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The wounds received in battle had scarce been dressed before the Sirdar was seeking to give effect to his schemes for the well-being of the Soudanese. Means were taken for the speedy connecting by telegraph of Suakin and Berber, Suakin, Kassala, Gedarif, Khartoum. The wire from Dakhala to Nasri was brought on to Omdurman a few days after the victory.
Lieut.-Colonel C. S. B. Parsons, R.A., Governor of Kassala and the Red Sea littoral, to whom I have previously referred when we were advancing against Omdurman, was menacing the dervish outpost of Gedarif.
Jaalin scouts and runners put themselves under the Sirdar's orders to scour the front and flanks of the army, at least up to Kerreri. Colonel Parsons, R.A., was to lead a mixed force of fellaheen soldiers, Abyssinian levies, ex-Italian Ascari, and Arabs from Kassala to attack Gedarif and menace Khartoum from the east.
The fifteen years' campaign against Mahdism was nigh over, but not quite concluded, with the victory of Omdurman. On receiving the check from the gunboats, Fadl and his dervishes retreated up the Blue Nile to where they had come from, their own country upon the borders of Abyssinia. News seems to have reached them of Colonel Parsons' advance, and it became a race for Gedarif.
Yet for sundry reasons I was anxious to be allowed to remain longer in the Soudan. There was news of fighting and movement up the Blue Nile. Emir Ahmed Fadl bringing a force of 3000 dervishes from Gedarif to assist the Khalifa had been driven back by the gunboat "Sultan." More important still, rumours had reached us that the French, under Marchand, were at Fashoda.
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