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Updated: May 8, 2025
In a couple of days the force might attack Metemmeh, and in that case he might be rescued.
Broadwood, with nine squadrons of Egyptian cavalry, was already on the western bank of the river opposite Atbara; and was to be joined at Metemmeh by the camel corps, and another squadron of horse from Merawi. On the 3rd of August the six Soudanese battalions left Fort Atbara for the point of concentration, a few miles below the cataract.
The pace was slow, little more than 2¼ miles an hour, though Sir Herbert Stewart's Bayuda desert column managed to average upon a longer and almost waterless route, from Korti to Metemmeh, 2¾ miles an hour. In that campaign, however, most of our marching was done during the cooler hours of very early morning and late eventide.
They returned after being absent for three days, saying that it was certain that there was no white captive in the hands of the Mahdi's people there. They had talked to several tribesmen who had fought at Metemmeh. These knew that a white prisoner had been taken by a party of Arabs of the Jahrin tribe.
The wood extended a hundred and fifty yards back from the river, and there was little fear that anyone coming down from Omdurman would enter it, when within sight of Metemmeh. At dusk they rode on again, until they judged that they were within two miles of the town; and then, entering a clump of high bushes by the river, halted for the night.
The column returned to the river without meeting with any opposition; but it was evident from the number of Arabs who were seen moving about in the direction of Metemmeh that the check of the previous day had by no means disheartened them, and that they were still in very considerable force in and around the town.
The next morning the party still further divided, the sheik with two men and Edgar starting alone. He felt sure that they were now some distance above Khartoum, as the city lay less than eighty miles from Metemmeh; they had made, he calculated, fully fifteen the first night. They had walked at least five-and-twenty on the second, and had ridden thirty, he calculated, on each of the last two days.
One piece of news that they had learned the day before they left the neighbourhood of Metemmeh had some slight effect in cheering Rupert, a native of that town having reported that a white prisoner had been brought in on the day after the battle near the town; he had been captured by some men of the Jahrin tribe and not by the regular troops of the Mahdi; three or four days later there had been a quarrel, the Mahdi's people wanting to take the prisoner and send him up to Khartoum; his captors had objected, claiming him as their private property; but as they were only a small party he would doubtless have been taken from them by force had they not, during the night, stolen out of the town with him, taken a boat, crossed the river, and made off.
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.
Of late, a good many fugitives from Kordofan have arrived here, and they say that there will be a general revolt there, when they hear that we have given the Dervishes a heavy thrashing." "And where do you think the great fight is likely to take place?" Gregory asked. "Not this side of Metemmeh. Except at Abu Hamed, we hear of no other strong Dervish force between this and Omdurman.
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