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Updated: June 13, 2025
"There's work 'ere to-day for whoever likes it on the 'op!" said Henry Withers, of the Sick Horse Depot, as he dragged his load of mimosa to the zeriba; for he had got leave to come on with his regiment. "You'll find it 'otter still when the vedettes and Cossack Posts come leadin' in the Osnum Digners.
"Here's to ye thin!" shouted Connor, as the enemy poured down on their zeriba on the west and the Bengalese retreated on them from the east, the Billy Bagshot detachment of Berkshires rallying them and firing steadily, the enemy swarming after and stampeding the mules and camels.
While the attack was proceeding, the valiant left, consisting of the rest of the army of Osman Sheikh-ed-Din, might move unnoticed to the northern flank and curve round on to the front of the zeriba held by the Egyptian brigade. Ali-Wad-Helu was meanwhile to march to the Kerreri Hills, and remain out of range and, if possible, out of sight among them.
"Oscillations 'as begun!" said Bagshot, as, disorganised by the vedettes riding through their flank into the zeriba, the Bengalese wavered. "'Tis your turn now go an to y'r gruel!" said Connor, as Bagshot with his company and others were ordered to move over to the Bengalese and steady them. "An' no bloomin' sugar either," Bagshot called back as he ran.
Again they rose, fewer than before, and ran. Again the Maxims and the rifles spluttered. Again they fell. And so on until the front of the zeriba was clear of unwounded men for at least half a mile. A few escaped. Some, notwithstanding the vices of which they have been accused and the perils with which they were encompassed, gloriously carried off their injured comrades.
The zeriba of the camp at Royan had been already made and much of the ground cleared by the energy of the Soudanese division, which had been the first to arrive. An advanced depot was established at Royan island which was covered with white hospital tents, near which there was a forest of masts and sails.
"He was achin' for it turrible achin' for it an' he would not be denied!" said Sergeant William Connor, of the Berkshire Regiment, in the sergeants' mess at Suakim, two nights before the attack on McNeill's zeriba at Tofrik. "Serve 'im right. Janders was too bloomin' suddint," skirled Henry Withers of the Sick Horse Depot from the bottom of the table.
Then four miles away on our right front emerged a long black line with white spots. It was the enemy. It seemed to us, as we looked, that there might be 3,000 men behind a high dense zeriba of thorn-bushes. That, said the officers, was better than nothing. It is scarcely necessary to describe our tortuous movements towards the Dervish position.
But they and the assaulting columns, regardless of the fire, bore down on the zeriba in all the majesty of war an avalanche of men, stern, unflinching, utterly irresistible. Two hundred yards from the entrenchment and one hundred and fifty from the thorn bushes independent firing broke out, running along the line from end to end.
Day after day and hour after hour the advance was maintained. Arrived at the camping-ground, the zeriba had to be built; and this involved a long afternoon of fatigue. In the evening, when the dusty, tired-out squadrons returned, the troopers attended to their horses, and so went to sleep in peace.
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