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Updated: June 10, 2025
'I had hoped to reach El Obeid, but I know that I shall not arrive at the well, which lies three miles away. I have already fallen three times. The next will be the last. Would that the bullet of the infidel had slain me, on the spot! "The poor fellow spoke with difficulty, so parched were his lips and swollen his tongue. I went to the bush, where I had left the gourd, half full of water.
We then marched on towards El Obeid, but before nightfall the Dervish horse had closed up round us. At daylight their infantry had also arrived, and fighting began. "All day we held our position, killing great numbers, but losing many men ourselves. By night, our water was exhausted.
Now we are going to El Obeid; therefore come with us there." "A capital idea!" cried Harry, hope dawning once more in his breast. "There will be a chance of catching the fellow, after all, that way. But how can it be managed? Will Hicks Pasha be bothered with me?" "He does not want any useless mouths, it is true," said Howard; "but I expect that he will be able to make some use of you.
They had reckoned before he left that it was three hours' march at the longest to the wells within sight of El Obeid, where they were to halt for the night, and he thought that he surely ought to be able to walk, alone and unencumbered, at least as fast again as the square moved, and he had little fear of not being in time for the attack.
With the Khalifa's army were several emirs who had fought at El Obeid; and these would, no doubt, be able to tell him more; but none of those who were taken prisoners, at the Atbara, had heard of any white man having escaped the slaughter of Hicks's army. Just as the general movement began, the force was joined by three companies of Soudanese.
I shouted to them, in Arabic, that I was an Englishman; and two or three of them at once ran down the slope, and aided me to climb it. I was taken, at my request, to General Gordon, who was surprised, indeed, when I told him that I was a survivor of Hicks's force, and had been living nine months at El Obeid.
If El Obeid was taken by the Mahdi, the insurrection of the Soudanese against the Egyptian yoke must be a very serious thing, and the country would be in a disturbed state for a long time, so that the Nile route would be closed against travellers, and passage across the desert to the sea would be equally difficult.
The total force was about fourteen hundred strong, and a defeat would mean annihilation; while even a victory would scarcely secure the capture of the Khalifa; who, with his principal emirs, Osman Digna, El Khatim the Sheik of El Obeid, the Sheik Ed Din, and Fadil, would be able to gallop off if they saw the battle going against them.
"It is very few words that I have been able to pick up. But what are you going to do now?" "That is just what I was wondering when that row took place, and sent all my ideas and reflections spinning. I must sleep on it." "Look here," said Howard, presently. "The chances are that that fellow Daireh has gone to the Mahdi's head-quarters, which are at El Obeid.
Being relieved from other duty, at present, Gregory went to the great yard near the mosque, called the Praying Square, where the majority of the Dervish prisoners were confined. Addressing a man of some five-and-forty years, he asked him, in Arabic, whether many among the prisoners had fought against Hicks, at El Obeid. The man hesitated.
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