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They belonged to the Hadendowah tribe. There were three or four hundred of the dervishes at Tokar. Osman Digma had in all four or five thousand men at Handoub, and was soon going to drive the Kaffirs into the sea. Many of their tribe were with him, but others were disheartened at the long delay to carry his promise into effect.
The name came with something of a shock upon Trench's ears. This man knew Durrance! He was not merely a stranger of Trench's blood, but he knew Durrance even as Trench knew him. There was a link between them, they had a friend in common. He knew Durrance, had fought in the same square with him, perhaps, at Tokar, or Tamai, or Tamanieb, just as Trench had done!
The sound of the guns at Teroi encouraged the Egyptians and revealed the direction of their friends. With the daylight the Dervishes, who seem throughout the affair to have been poor-spirited fellows, drew off, and the detachment, remounting, made haste to rejoin the main body. The force, again united, pursued their way to Khor Wintri, where they found the column from Tokar already arrived.
The Mahdists suffered a crushing and, as it seemed at the time, a complete defeat, and the troops meeting with no further opposition advanced to Tokar, and after destroying the fort returned to Suakin.
At nine o'clock the force moved out towards Tokar, half the Gordon Highlanders being left at El-Teb for the protection of the hospital and stores, and with orders to find and bury the Europeans that had fallen. During the day many of the Egyptian garrison of Tokar came into the camp from the surrounding villages.
In a week he would sail for England; he lay awake, counting up the years since the packet had cast off from Dover pier, and he found that the tale of them was good. Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir, the rush down the Red Sea, Tokar, Tamai, Tamanieb the crowded moments came vividly to his mind.
Twenty-five per cent of the British officers were invalided to England or India, and only six escaped a stay in hospital. The experiences of the battalion holding Tokar Fort were even worse than those of the troops in Suakin. At length the longed-for time of departure arrived. With feelings of relief and delight the Indian contingent shook the dust of Suakin off their feet and returned to India.
The same correspondent observes that these Arabs told him, months previously, of the defeat of the Egyptian army under Baker Pasha at Tokar that they not only gave him the news, but several particulars concerning the matter, two full days before intelligence was received from the Red Sea coast.
The fort they had constructed near Trinkitat had done much to help the rapid and successful advance upon Tokar; and now the zereba they had made eight miles out from Suakim, and in the direction in which Osman Digna lay with his whole army, made a good first halting-place for the English troops.
If Hicks Pasha had had, as he asked for, an English regiment or two with him, he would never have been smashed up by the Mahdi's people; and it seems to me awful that the garrisons of Sinkat and Tokar should be deserted when we have a lot of troops lying idle at Cairo, while Baker is trying in vain to get up a native force to march to their relief.
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