On the 13th Wolseley was instructed that the Government adopted the dispositions recommended in his telegram of the 5th. This was followed by preparations for the immediate embarkation of the expedition.
Before this, Graham had on the 5th made a raid on Takool, a village ten miles south of Otao, and twenty west of Souakim, and driven out the enemy, reported to be 700 strong. Graham's force burnt Takool, and captured between 1,500 and 2,000 sheep and goats in this the last exploit of the campaign.
The railway works were now discontinued, the troops called in from Otao, and the navvies withdrawn. As the last truckload came in from the front, it was followed and fired on by jeering Soudanese.
The store-ships, which had for weeks been lying in the roads with rails, plant, and machinery not yet unloaded, were ordered back to England with their cargoes.
On the 17th May Graham and his staff left Souakim with the Coldstream Guards. The Grenadiers, as well as the Australians and Scots Guards, sailed the following day.
The remainder of the troops followed shortly after, and before the end of the month the whole of the expedition, with the exception of the Shropshire Regiment and a portion of the Indian Contingent, had left Souakim.
Of the results obtained by the expedition, there is but little to say. Its departure left Osman Digna still uncrushed, and the Souakim-Berber route still unopened; and Osman was enabled in 1885 to boast, as he had done in 1884, that he had driven the British out of the country.[136]
This expedition was of far greater strength than its predecessor, and it is no disparagement to the officers and men engaged in it to say that their exploits did not equal those of the expedition of 1884. Tamaai, Handoub, and other positions had been taken and occupied temporarily, and a small portion of the railway had been made. This represented about the sum total of results.[137]