10.20 a.m.—For half-an-hour firing lulled, but then recommenced, and is still going on. The Ismailia was struck with a shell, but I hear is not seriously damaged. The Husseinyeh is aground (I feel much the want of my other steamers at Metemma). 11.15 a.m.—Firing has lulled; it was very heavy for the last three-quarters of an hour from Ismailia and Arabs; it is now desultory, and is dying away. Husseinyeh is still aground. The Ismailia is at anchor. What a six hours of anxiety for me, when I saw the shells strike the water near the steamers from the Arabs; imagine my feelings! We have £831 in specie and £42,800 in paper; and there is £14,600 in paper out in the town! I call this state of finance not bad, after more than eight months’ blockade. The troops are owed half a month’s pay, and even that can be scarcely called owed them, for I have given them stores, and beyond the regulations. Noon.—The firing has ceased, I am glad to say. I have lived years in these last hours! Had I lost the Ismailia, I should have lost the Husseinyeh (aground), and then Omdurman, and the North Fort! And then the Town! 1 p.m.—The Arabs are firing on the steamers with their two guns. The Husseinyeh, still aground; that is the reason of it. Firing, 1.30 p.m., now has ceased. The Ismailia, struck by three shells, had one man killed, fifteen wounded on board of her; she did really very well. I boxed the telegraph clerk’s ears for not giving me the telegram last night (after repeated orders that no consideration was to prevent his coming to me); and then, as my conscience pricked me, I gave him $5. He said he did not mind if I killed him—I was his father (a chocolate-coloured youth of twenty). I know all this is brutal—abrutissant, as Hansall calls it—but what is one to do? If you cut their pay, you hurt their families. I am an advocate for summary and quick punishment, which hurts only the defaulter. Had this clerk warned me, of course at daybreak, the steamers would have had their steam up, and been ready. We have a Krupp at Mogrim Fort. Ferratch Pasha reports he has dismounted one of the Arab guns. The Arabs had a show of four hundred horsemen, who kept far off. Telegraph was, and is, interrupted between this and the Omdurman Fort (whether by bullet or otherwise is not known as yet). Considering that the Arab mountain gun can (and has) made holes two feet square in the steamer, my anxiety is not to be wondered at. (I feel as if I had walked thirty miles.) We fired eighty-three rounds of Krupp at the Arabs from Mogrim, forty-three rockets. The Arabs fired three hundred and seventy rounds from their guns at the steamers. As for ammunition (Remington), we fired from our steamers, forts, &c., fifty thousand rounds; and I certainly think the Arabs fired as much, Omdurman certainly was “over-eager to fire on the enemy”[224] in the early dawn, and consequently wasted ammunition. This ends the greatest battle (as yet) of our second blockade. Spies (of last night) say it was undertaken against the Mahdi’s wish, by his Khalifa or Vizier, who persuaded him to allow it. During all through, the Arabs of the South and East never moved a peg. Like the Chinese, one may calculate, they will never assist one another.
This is our first encounter with the Mahdi’s personal troops. One tumbles at 3 a.m. into a troubled sleep; a drum beats—tup! tup! tup! It comes into a dream, but after a few moments one becomes more awake, and it is revealed to the brain that one is in Kartoum. The next query is, where is this tup, tupping going on. A hope arises it will die away. No, it goes on, and increases in intensity. The thought strikes one, “Have they enough ammunition?” (the excuse of bad soldiers). One exerts oneself. At last, it is no use, up one must get, and go on to the roof of the palace; then telegrams, orders, swearing, and cursing goes on till about 9 a.m. Men may say what they like about glorious war, but to me it is a horrid nuisance (if it is permitted to say anything is a nuisance which comes on us). I saw that poor little beast the Husseinyeh (a Thames launch) fall back, stern foremost, under a terrific fire of breechloaders. I saw a shell strike the water at her bows; I saw her stop and puff off steam, and I gave the glass to my boy, sickened unto death, and I will say my thoughts turned on ... more than on anyone, and they are not beneficent towards him. My boy (he is thirty) said, “Husseinyeh is sick.” I knew it, but said quietly, “Go down and telegraph to Mogrim,[225] ‘Is Husseinyeh sick?’” Answer, “No.” I asked again; answer, “No.” Then telegraph said, “She was aground.”
2.45 p.m. The Ismailia tried to take Husseinyeh off, and got struck twice, in addition to the three times before mentioned, with shells, so she desisted from the attempt. The Arabs are firing on the Husseinyeh. I have ordered the Krupp of Mogrim to play on the Arab guns, and shall wait till night to take off the Husseinyeh. She is nearer to the left bank than to the right bank; it is not clear if she is aground or half sunk (equally a trouble). 3.30 p.m. The Arabs are bringing their guns nearer to the aground or half-sunken Husseinyeh. The Ismailia reports that the two last shells have done her no material damage. 4.30 p.m. The Arabs have now three guns bearing on the Husseinyeh. 6 p.m. The firing has ceased. I hope to get the Husseinyeh off at night. 7 p.m. The Arabs keep up a dropping fire on the Husseinyeh, who, I hear, has two shell holes in her, and has six men, including the captain, wounded. I must say the Arabs to-day showed the greatest of pluck; over and over again they returned to the attack, though overwhelmed with the musketry fire of the castellated Ismailia. I think they must have lost heavily, for at times they were in dense groups. I believe that by the Arabs we may understand our own regulars captured in Kordofan and Darfur, &c. We are going to get the Husseinyeh off to-night if we can. No Royal Navy vessels would have behaved better than the Ismailia to-day; she passed and repassed the Arab guns upwards of twenty times, when any one well-placed shell would have sunk her. Whether the crew knew it or not does not matter. I did, and felt comfortable accordingly. The Arab guns were not 1,200 yards distant from her, and even less at times. She was struck five times with shell. Remember that the Ismailia, is only a superior penny boat, and that the Egyptian mountain gun is as superior to our wretched seven-pounders as a three-pounder is to a twelve-pounder Howitzer, both for range and for effect. You want a gun to make a hole, not a gimlet-hole, which these seven-pounders do, and what wearisome work to carry them!
All this worry is (humanly speaking) due to that chocolate-coloured clerk of the telegraph not warning me. This evening there was an ominous sign that the Arabs on the Blue Nile knew of our troubles with the Husseinyeh. They came up against Bourré, but two gunshots drove them off. At 4 p.m. the Arabs on the right bank of the White Nile fired twelve shells against the Lines, and opened a fire of musketry for a short time, but did no harm. I have given half a month’s pay to the Ismailia and to the Husseinyeh crews, and $2 for the men who have gone to get the latter off; she is not half sunk, but is aground. There is (8 p.m.) a fire on the left bank of the White Nile, opposite to Halfeyeh. The Arabs got into the ditch of the entrenched camp at Omdurman, which is theirs. We only occupy the fort x. Hicks’ army were in this entrenched camp. Arabs came to y.
8.15 p.m. The Arabs have still their guns on the river bank, and are firing at the Husseinyeh, whom I am trying, by my men, to get off. Evidently they are not cowed, for generally they take their guns back at night to their camp. Report from Husseinyeh steamer:—-10.20 p.m., Wounded, 6; killed, 3; efforts as yet are ineffectual as to taking off the steamer Husseinyeh.
November 13.—The Ismailia, 2 a.m., got struck by two shells (?)[226] going to take off the Husseinyeh, so we took her gun out, and her crew, and have left her. At 5.30 a.m., the Arabs commenced firing on the Lines at Bourré, and 7 a.m. I see they are coming across to Goba, bringing a gun with them. The Arabs at Omdurman are quiet. The Arabs have fired five times with their gun at the Omdurman Fort. The Arabs have got their gun at the village outside Sheikh Ali, near the end of the Lines on the White Nile, and have fired shells at the Lines. Our telegraph was cut yesterday evening with Omdurman Fort, and cannot be repaired (8 a.m.), for the Arabs are shelling that fort. The Arabs, on the North Side, have their gun on the low sandhills some 4,000 yards off, and are shelling us; musketry firing going on at Bourré. The Arabs had their guns last night defending the approach to the Husseinyeh. We are repairing the Ismailia; the barricade of the steersman of the Husseinyeh got struck by a shell. We raised a parapet on the river bank to defend any approach of the Arabs to Husseinyeh. Omdurman had yesterday a quarter of a million cartridges—Remington.
Omdurman Fort has one and a half month’s supply of food and water; it was a fault to place it so far from the river;[227] yesterday it had not its flag up; to-day it has. The Arabs have sent 250 men to Goba; but the village Hogali, which was the one close to the palace, having been levelled, they are too far off to do us any harm. There is a report in town, the Arabs say they will enter it to-morrow, and say their prayers in the mosque on Friday. The Arabs at Goba are wasting a lot of ammunition (Remington), their bullets do not reach us.[228] They will be bothered for water, for we filled up all the wells in Goba. 9.15 a.m. The Arabs have returned from Goba. 10 a.m. They have made a long détour,[229] and have gone to the prolongation of our lines at Bourré, on the right bank of the Blue Nile, where they are firing heavily. I expect we fired 50,000 rounds yesterday, and the Arabs rather more, while to-day the Arabs have fired a great deal. We calculate that with Hicks’ army was lost 1,000,000 cartridges, and now it is a year ago, during which time, with the firing there and elsewhere during a year, two-thirds of that million must have been expended, and they have no means to renew the cartridges; they cannot have much more than 300,000 rounds.
The Arabs have now gone from opposite Bourré (11 a.m.), having fired a nice lot of ammunition, and hurt no one in the fort. Omdurman Fort is still cut off from us; Arabs at a b c. The Arabs certainly got the best of it yesterday, though I expect they paid for it. It appears the Husseinyeh got aground through the captain, who was afterwards wounded, not doing what the Reis told him. Fortunately I had foreseen the likelihood of the fort at Omdurman being cut off, and had provisioned it. If the expedition comes at all, it ought to be here before long. We had fifteen men wounded yesterday, three rather dangerously, and seven were killed. I never feel anxious about any of the fights, except when the steamers are engaged, and then I own I am on tenterhooks as long as they are out. 1 p.m. The Arabs have got four guns down on the river, and are firing across the river at the Mogrim Fort, which is answering by Krupp and rockets. We are not fortunate with the little steamers I had brought out in sections from England; we have lost, at any rate temporarily, one, the Husseinyeh; another, the Abbas, where is she? And the Arabs have the third, the Mahomet Ali, on the Blue Nile. The Arabs fired four guns on the lines near the White Nile this morning (they fired sixty rounds). Musketry (3 p.m.) going on across river between our men and the Arabs. Certainly we have been left to almost the very last extremity, and I declare I think the year will be complete, from the time Cairo heard of Hicks’ defeat, to the time of the relief expedition arriving here!!! And I am sure, if an enquiry was made, it would be made out no one was to blame.