The Downfall of the Dervishes; or, The Avenging of Gordon

by Ernest Nathaniel Bennett

Shortly before leaving Cairo my cook Ali appeared before me with a huge two-handed Dervish sword, which he had purchased out of his own money for twenty piastres. The creature had already the day before begged me to buy him a rifle for defensive purposes, as I was quite unable to eradicate from his mind the belief that his kitchen utensils and himself might at any moment during the next six weeks be exposed to an attack from a frenzied rush of Dervishes. I could not see my way to gratify his wishes in this respect. To have a cook bending over the fire with a belt full of cartridges, or walking round one's tent with a loaded rifle—these were indeed added terrors to the perils of a Sudan campaign. He was, however, permitted to wear the gigantic sword, as I thought it might come in handy for cutting wood or opening tins of meat.

We were not sorry to get out of Cairo. The moist heat which prevailed in the town clogged all the pores of the skin and was extremely trying. Just before we left, a detachment of the Grenadier Guards entrained for the front. These fine fellows were marched from Abbasseeyeh to the station—no great distance—in the hottest part of the day, between twelve o'clock and two. When they reached the station the perspiration was streaming from their faces, and they were kept at "attention" to prevent them from drinking water in this condition. But the heat had already begun to tell in several cases; three men fell prostrate, and quite a number were attacked by violent sickness. The drainage, too, of the city was in a deplorable condition. The old native system had been recently abolished, and during the period of transition sanitation was in a state of chaos. Which things are an allegory! In consequence probably of the escape of sewage into water-pipes, enteric fever and diphtheria were far from infrequent, and quite recently two young officers of the 21st Lancers had succumbed to these fatal diseases.

When we arrived at the railway station in the evening en route for the South, we found our servants already there. But how transformed! Ali and the säis had exchanged their native cotton garments for brand new suits of yellow kharki, purchased at my expense. From some association of ideas in connection with the forthcoming campaign, they were "got up" in a pseudo-military fashion, with brass buttons and shoulder straps. As Ali the cook stood before us in his ill-fitting garments, with an enormous crusading sword in one hand and a kitchen colander and soup ladle in the other,—a kind of walking allegory of Peace and War,—we laughed so much that we could scarcely ask for our tickets. At the last moment a native rushed into the station closely pursued by his wife. The man was evidently bent on securing a seat in the train, but his better half disapproved of this, and as he was getting into the carriage she suddenly struck a violent blow at his hand luggage. It was a most effective stroke. The bundle he carried exploded like a shell, and its contents lay scattered in hopeless confusion over the platform. Long before the baffled husband could collect the disjecta membra of his travelling kit, the train steamed off into the darkness, and he was left to settle matters with his triumphant wife.

We rapidly left Cairo behind us, and with it the joys and comforts of civilisation. It was a positive relief to feel that we had now commenced in real earnest to travel the twelve hundred miles which separated us from our final goal far away in the Sudan. Still, at the time of our departure from Cairo, no certainty was felt that there would be any fighting at all. Rumours were persistently current that the Khalifa and his forces had retreated from Omdurman. It would, as somebody said, be simply a case of cherchez la femme. If the women and children became panic-stricken and retired, it was certain that the Dervishes would lose heart and make a poor show of resistance. Take, for instance, the case of Berber. Here a vigorous defence might reasonably have been expected, but it was afterwards found that an exodus of the women brought about the total evacuation of the town, which our advancing forces thus occupied without any fighting whatever. Still it was too early to speculate on the amount of opposition our troops were likely to encounter. Whether there would be one or more sharp struggles before we found ourselves face to face with the ramparts of Omdurman; whether even then those ramparts would be held by Dervishes driven to bay and fighting with their old desperate courage, or we should bivouac in a deserted city—all these things, we felt, lay verily on the knees of the gods!

Our first taste of discomfort was provided by the night journey to Luxor. Soon after leaving Cairo the motion of the train raises an almost continuous cloud of dust, which penetrates into the carriages, scheme one never so wisely. One may put the glass windows up or merely raise the wooden venetians according as one prefers the alternative of being almost asphyxiated by too little air or stifled by too much dust. Even with the windows up the dust insinuates itself into the compartment somehow; and if one can sleep through the night one finds next morning a thick layer of dust over everything, and reflects with astonishment and dismay on the condition of one's lungs and internal economy in general. The train was not a "troop train" in the special sense, but it contained a good many officers. It is worth noticing, by the way, that Egyptian officers, even of high military rank, travel second class with British sergeant-majors and warrant officers. As no horse boxes would be available for the conveyance of our animals for two days, we were compelled to stay a couple of nights at the Luxor Hotel. The dreariness of this hotel out of the season was still more marked than at Shepheard's. Outside, all blistered by the heat, hung the quaint notice, as a warning to that species of knicker-bockered tourist who shoots gulls from the Clacton cliffs, "Il est défendu de chasser dans le jardin." The servants shuffled listlessly about, the long corridors were covered with dust, and forlorn notices about church services which were no longer served, and trained nurses who had vanished, were almost the only outward and visible signs of the past season, with its crowded table d'hôte, the vulgar chatter of American globe-trotters, and the irritating atmosphere of valetudinarianism.

At the hotel we met two hard-worked transport officers, Captain Hall and Lieutenant Delavoy, busied night and day with the incessant despatch of stores and ammunition to the front. People are often apt to forget to what an extent the success of a campaign is due to the honest work of the Army Service Corps and transport officials. Upon these departmental troops fell the onerous labour of forwarding for many weeks all the stores required for the feeding of some twenty-three thousand men and several thousand animals.

Our recent campaigns in the Sudan have been unique in military history from the fact that the army's line of communication with its base was ultimately over twelve hundred miles in length. Every ounce of food, with the exception of a little fresh meat occasionally obtained along the line of march, had to be conveyed from Cairo by river, rail, or camel. The best thanks of the public are due to the indefatigable labours of the transport officers and men, many of whom were not brought by their work within the area which will be covered by the forthcoming medal.

As we sat at dinner in the cool of the evening under the palms and tamarisks, somebody chanced to look under the table and saw a number of large yellowish tarantulas waltzing about our feet. A panic ensued, and the meeting rose as one man and got upon chairs, until these repulsive insects were driven away by the waiters. The incident forcibly recalled the famous congress of ladies which was convened to demonstrate the Superiority of Woman over Man, and was broken up by a small box of mice opened by a son of Belial in the audience. These horrid spiders, whose bite is very painful, and, in the case of young children, occasionally fatal, seemed to be ubiquitous at Luxor; nor did they even respect the sanctity of our bedrooms. Medical psychologists tell of a case in which a gentleman suffering from hallucinations declared that he saw "pink pachyderms" in his bath, but was unable to secure a specimen owing to the rapidity of the creature's movements. But I had much rather see a pink pachyderm—which may after all be merely subjective—inside my tub than a brace of tortoiseshell tarantulas, whose objectivity is undoubted, racing round and round the bath and cutting off one's retreat.

We took the opportunity afforded us by our enforced wait at Luxor to visit the temples. No tickets were demanded, no touts clamoured at one's heels and interfered with one's reflections. We rode to Karnak in the moonlight, and after dismounting we were suddenly mobbed by scores of dogs, who came rushing upon us from the Bedawin houses near the ruins. The animals became so menacing and approached so close that I was compelled to use my revolver. The pariah doggie in Egypt does not seem to be quite like his Constantinople cousin, who is probably descended partly from the jackals who accompanied the Turkish armies from their Asiatic settlements. The puppies of these pariah dogs are, by the way, the dearest little creatures in the world, with rough woolly coats like tiny bears.

There is absolutely nothing in the world to compare with the temple of Karnak in point of magnificence and grandeur. When one gazes on the colossal pillars, the huge pylons, and the rows and rows of sculptured sphinxes, it would be alike difficult and painful to believe that all this mighty effort, this outcome of the blood and sweat of thousands, could after all be based on a mere delusion and groundless enthusiasm. On the contrary, one may wonder whether the full force of the religious motive which raised these giant structures has not been to some extent lost in later ages. At anyrate, it seems certain that in the West our religious consciousness has never been marked by that intense appreciation of God's omnipotence which underlay the creation of such stupendous monuments. On the contrary, there seems to be a tendency in modern Christianity to anthropomorphise the Deity into the official Head of a scheme of charity organisation, to which the belief in a future life, so powerful a factor in the ancient religion of Egypt, is attached as a subsequent phase of subsidiary importance. As the race grows less and less disposed to endure physical pain and discomfort, we clamour more and more for tangible and material blessings, and refuse to be comforted by any contemplation of the problematic joys of another world. There is something to be said for this point of view, and much evil has undoubtedly been done by the reckless bestowal on suffering humanity of "cheques to be cashed on the other side of Jordan." Still, if this process continues, it is difficult to realise how, in the conduct of future generations, any place can be found for a religious and supernatural, as distinct from a merely ethical, obligation.