No one could be astonished at my reluctance to make a bolt of it without the garrisons, for it virtually makes out all our toils, for the last seven months, as utterly useless; we had, to all intents and purposes, better have surrendered months ago. One feels such a mean brute to go egging on men to fight, and then to let it end with a skedaddle.
October 2nd.—A sergeant-major, with a soldier, escaped last night; he reports that the Mahdi came from Obeyed to Schatt, with two ortas of black captured troops, two Krupp guns, and seven mountain guns; but then the Arab tribes in his rear rose, and that he went back, taking the guns with him, sending one of his Ameers, Abdullah Waled Jubira, to Kalakla with 100 black troops. The sergeant-major reports the Arabs have 140 Krupp shells and 200 boxes of Remington ammunition; that the Arabs did not suffer when they fired on the steamers coming from Sennaar; that, with the Mahdi, are all the Roman Catholic Mission party, who have not changed their religion: one nun is exposed to the sun to force her to do so. The man says the other guns are all broken in their carriages, in the Mahdi’s fights with the Arabs. The Mahdi takes Slatin and all the Europeans with him when he moves; he reports Waled a Goun has sent the black troops he had with him to the rear, because so many escaped; the Arabs fired a salute of four guns on arrival of the Ameer Abdullah Waled Jubira.
A slave coming in from the left bank reports Faki Mustapha with few troops; says the rumour of the advance expeditionary force is rife; says the Arab ferry is at Kalakla; they pass only at night. The sergeant-major says that he is sure the tribes (on the Mahdi’s going to Schatt) all rose and pillaged on the road: hence the Mahdi’s return towards Obeyed.
The man the doctor operated upon for the large stone is dead.
From what the sergeant-major says, it appears I am not more liked by the Mahdi than I am elsewhere—a nuisance! and a bore!
The Towfikia steamer went up the White Nile, and fired upon the Arabs! The Bordeen steamer went up the Blue Nile, and fired upon the Arabs! The Halfeyeh people went out and captured a camel! All these things are hostilities not countenanced by Her Majesty’s Government. This afflicts me, that joker Egerton!
I have sent off another spy to Debbeh, saying that three steamers wait their orders at Metemma, one hundred and fifty miles from Debbeh!
The Shaggyeh tribes are giving me bother again with their horrid families down river. They are most exasperating.