digna's men, and followed them with a raking fire as they retreated wildly into the mimosa bushes on the plain.
Some folk said the troops should have taken advantage of the rout and dispersion of Osman Digna's tribes to march across to Berber on the Nile, and then Khartoum would have been relieved without any further fuss. Other people, who had equally good means of judging, scorned this idea, and were certain that had such a thing been attempted every man of the expedition would have perished.
But all this time the enemy had been busy. At the beginning of the battle the Khalifa had posted a small force of 700 men on his extreme right, to prevent his line of retreat to Omdurman being harassed. This detachment was composed entirely of the Hadendoa tribesmen of Osman Digna's flag, and was commanded by one of his subordinate Emirs, who selected a suitable position in the shallow khor.
While daylight lasted the men inside watched Osman Digna's seemingly innumerable soldiers dodging about, and when night fell the knowledge that they were there unseen, and might attack on all sides at any moment, was really calculated to try the nerves. For there is nothing more unpleasant than the idea of any one pouncing upon you suddenly in the dark.
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