by Wilbur Smith
“Get down!” Osman roared as he raced across the open ground. “Let not the infidel see you!” But his men were four hundred yards away and his voice did not carry to them. They stood and watched the approaching machine with amazement. Suddenly a blast of white steam shot up from the land steamer and it emitted a howl like a maddened jinn. Stupefied, making no effort to conceal themselves, they stood and stared at it. It was a mighty serpent, with a head that hissed, howled and shot out clouds of smoke and steam, and whose body seemed to reach back to the skyline.
“They have seen you!” Osman tried to warn them. “Beware! Beware!” Now they could see that the rolling trucks were stacked with steel rails and crates. On the last they made out the heads of half a dozen men, who were crouched behind some strange contraption.
“Beware!” Osman was racing up the slip-face of the dune, almost at the top. His voice held a high, despairing note. Suddenly the yellow sands under the feet of the group of aggagiers and the hoofs of their horse exploded into flying clouds of dust. It was as though a khamsin wind had torn over them. The terrible sound of the Maxim gun followed close behind the spray of bullets. The troop of men and horse disintegrated, blown away like dead leaves.
The gun traversed back towards Osman, but before the dancing pattern of bullets reached him, al’Buq lunged over the crest. Osman swung down from the saddle. He was still stunned by the enormity and menace of the machine, but he ran to where his men lay. Most of them were dead. Only al-Noor and Mooman Digna were still on their feet. “See to the others,” Osman ordered. He threw himself flat on the top of the dune and peered down the far side. He watched the long train of wagons wind away along the floor of the valley towards Akasha.
In the few moments that they had been exposed to the fire of the Maxim gun, eight of his men had been killed outright, four were gravely wounded and would die. Four had survived. Five horses were untouched. Osman destroyed the wounded animals, left a waters king with the wounded men to ease their passing, gathered up his surviving aggagiers and rode back to Firket.
Now that he had had his first glimpse of the juggernaut that was rolling down on them, he realized that his options were limited. There was little he could do to oppose and hold the enemy here at Firket. He determined to assemble and concentrate all his array on the banks of the Atbara jiver and strike the enemy there in overwhelming force.
He replaced the depraved and ineffectual Emir Hammuda with the Emir Azrak. This man was completely different from Hammuda: he was a fanatical devotee of the Mahdi; he had carried out many daring and brutal raids on the Turk and the infidel; his name was well known in Cairo, and he could expect little mercy if he were captured; he would fight to the death. Osman gave Azrak orders to delay the enemy at Firket for as long as possible, but at the last moment to fall back on the Atbara river with all his army. He left him, and rode back to Omdurman.
No sooner had Osman ridden away than Hammuda refused to accept that he had been replaced and engaged in a bitter dispute with Azrak, which left both men powerless.
While they wrangled the sirdar built up his base at Akasha. Men and equipment, supplies and munitions were brought down the railway line with machine-like efficiency. Then, with nine thousand men under his personal command, General Kitchener fell upon the town of Firket. The Dervish were decimated and the survivors driven out helter-skelter.
Hammuda died in the first charge. Azrak escaped with less than a thousand men and rode southwards to the confluence of the Atbara to meet Osman. With his Camel Corps Kitchener followed the fleeing Dervish along the riverbank, and captured hundreds of men and horses and great stores of grain.
Within weeks the entire Dervish province of Dongola had fallen to the sirdar. The juggernaut resumed its deliberate and ponderous advance southwards towards the Atbara river. Month after month and mile after weary mile the railway line unreeled like a silken thread across the desert. On most days the track advanced a mile or so, but on occasions up to three miles.
The workmen encountered unexpected hardships and setbacks. Cholera broke out and hundreds of graves were hastily dug in the empty desert. The first false flood of the inundation brought the ‘green tide’, all the sewerage that had settled on the exposed banks during the Low Nile, downstream. There was no other water to drink. Dysentery racked the army camps. Terrible thunderstorms poured out of a sky that usually never rained. Miles of track were washed away, miles more were swamped under six feet of water.
Zafir, the first of the new stern-wheel gunboats, was brought in sections from Wadi Haifa, and reassembled in a makeshift boatyard at Koshesh on the clear-water section above the cataracts. Her appearance was stately and impressive, and she was launched with General Kitchener and his staff on board. As the boilers built up a full head of steam there was an explosion like a salvo of heavy artillery as they burst. The Zafir was out of action until new boilers could be brought out from England and installed.
Yet the remorseless advance continued. The Dervish garrisons at Abu Hamed and Metemma were overrun, and driven back on the Atbara river. Here Kitchener bombarded Osman Atalan’s great defensive zareba, then smashed it wide open with bullet and bayonet. The Arabs either fled or fought to the death. The black Sudanese troops who would fight as willingly for the infidel as they had for the Dervish were recruited into the sirdar’s army.
Victory on the Atbara was decisive. Kitchener’s expeditionary force went into summer quarters. He planned and mustered his powers and waited for the river to rise before the final advance on Omdurman.
Penrod, who had received a spear wound through the thigh during the fighting, was granted convalescent leave. He travelled back, by rail and river steamer from Aswan, to Cairo.
When Penrod limped into Cairo, Amber was beside herself with joy to have him at her side, and in her bed. Lady Jane Ballantyne had returned to Clercastle at the insistence of her husband. What had been planned as a three-month sojourn had extended to almost two years. Sir Peter had long ago tired of the bachelor existence.
Ryder Courtney had returned from a highly successful visit to the United States and Canada. The wheat he had purchased was already offloading in Alexandria docks. He had arrived home just in time for the birth of his son. He had learnt that as soon as the Sudanese campaign ended, Sir Evelyn Baring would turn all his energy and the resources of the Khedive to the building of the great irrigation works on the upper Nile, which had been long projected. Almost two hundred thousand acres of rich black soil would be brought under permanent irrigation and would no longer be dependent on the annual inundation from the Nile. Ryder had purchased twenty thousand of these acres in a speculative move. It was a wise decision that, within ten years, would make him a cotton millionaire.
Penrod’s wound healed cleanly, and he discovered that he had been gazetted for the Distinguished Service Order for his conduct in the battles of Firket and Atbara. Amber missed her moon, but on Saffron’s advice she did not tell Penrod of this momentous occurrence. “Wait until you are certain,” Saffron told her.
“What if he guesses the truth before I tell him?” Amber was nervous. “He would take that hard.”
“My darling, Penrod is a man. He would not recognize a pregnancy if he tripped over it.”
With the approaching cool season heralding High Nile, and conditions conducive to resuming campaigning, Penrod kissed Amber farewell and, oblivious of his impending elevation to fatherhood, returned upriver to the great military camp on the Atbara.
When he arrived he found that the encampment now stretched for many miles along the riverbank, and the Nile itself resembled the port of some prosperous European city. It was a forest of masts and funnels. Feluccas and gyassas, barges, steamers and gunboats crowded the anchorage. There were six newly assembled armoured’screw gunboats. They were a hundred and forty feet long and twenty-four wide. They were armed with twelve-and six-pounder quick-firing guns, and with batteries of Maxim machine-guns on their upper decks. They were equipped with modern machinery:
ammunition hoists, searchlights and steam winches. Yet they drew only thirty-nine inches of water, and their stern screws could drive them at speeds of up to twelve knots. In addition there were four elderly stern-wheel gunboats, dating from Chinese Gordon’s era, which also carried twelve-pounders and Maxim guns.
The sirdar had asked London for first-line British troops to reinforce his already formidable new Egyptian army. His request had been granted and battalions of the Royal Warwickshires, Lincolns, Seaforth Highlanders, Cameron Highlanders, Grenadier Guards, Northumberland Fusiliers, Lancashire Fusiliers, the Rifle Brigade and the 21st Lancers had already joined and were encamped in the great zareba. The array of artillery was formidable and ranged from forty-pounder howitzers to field and horse batteries. The sirdar’s large white tent stood on an eminence in the centre of the zareba, with the Egyptian flag waving on a tall staff above it.
Penrod found his camels fat and strong and his men in much the same condition. Life in summer quarters, without the presence of their commander, had been restful. Penrod stirred them into action with a vengeance.
As the first green flood of the rising Nile had poured down through the Shabluka gorge, the grand advance began. Thirty thousand fighting men and their battle train moved southwards to the first staging camp at the entrance to the gorge. Here the mile-wide river was compressed into a mere two hundred yards between the black and precipitous cliffs. They were fifty-six miles from Khartoum and Omdurman. The next staging camp was only seven miles upstream opposite Royan Island above the gorge, but these were seven difficult and dangerous miles.
The gunboats thrashed their way up through the racing, whirling rapids, towing the barges behind them. The ill-fated gunboat Zafir now sprang a leak and sank by the bows in the jaws of the gorge. Her officers and men had barely time to escape with their lives.
For the infantry and cavalry the march to Royan Island was doubled in length. To avoid the rocky Shabluka hills they had to circle far out into the desert. Penrod’s camels carried water for them in iron tanks.
Once they had reached Royan Island, the road to Omdurman was clear and open before them. The vast array of men, animals, boats and guns moved forward relentlessly, ponderously and menacingly.
At last only the low line of the Kerreri hills concealed the city of Omdurman from the binoculars of the British officers. There was still no sign of the Dervish. Perhaps they had abandoned the city and fled. The sirdar sent his cavalry to find out.
The Khalifat Abdullahi had assembled all his army at Omdurman. They numbered almost a hundred thousand. Abdullahi reviewed them before the city, on the wide plain below the Kerreri hills. The prophecy of one of the saintly mullahs on his deathbed was that a great battle would be fought upon the hills that would define the future of Mahdism and the land of Sudan.
Anyone looking upon the mighty Dervish array could not doubt the outcome of the battle. The galloping regiments were strung out over four miles, wave after wave of horsemen and massed black Sudanese spearmen. At the climax of the review, Abdullahi addressed them passionately. He charged them in the name of Allah and the Mahdi to do their duty. “Before God, I swear to you that I will be in the forefront of the battle.”
The threat that the emirs and khalifs feared above all others was that presented by the gunboats. Their spies had reported the power of these vessels to them. Abdullahi devised a counter to this menace. Among his European captives still in Omdurman was an old German engineer. Abdullahi had him brought before him, and his chains were struck off. This was usually the prelude to execution and the German was prostrated with terror.
“I want you to build me explosive mines to lay in the river,” Abdullahi told him.
The old engineer was delighted to have this reprieve. He flung himself into the project with enthusiasm and energy. He filled two steel boilers each with a thousand pounds of gunpowder. As a detonator he fixed in them a loaded, cocked and charged pistol. To the pistol’s triggers he attached a length of stout line. A firm tug on this would fire the pistol, and the discharge would ignite the explosive contents of the boiler.
The first massive mine was loaded on to one of the Dervish steamers, the hhmaelia. With the German engineer and a hundred and fifty men on board it was taken out into mid-channel and lowered over the side. As it touched the bottom of the river the steamer’s captain, for reasons he never had an opportunity to explain, decided to yank the trigger cord.
The efficacy of the mine was demonstrated convincingly to Abdullahi, his emirs and commanders who were watching from the shore. The hhmaelia, with her captain, crew and the German engineer, was blown out of the water.
Once Abdullahi had recovered from the mild concussion induced by the explosion, he was delighted with his new weapon. He ordered the captain of one of his other steamers to place the second mine in the channel. This worthy had been as impressed as everybody else with the first demonstration. Wisely he took the precaution of flooding the mine with water before he took it on board. The mine, rendered harmless, was then laid in the channel of the Nile without further mishap. Abdullahi praised him effusively and showered him with rewards.
The Dervish commanders waited for the infidel to come. Each day their spies brought reports of the slow but relentless approach. Better than anyone Osman Atalan understood the strength and determination of these stern new-age crusaders. When the infidel advance reached Merreh, only four miles beyond the Kerreri Hills, he rode out with al-Noor and Mooman Digna and gazed down from the heights upon the host. Through the dust they raised, he saw the marching columns and the lance heads of the cavalry glittering in the sunlight. He watched the heliographs flashing messages he could not understand. Then he gazed at the flotilla of gunboats, beautiful and deadly, coming up the flow of the Nile. He rode back to his palace in Omdurman and called for his wives. “I am sending you with all the children to the mosque at the oasis of Gedda. You will wait for me there. When the battle is won, I will come to find you.”
Rebecca and Nazeera packed their possessions on to the camels, gathered up the three children and, under an escort of aggagiers, left the town.
“Why do these infidels wish to hurt us?” Ahmed asked pitifully. “What shall we do if they kill our exalted and beloved father?” Ahmed lacked the fine looks of his parents. His eyes were blue, but close-set and furtive. His front teeth protruded beyond his upper lip. This gave him the appearance of a large, ginger rodent.
“Do not snivel, my brother. Whatever Allah decrees, we must be brave and take care of our honoured mother.” Kahruba answered.
Rebecca felt her heart squeezed. They were so different: Ahmed plain-featured, timid and afraid; Kahruba beautiful, fearless and wild. She hugged the infant to her breast as she swayed on the camel saddle. Under the cotton sheet she had spread over her to protect her from the sun, her baby daughter lay listlessly against her bosom. The tiny body was hot and sweaty with the fever that consumed her. Omdurman was a plague city.
The little caravan of women and children reached the oasis an hour after dark.
“You will like it here,” Rebecca told Ahmed. “This is where you were born. The mullahs are learned and wise. They will instruct you in many things.” Ahmed was a born scholar, hungry for knowledge. She did not bother to try to influence Kahruba. She was her own soul, and not amenable to any views that did not coincide with her own.
That night as she lay on the narrow angareb, holding her sick baby, Rebecca’s mind turned to the twins. This had happened more often recently, ever since she had known that the Egyptian army was moving irresistibly southwards down the river towards them.
It was many years since she had parted from Amber, even longer since Saffron had run off through the dark streets of Khartoum. She still had a vivid picture of them in her mind. Her eyes stung with tears. What did they look like now. Were they married? Did they have children of their own? Were they even alive? Of course they would not recognize her. She knew she had become an Arab wife, drawn and haggard with childbir
th, drab and aged with care. She sighed with regret, and the infant whimpered. Rebecca forced herself to remain still, to allow her baby to rest.
She was seized with a strange unfocused terror for what the next few days would bring. She had a premonition of disaster. The existence to which she had become inured, the world to which she now belonged, would be shattered, her husband dead, perhaps her children also. What was there still to hope for? What was there still to be endured?
At last she fell into a dark, numbed sleep. When she awoke the infant in her arms was cold and dead. Despair filled her soul.
The British and Egyptian cavalry moved forward together. The Nile lay on their left hand, and on it they could see the gunboats sailing up the stream in line astern. Before them stood the line of the Kerreri hills. Penrod’s camels were on the right flank of the advance. They climbed the first slope, and came out abruptly on the crest. Spread below him, Penrod saw the confluence of the two great Niles, and between them the long-abandoned ruins of Khartoum.
Directly ahead, in Omdurman, rose the brown dome of a large building. It had not been there when Penrod had escaped. He knew, however, that this must be the tomb of the Mahdi in the centre of the city. Nothing else had changed.
The wide plain ahead was speckled with coarse clumps of thorn bush and enclosed on three sides by harsh, stony hills. In the centre of the plain, like another monument, was the conical Surgham Hill. Abutting the hill, a long low uneven ridge hid the fold of ground immediately beyond it. There was no sign of the Dervish. Obedient to his express orders, Penrod halted his troops on the high ground and they watched the squadron of British cavalry ride forward cautiously.
Suddenly there was movement. Hundreds of tiny specks left what appeared to be the walls of a zareba of thorn branches. It was the Dervish vanguard. They moved forward to meet the British cavalry. The front echelon of, troopers dismounted and, at long range, opened fire with their carbines on the approaching Dervish. A few fell, and their comrades rode unhurriedly back to the zareba.