The Dash for Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition

by G. A. Henty

In the centre behind the fighting line were two guns of the Royal Artillery, the other having been left in the zareba, while the centre of the square was filled with camels carrying water, ammunition, and cacolets or swinging beds for the carriage of the wounded.

The instant the square was formed and moved out the fire of the enemy redoubled. Swarms of natives appeared on the top of the hills, moving parallel with the advance of the square. The march was taken in slow time to allow the guns and camels to keep up. The ground was extremely difficult and broken, deep water-ruts and rocky hillocks having to be crossed, and the whole very undulating and broken.

Men fell fast, and frequent halts had to be made to enable the doctors to attend to the wounded, and place them in the cacolets. The front face and sides of the square advanced in fair order, but there was much confusion in the rear face, caused by the lagging camels. Skirmishers were thrown out on either side, and these did their best to keep down the fire of the enemy. For an hour the square proceeded, and had nearly emerged from the pass on to the plain beyond, when a number of green and white flags were seen at some distance on the left front. As the firing had principally come from the right, and as it was from that side that an attack was expected, there was considerable curiosity as to the meaning of these seemingly deserted flags; and a small party were about to go out to investigate them, when a great number of other flags suddenly appeared at the same spot, and a moment later a vast mass of Arabs who had been concealed in a gulley sprang to their feet. (See plan on page 138.)

They were about five hundred yards distant from the square, which was at the moment halted at the foot of a stony knoll. It was moved at once on to the rising ground, and the skirmishers were called in. The Arabs with wild yells moved across the left front, disappeared for a minute behind some rocks and high grass, and then reappeared close to the left rear, when they wheeled into line, and with wild yells charged down upon the square. So quick were their movements that the skirmishers had hardly time to reach the square, and one man was overtaken and speared before he reached it.

Several of the exhausted camels with their loads of wounded had been left outside, lying down at the foot of the slope when the square moved up it. Their native drivers rushed into shelter, and the wounded would have fallen into the hands of the enemy had not an officer of the Guards' Camel Corps and several privates of the Heavies rushed out, seized the camels, and by main force dragged them into the square. In the square itself there was a din of voices, the officers shouting to the men to stand steady and reserve their fire until the skirmishers, who were between them and the enemy, had run in. The instant they had done this a roar of musketry broke out from the left and rear faces of the square, at first in volleys, then in independent fire as fast as the men could load; but though scores of the enemy fell, their rush was not checked for a moment, and with wild yells they fell upon the left corner of the square.

The men were but two deep, and were unable to stand the pressure of the mass of the enemy, and in a moment the rear face of the square was driven in, and a hand-to-hand fight was going on between the soldiers, mixed up with the struggling camels and the Arabs. All order was for a time lost; the voices of the officers were drowned by the din of musketry, the yells of the Arabs, and the shouts of the men. Each man fought for himself; but their bayonets were no match for the long spears of the Arabs, and they were pressed back until the throng of camels pushed hard against the Guards in front of the square.

The rear ranks of the Mounted Infantry on the left and the Marines on the right were faced round, and opened a terrible fire into the crowded mass of natives, while the Heavies with bayonets and clubbed muskets fought singly, man to man, with their foes. The combat did not last long. Mowed down by the fire on both flanks the assailants withered away, and it was not long before silence succeeded the terrible din of battle. In the interior of the square the last Arab of those who had pierced the square had fallen, and the fire of the outside faces of the square had prevented them from receiving any reinforcement from their friends, and these now fell back sullenly before the leaden hail. As soon as they had done so there was time to investigate what had taken place in the centre of the square.

A terrible sight presented itself. The ground was strewn with bodies of the natives, mingled with those of men of the corps that had formed the rear face of the square, the 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards, Naval Brigade, 1st and 2d Life Guards, and the Sussex. Among them lay camels which had been hamstrung or speared by the natives, broken cacolets, and water tanks and skins, medical stores, and a confusion of articles of all kinds.

Although forced back by the sheer weight of the native attack, the Heavies had never been completely broken up. They maintained their resistance to the end, jammed up as they were against and among the camels, and thus enabled the men on the two sides of the square to concentrate their fire on the Arabs.