With Kitchener in the Soudan : a story of Atbara and Omdurman

by G. A. Henty

  "We never kill prisoners. Even the bitterest enemy that may fall into our hands is well treated. Mahmud will doubtless be sent down to Cairo, and it will then be settled where he is to be taken to; but you may be sure that wherever it may be, he will be well treated and cared for."

  " In that case I shall be happy," she said. " When you saved me I saw that the ways of you Christians were better than our ways; now I see it still more. To be always raiding, and plundering, and killing cannot be good. It used to seem to me natural and right, but I have come to think differently."

  At four o'clock the troops marched. At Gregory's request he was allowed to remain behind and accompany the Egyptians. He had bought for a few shillings from the soldiers a dozen donkeys that had been found alive in some of the pits. These he handed over to Fatma for her conveyance and that of the wives of some of the emirs, who were of the party. The Egyptians started at half-past eight, carrying their own wounded and those of the British. By the route by which the army had marched the night before, the distance was but nine miles; but there had been some rough places to pass, and to avoid these, where the wounded might have suffered from jolting, they made a circuit, thereby adding three miles to the length of the march, and did not reach Umdabieh camp until two o'clock in the morning. General Hunter, who never spared himself, rode with them and acted as guide. During the fight he, Colonel Macdonald, and Colonel Maxwell had ridden at the head of their brigades, the white regimental officers being on foot with the men, as was their custom, and it was surprising that the three conspicuous figures had all come through the storm of fire unscathed.

  The next morning was a quiet one, and in the afternoon all marched off to the old camp at Abadar.' On Sunday they rested, and on Monday the British brigade marched to Hudi, and then across the desert to Hermali, where they were to spend the summer. The Sirdar rode with the Egyptian brigades to Fort Atbara, Macdonald's brigade was to go on to garrison Berber, Maxwell's to Assillem, and that of Lewis to remain at Atbara.

  The question of the prisoners was already half solved. Almost all of them willingly embraced the offer to enlist in the Egyptian army. Many of the women found their husbands among the prisoners; others agreed at once to marry men of the Soudanese battalion; the rest, pending such offers as they might receive in the future, decided to remain at Atbara. At Berber their lot would have been a hard one, for they would have been exposed to the hatred and spite of the Jaalin women there, whose husbands had been massacred at Metemmeh. Fatma, with two attendants only, accompanied Macdonald's brigade to Berber.

  On arriving outside the town the force encamped. Next day the Sirdar, with his staff and General Hunter, came up, and on the following morning made a triumphant entry into the town, followed by the Soudanese brigade. Berber was prepared to do honour to the occasion. Flags waved, coloured cloths and women's garments hung from the windows, and the whole population lined the streets and received the conquerors with cries of welcome and triumph. They had anticipated a very different result, and had fully expected that the army would have been well-nigh annihilated, and that .again the triumphant Dervishes would become their masters. But the sight of Mahmud walking a prisoner, with two guards on each side of him, convinced them that the reports that had reached them were true, that the Dervishes had been signally defeated, and that there was no fear of their ever again becoming loixls of Berber.

  The Sirdar, by whose side General Hunter rode, headed the procession, followed by his staff; then, leading his brigade, came Macdonald—stern and hard of face, burnt almost black with years of campaigning in the desert—and his staff, followed by the black battalions, erect and proud, maintaining their soldierly bearing amid the loud quavering cries of welcome from the women.

  Gregory had, on his arrival with the brigade the day before, gone into the town and engaged a small house in its outskirts as the abode of Fatma and her two attendants, purchased suitable provisions, and made what arrangements he could for her comfort. Late in the evening he had escorted her there, and left Zaki to sleep in an outhouse attached to it, to secure them from all intrusion. Then he went down to the river, and, finding the Zafir lying there, went on beard. He was received as one returned from the dead by Captain Keppel, Lieutenant Beatty, and Lieutenant Hood — the commanders of the other gun-boats — who had been dining on board. He had become a general favourite during the time he had spent with them, and their congratulations on his safe return were warm and hearty.

  " You may imagine our surprise when, after the fight was over," said Captain Keppel, " it was discovered that you were missing. No one could imagine what had become of you. One of the blacks who had been working your Maxim said they had not noticed your leaving them, and that when they found you were not there, they supposed you had come to confer with me. Then I sent for your man, but he too was missing. We searched everywhere, but no signs of you, dead or alive, and no marks of blood were to be found ; so it seemed that the matter must remain a mystery. Early the next morning, however, we saw a white rag Avaving on the bank, and then a black entered the water and swam out towards us. I sent the boat to meet him, and when he came on board I found that he was your man, and the mystery was explained. I fancy I used some strong language, for I never before heard of a man being so hare-brained as to spring overboard in the middle of a battle and pick up a woman without saying a word to anyone of what he was doing, and that with the boat still steaming ahead. Of course your man told us that it was Mahmud's wife you had saved, and that she had taken you under her protection, but I did not expect that among those fanatics your life would be spared. Now tell us all about your adventures, and how you got down here just in time to see our fellows enter in triumph. I suppose you managed to give them the slip somehow?"

  Gregory then told his story. When he had concluded, Captain Keppel said: "Well, you have the luck of the old one! First you have got hold of as faithful a fellow as is to be found in all Egypt or anywhere else, and in the second place you have been in the battle of Atbara, while we have been kicking our heels here and fuming at being out of it altogether, except for our bloodless capture of Shendy. So you say the Sirdar blew you up? I am not surprised at that. You know the story of the man who fell overboard in the old flogging days, and the captain sentenced him to two dozen lashes for leaving the ship without orders."

  " I don't think he was really angry, for when I went to him the next evening he was a good deal milder. Of course he did say again that I had done wrong, but not in the same tone as before; and he seemed a good deal interested in what I told him about Mahmud, and how my boy had risked his life to rescue me and had succeeded almost by a miracle. He said there is a lot of good in these black fellows if one could but get at it. They have never had a chance yet, but, given good administration and the suppression of all tribal feuds with a stern hand, they might be moulded into anything." " And are you coming back to us now, Mr. Hilliard?" " I have no idea. I don't suppose anything will be settled for a time. There is not likely to be much doing anyway, except on the railway, and even your gun-boats will have an easy time of it, as there is not an enemy left on this side of the sixth cataract. The Dervishes who escaped are pretty sure to cross the Atbara. There are enough of them still, when they rally, to beat off any attacks that might be made by our tribesmen from Kassala."

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE FINAL ADVANCE

  A FEW days after the return of head-quarters to Berber, Mahmud was sent down-country, and Fatma was permitted to accompany him. She expressed to Gregory in touching terms her gratitude for what he had done for her.

  " We have been of mutual assistance," said Gregory. " I have the same reason to be grateful to you as you have to thank me. I saved your life and you saved mine. You were very kind to me when I was a captive—I have done as much as I could for you since you have been with us; so we are quits. I hope you will be happy with Mahmud. We do not treat our prisoners badly, and except that he will be away from the Soudan, he will probably be more comfortable than he
has ever been in his life."

  Gregory was now employed in the transport department, and journeyed backwards and forwards with large convoys of camels to the head of the railway. The line was completed to Berber, but the officers charged with its construction were indefatigable, and as fast as the materials came up, it was pushed on towards the Atbara. Complete as had been the victory on that river, the Sirdar saw that the force which had been sufficient to defeat the twenty thousand men under Mahmud was not sufficiently strong for the more onerous task of coping with three times that number, fighting under the eye of the Khalifa, and certain to consist of his.best and bravest troops. He therefore telegraphed home for another British brigade and additional artillery, with at least one regiment of cavalry—an arm in which the Egyptian army was weak.

  Preparations were at once made for complying with the request. The 21st Lancers, 1st battalion of Grenadier Guards, 2nd battalion of the Rifle Brigade, 2nd battalion of the 5th Lancashire Fusiliers, a field-battery, a howitzer-battery, and two forty-pounders to batter the defences of Omdurman should the Khalifa take his stand, were sent. A strong detachment of the Army Service Corps and the Royal Army Medical Corps was to accompany them, but they had yet some months to wait, for the advance would not be made until the Nile was full and the gun-boats could ascend the cataract. However, there was much to be done, and the troops did not pass the time in idleness. Atbara Fort was to be the base, and here the Egyptian battalions built huts and storehouses. The Soudanese brigades returned to Berber, and the transport of provisions and stores for them was thus saved. The British at Darmali were made as comfortable as possible, and no effort was spared to keep them in good health during the ensuing hot weather. A small theatre was constructed, and here smoking concerts were held. There was also a race meeting, and one of the steamers took parties of the men who were most affected by the heat for a trip down the Nile. They were practised in long marches early in the morning, and although, of course, there was some illness, the troops on the whole bore the heat well. Had there been a prospect of an indefinitely long stay the result might have been otherwise, but they knew that in a few months they would be engaged in even sterner work than the last battle, that Khartoum was their goal, and with its capture the power of the Khalifa would be broken for ever and Gordon avenged.

  Early in April the railway reached Abadia, a few miles from Berber, and in a short time a wonderful transformation took place here. From a sandy desert, with scarce a human being in sight, it became the scene of a busy industry. Stores were sorted and piled as they came up by rail. Three gun-boats arrived in sections, and these were put together. They were stronger and much better defended by steel plates than the first gun-boats, and each of them carried two six-pounder quick-firing guns, a small howitzer, four Maxims, and a searchlight. They were, however, much slower than the old boats, and could do very little in the way of towing.

  Besides these, eight steel double-deck troop barges were brought up in sections and put together. Three Egyptian battalions came up from Merawi to aid in the work, which not only included building the gun-boats and barges, but executing the repairs to all the native craft and putting them in a thoroughly serviceable state. In June the railway reached the Atbara, and for the first time for two years and a half the officers who had superintended its construction had a temporary rest. The stores were now transferred from Abadia to the Atbara, and two trains ran every day, each bringing up something like two hundred tons of stores. In the middle of July two Egyptian battalions left Atbara and proceeded up the Nile, one on each bank, cutting down trees and piling them for fuel for the steamers. As the river rose, four steamers came up from Dongola, together with a number of sailing boats, and in the beginning of August the whole flotilla, consisting of ten gun-boats, five unarmed steamers, eight troop barges, and three or four hundred sailing boats, were all assembled.

  By this time the reinforcements from home were all at Cairo, and their stores had already been sent up. It was arranged that they Avere to come by half-battalions, by squadrons, and by batteries, each one day behind the other. To make room for them, two Egyptian battalions were sent up to the foot of the Shabluka cataract. The six black battalions left Berber on July 30th, and arrived at Atbara the next day.

  There were now four brigades in the infantry divisions instead of three, two battalions having been raised from the Dervishes taken at the battle of Atbara. These were as eager as any to join in the fight against their late comrades. This was scarcely surprising. The Baggara, the tyrants of the desert, are horsemen. The infantry were for the most part drawn from the conquered tribes. They had enlisted in the Khalifa's force partly because they had no other means of subsistence, partly from their innate love of fighting. They had, in fact, been little better than slaves; and their condition as soldiers in the Egyptian army was immeasurably superior to that which they had before occupied.

  Broadwood, with nine squadrons of Egyptian cavalry, was already on the western bank of the river opposite Atbara, and was to be joined at Metemmeh by the camel corps and another squadron of horse from Merawi. On the 3rd of August the six Soudanese battalions left Fort Atbara for the point of concentration a few miles below the cataract. To the sides of each gun-boat were attached two of the steel barges; behind each were two native craft. All were filled as tightly as they could be crammed with troops. They were packed as in slavers, squatting by the side of each other as closeby as sardines in a box. The seven steamers and the craft they took with them contained six thousand men, so crowded that a spectator remarked that planks might have been laid on their heads, and that you could have walked about on them, while another testified that he could not have shoved a walking-stick between them anywhere. White men could not have supported it for an hour, but these blacks and Egyptians had a hundred miles to go, and the steamers could not make more than a knot an hour against the rapid stream, now swollen to its fullest.

  While they were leaving, the first four companies of the Rifle Brigade arrived. Every day boats laden with stores went forward, every day white troops came up. Vast as was the quantity of stores sent off, the piles at Atbara did not seem to diminish. Ninety days' provisions, forage, and necessaries for the whole force had been accumulated there, and as fast as these were taken away they were replaced by others from Berber. Like everyone connected with the transport or store department, Gregory had to work from daybreak till dark. Accustomed to a warm climate, light in figure, without an ounce of spare flesh, he was able to support the heat, dust, and fatigue better than most, and as he himself said, it was less trying to be at work even in the blazing sun than to lie listless and sweating under the shade of a blanket. There was no necessity now to go down the line to make enquiries as to the progress of the stores or of the laden craft on their way up; the telegraph was established, and the Sirdar at Atbara knew the exact position of every one of the units between Cairo and himself, and from every station he received messages constantly and dispatched his orders as frequently. There was no hitch whatever. The arrangements were all so perfect that the vast machine, with its numerous parts, moved with the precision of clock-work. Everything was up to time. For a train or steamer, or even a native boat, to arrive half an hour after the time calculated for it was almost unheard of.

  The Sirdar's force of will seemed to communicate itself to every officer under him, and it is safe to say that never before was an expedition so perfectly organized and so marvellously carried out. At Atbara the Sirdar saw to everything himself. A brief word of commendation to those working under him cheered them through long days of toil—an equally curt reproof depressed them to the depths. Twice when Gregory was directing some of the blacks piling large cases as they were emptied from the train, anathematizing the stupid, urging on the willing, and himself occasionally lending a hand in order to show how it should be done, the Sirdar, who, unknown to him, had been looking on, rode up and said shortly, "You are doing well, Mr. Hilliard!" and he felt that his offence of jumping overboard had
been condoned. General Hunter, himself indefatigable, had more occasion to notice Gregory's work, and his commendations were frequent and warm.

  The lad had not forgotten the object with which he had come to the front. After Atbara he had questioned many of the prisoners who from their age might have fought at El Obeid, but none of these had done so. The forces of the Khalifa came and went as there was occasion for them. The Baggara were always under arms, but only when danger threatened were the great levies of foot assembled; for it would have been impossible, in the now desolate state of the Soudan, to find food for an army of a hundred thousand men. All agreed, however, that, with the exception of the Egyptian artillerymen, they heard that no single white man had escaped. Numbers of the black soldiers had been made slaves; the whites had perished—all save one had fallen on the field. That one had accompanied a black battalion who had held together, and, repulsing all attacks, had marched away. They had been followed, however, and after repeated attacks had dwindled away until they had finally been broken and massacred.

  With the Khalifa's army were several emirs who had fought at El Obeid, and these would no doubt be able to tell him more; but none of those who were taken prisoners at the Atbara had heard of any white man having escaped the slaughter of Hicks's army.

  Just as the general movement began, the force was joined by three companies of Soudanese. These had marched from Suakim to Berber, two hundred and eighty-eight miles, in fifteen days, an average of nineteen miles a day,—a record for

  such a march, and one that no European force could have performed. One day, after marching thirty miles, they came to a well and found it dry, and had to march thirty miles farther to another water-hole, a feat probably altogether without precedent.

  " You had better fall back upon your old work, Hilliard," the General said the day before they started. "As my 'aide' I shall find plenty for you to do, now that I command the whole division."