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Updated: June 10, 2025
Six days' supply of grain, from the stores found in the camp, were handed over to them; together with ten camels with water skins, and they started at once on their long march. Gregory rode out for a couple of miles with them, and then took leave of the two emirs. "Come to El Obeid," Khatim said, "and you shall be treated as a king. Farewell! And may Allah preserve you!"
With an Egyptian regiment at El Obeid we had a pleasant and symbolic exchange of colours. The men were scrupulously careful of native sensibilities. At Port Sudan, Private J.P. Lyons, our champion boxer, who was killed on Gallipoli, was publicly thanked by the Governor, Colonel Wilson, for having saved a black policeman from some drunken sailors.
With this numerous and powerful following he was travelling day and night towards El Obeid, which town was held by an unbeaten Dervish garrison of nearly 3,000 men. On hearing these things the friendly Arabs determined not unwisely to abandon the pursuit, and came boastfully back to Omdurman.
He handed ten dollars to the native, thrust the packet into his breast pocket, and walked slowly down to the river. He had never entertained any hope of finding his father, but this evidence of his death gave him a shock. His mother was right, then. She had always insisted there was a possibility that he might have escaped the massacre at El Obeid. He had done so. He had reached Khartoum.
When I have once entered it, and they ask whence I came, I must tell them some likely story that I have made up: as, for example, that I have come from El Obeid, and that I am an officer of the governor there; that, finding he could not get away himself, he yielded to my request that I might come, and help to drive the infidels into the sea." Zaki nodded.
At first the route of this seemingly never-ending cavalcade lay along the Nile bank. Then it was committed to the desert. One hundred and eighty miles of trackless, parched waste lay between them and El Obeid.
The whole country had been cleared of the Dervishes, and it was now time for the Sirdar, who had just returned from England, to turn his attention to the Khalifa. The latter was known to be near El Obeid, where he had now collected a force, of whose strength very different reports were received.
Surely not a mile off, but say a mile and a half, rose towers, fortifications, minarets, palm-trees, and, most grateful sight, all this was reflected in a broad clear sheet of water. "El Obeid!" he cried aloud, forgetting everything else in the joy of the moment. He had never heard that it was on a lake, and thus his wildest expectations were surpassed.
"It was wonderful that, sixteen years after his death, I should find my father's journal at Hebbeh, and learn the story of his escape after the battle, and of his stay with you at El Obeid." Gregory rode into camp between the two emirs.
It was my mother's wish, also, that I should do so. My main object is to endeavour to obtain particulars of my father's death, and to assure myself that he was one of those who fell at El Obeid.
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