As we were leaving Wad Hamed about forty Gaalins arrived on the bank, and were embarked on the Metemmeh. These friendlies were wonderfully spick and span, with nice clean clothes. Some of them were equipped with large Dervish swords, while others had only sticks, which they carried with a jaunty air at the "shoulder," in anticipation, no doubt, of the Remington rifles which would be issued to them before the fight. They were accompanied to the bank by a fine old sheikh in flowing snow-white robes, and their farewells to the venerable chieftain were very impressive. In the Sudan people are not content with a single handshake. When one group is saying good-bye to another the interchange of courtesies and caresses is interminable. One man falls on the other's neck, without actually touching his face or shoulder,—rather after the manner of a stage kiss,—and then handshaking goes on ad libitum all round, the same two people often clasping and unclasping their hands half a dozen times or more, according to the degree of intimacy.
The Shabluka cataract, through which the flooded Nile rushes with amazing violence, lies in a gorge which has evidently in remote ages been torn through the limestone ridge by the river. A width of a thousand yards is here suddenly compressed into a hundred yards, and in the face of the terrific current which is thus produced, our gunboat could barely forge ahead at the rate of one and a half miles an hour. It is an open secret that the new gunboats built for the Nile service by Thorneycrofts are regarded as failures by naval experts. One of them, the Sheikh, can only make two miles an hour against the ordinary Nile current in August.
Even in the moonlight one could realise the amount of damage which might have been inflicted by an effective occupation of Shabluka, upon a force advancing up the river. When we passed the forts, constructed, after the manner of Dervish engineers, on a level with the water, we found them deserted, and their guns had been removed. But if the enemy, who were posted here up to last May, had maintained their position, we should have been compelled to halt and drive them out of it from the land side, for none of our slow gunboats could have forced the gorge had it been lined with artillery.
We arrived at Rojan Island before daybreak on the 28th, and were aroused out of sleep in the dark by the pleasing intelligence that an order had arrived from the Sirdar that we were to be turned out of the gunboat, bag and baggage, as the vessel was wanted for other purposes. Floundering about in the semi-darkness we got our luggage together as well as we could, and in less than twenty minutes found ourselves sitting on the river bank with our few goods and chattels round us. It would not have taken the gunboat five minutes to land us at Hagir on the opposite bank; in fact, after marooning us on the island, it actually touched at the camp on its return down the Nile. This was one of several instances in which, during the campaign, correspondents were treated with an utter disregard of consideration or even ordinary courtesy. It often seemed as if the Sirdar or his subordinates went out of their way to cause all the inconvenience they could to the representatives of the press. Certainly if this conduct was merely due to oversight or thoughtlessness, it was bad enough; if it was intentional, it was based upon a petty and ungenerous abuse of authority. On the present occasion we were left for seven mortal hours on this treeless island, although the El Tahra was lying off Hagir, and could easily have been sent across the river for us. When at last the old ferry-boat came blundering across, the official in charge, who seemed, from his manner, to have caught the Sirdar's mental attitude towards correspondents, brusquely refused to take us over to Hagir, because no one had given him orders to do so. Consequently the El Tahra left us and recrossed to the camp with her precious commander, although one of our number was suffering severely from the sun, and lay prostrate on the ground. As all our baggage was on the other side of the river, having been sent on by camels, we had absolutely nothing to protect us from the heat as it grew fiercer and fiercer every moment, so we simply sat on the ground and grilled in the sun. The misery of such an experience is very real indeed when the thermometer stands at 115° in the shade! As one lies amid a dreary waste of sand and rock,
sub curru nimium propinqui
Solis in terra domibus negata,
with the pitiless rays of noontide beating down upon one's head, visions of iced cups and other delights rise like a mental mirage and mock one's misery! The thoughts stray far away in fantasy from the unlovely landscape, and rest upon an English tennis lawn, beside the cool Cherwell or under the cedars of the Wadham Gardens—the pleasant game, the refreshment of shade and drink which follows it!
As there was absolutely nothing else to do on the island—and it is always a good thing to engage in some more or less arduous work when one is inclined to take a pessimistic view of one's surroundings—I scrambled up to the top of Gebel Rojan, a rocky hill about three hundred feet high. From this Pisgah height one could trace far away to the south the faint outlines of the hills of Omdurman, our Promised Land! Below, on the desert plain, three Egyptian battalions were marching forward, their right flank guarded by squadrons of cavalry. The rifle barrels and steel scabbards glinted brightly in the rising sunlight, and the columns themselves looked like sinuous lines of ants threading their way through the scrub.
We were all very bad-tempered when the El Tahra returned once more; but this time, mercifully, the steamer was no longer in the hands of the punctilious sapper, with his combination of red tape and rudeness. The new commander ventured upon the independent exercise of his own common sense, and most kindly conveyed us across the river without further ado. Whether he was subsequently reprimanded by the authorities for this act of ordinary politeness I do not know.
By the time we had landed from the steamer, and the servants had discovered the whereabouts of our camels and luggage, it was nearly two o'clock, and the camp had practically broken up. The native battalions had left early in the morning, as I had seen from the summit of Gebel Rojan, and had been followed by General Gatacre's division. The Sirdar and his staff, the Intelligence Department, the correspondents, and the baggage were to leave at four o'clock; so there was barely time to get a scratch meal before we saw to the loading of our camels, and again set out on our forward march towards Omdurman. Both Cross and I had intended to walk, but Steevens and Maud most kindly put a couple of their extra horses at our disposal. The animal I rode was a polo pony from Cairo, in excellent condition and full of "go." It hated to be alone for a moment, and if in the scrub it found itself separated from the rest of the column, either in the rear or on the flank, and the rein was at all loose, it would suddenly, without any warning, make a clean bolt to rejoin its companions; and when a borrowed horse tears at full gallop through mimosa bushes and over the rough sandy soil intersected with nullahs, one is precious glad to be able to return it to its owner in the evening without a couple of broken knees or worse.