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Truth compels me to add that my general appearance, as seen in that glass which will not lie, reminds me of that of a rather aged goat; indeed, to be frank, by the natives among whom I have sojourned, and especially among the Khalifa's people when I was a prisoner there, I have often been called the White Goat. Of my very commonplace outward self let this suffice.
Meanwhile the preparations for the final campaign against Mahdism were not slackened. Vast quantities of supplies and material of war were stored at Dakhala. Outposts were pushed forward and Shendy was occupied, whilst Metemmeh was held by friendly Jaalin tribesmen, who had suffered much at the Khalifa's hands.
Ibrahim says that if the Hakim performs a few cures as we get nearer, the news thereof will reach the Khalifa's camp, where men die off in hundreds, and after a time he will be sure to send for us. Just think of the difference in our reception." Frank nodded.
From the first it had been planned that the Lyddite guns and the 40-pounder Armstrong cannon should be employed to batter down or breach the Khalifa's walls. The howitzers were sent on by one of the gunboats to be landed on Tuti Island, which is opposite Khartoum, for that purpose.
The seventh month passed, and one morning at the beginning of the eighth there came two of the Khalifa's bodyguard to the prison, who talked with Idris. Idris advanced to the two prisoners. "Verily God is good to you, you men from the bad world," he said. "You are to look upon the countenance of the Khalifa. How happy you should be!"
All of the enemy, however, who showed the least disposition to surrender were left unmolested. Hundreds of dervishes who had been wounded hobbled on in front of our army. We could see the Khalifa's forces behind the hills watching us and streaming upon a parallel line towards Omdurman. But the dervishes were no longer in compact military array or ranged in division under chiefs.
There may be soldiers of your own journeying south, who, hearing from spies that a party of the Khalifa's men have come so far north, would be sure to try and scatter them like the sand before the storm." "But, on the other hand," said the doctor quietly, "none of these things may happen, and we may sleep in peace and trust that all will be well."
At first he chafed under the hourly duplicity necessary in his service to the Khalifa, then he took an interest in it, and at last he wept tears of joy over his dangerous proficiency. Day after day Macnamara waited, in the hope of making sure that the Khalifa's treasure was under the room where he slept.
Believing there was a chance to wreck the railroad and capture outposts and stores, Mahmoud, a nephew and favourite general of the Khalifa's, led a powerful dervish army from Shendy north to raid the country to and beyond Berber. In spite of the gunboats, after disposing of the recalcitrant Jaalins, Mahmoud crossed the Nile at Metemmeh to the opposite bank.
But their fire was soon disregarded for, from the ravines in the range of low hills, behind which the Khalifa's force had disappeared, a mass of men burst out at a hard run. From their shelter behind Surgham Hill, a portion of the force who were there also swept down to join the Khalifa, while Yacoub advanced from the southwest, and another body from the west.
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