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Updated: May 31, 2025
"No, no. It was the truth. You are seeking now to buoy me up with false hope. It is sixteen hundred miles from Hong Kong to Singapore, and half as much from Siam to Borneo. The Sirdar might have been driven anywhere in the typhoon. Didn't you say so, Mr. Jenks?" He wavered under this merciless cross-examination. "I had no idea your memory was so good," he said, weakly. "Excellent, I assure you.
This man in his defence denied that any Sudanese like himself would dream of plotting against the British, who had purified government, employed Sudanese in administration, and given their children schools. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but that penalty was commuted by the Sirdar, in consideration of a tardy confession.
In the face of a fire that mowed down battalions and smashed great gaps into their columns they flinched not nor turned. Noticing the enemy's persistency, the Sirdar sent bidding General Lyttelton try them with long-range volleys from the Lee-Metfords. Major Lord Edward Cecil took the message, and Lieutenant H. M. Grenfell got the range from the gunners.
Iris happened to watch him chipping the forty-fourth notch on the edge of the horizontal block of wood. "Have we really been forty-four days here?" she inquired, after counting the marks with growing astonishment. "I believe the reckoning is accurate," he said. "The Sirdar was lost on the 18th of March, and I make this the 1st of May." "May Day!" "Yes. Shall we drive to Hurlingham this afternoon?"
We had tea with the Russians in a little arbour on the roadside, and chewed sweets which had just arrived from Petrograd, having been three months on the journey, but none the worse for that. Many officers came, amongst them the husband of the little Russian girl we had met at Prepolji. They all seemed to be Voukotitches, and at last the Sirdar himself honoured us.
It was halted behind and exactly covering the French position from the land side, the flanks overlapping and enclosing the old line of Egyptian works. A tall flag-pole which was brought ashore was set up on a ruined bastion in line with the French tricolor and about 300 yards behind it. Then the Sirdar and staff came and stood around the pole.
Thereupon an Egyptian band played at some length the Khedivial hymn. At its close the Sirdar called for three cheers for "The Queen," which were given voluminously, even the natives shouting, though, perhaps, they didn't quite know why. Three cheers for the Khedive were also heartily given.
They succeeded; for on the next day they caught him, moving along the bank in considerable disorder, and, opening a heavy fire, soon drove the mixed crowd of fugitives, horse and foot, away from the river into the desert. The gunboats then returned to Berber, towing a dozen captured grain-boats. Meanwhile the Sirdar had started for the front himself.
For a moment the Sirdar was wroth at what was fancied to be our gunners' blundering practice. It was quickly discovered, however, that the particular shells in question were aimed by the dervishes. Very soon, whether settled by our guns, our Maxims, or by infantry volleys, I know not, the dervish cannon and their foolish efforts to shell our lines troubled us no more.
On the march the British troops having to swing aside from where the Khalifa's black flag still stood, it fell into the hands of an Egyptian brigade, and was conveyed to the Sirdar by Captain Sir Henry Rawlinson and Major Lord Edward Cecil. It was given to an Egyptian orderly to carry behind the headquarters staff.
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