The Dash for Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition

by G. A. Henty

"Yes, sir," the lad said saluting. "I am a little stiff, and it hurts me if I move suddenly, but I am sure I should not feel it if we were engaged again."

"Well, do not do anything rash, lad; these fellows are not to be trifled with." That, indeed, was the general opinion in camp. The men were ready and eager for another fight with the enemy, but there was little of the light-hearted gaiety with which the contest had been anticipated before they had met the Arabs at El-Teb. The idea that savages, however brave, could cope with British troops with breech-loaders had then seemed absurd; but the extraordinary bravery with which the Arabs had fought, the recklessness with which they threw away their lives, and the determination with which they had charged through a fire in which it seemed impossible that any human being could live, had created a feeling of respect. There was nothing contemptible about these foes, and it was expected that not only would the force be very much larger than that met at El-Teb, but as it would be composed of Osman Digma's best men, and would be fighting under his eye, the battle would be much more hardly contested than before. The cavalry were particularly impressed with the formidable nature of these strange foemen. While they would have hurled themselves fearlessly against far superior forces of the best cavalry of Europe, they felt that here their discipline and mastery of their horses went for little. They could charge through any number of the enemy, but the danger lay not in the charge but after it. The Arab tactics of throwing themselves down only to stab the horses as they rode over them, and then rising up cutting and thrusting in their midst, were strange and bewildering to them.

"I am game to charge a dozen squadrons of cavalry one after the other," a trooper said as they sat round the fire on the night of the 9th of March, "and if we had orders to go at a square of infantry I should be ready to go, although I might not like the job; but as for these slippery black beggars, the less we have to do with them the better I shall be pleased. You go at them, and you think you have got it all your own way, and then before you can say knife there they are yelling and shouting and sticking those ugly spears into you and your horses, and dancing round until you don't fairly know what you are up to. There ain't nothing natural or decent about it."

There was a general murmur of assent.

"We shall know more about their ways next time," another said. "But lancers would be the best for this sort of work. There is no getting at these beggars on the ground with our swords, for the horses will always leap over a body, and so you cannot reach them with your swords; but a lance would do the business well. I don't care much for lances for regular work, but for this sort of fighting there is no doubt they are the real thing. Well, there is one thing, if we get among the niggers this time we know what we have got to deal with, and up or down there will be no mercy shown."

On the 10th the Royal Highlanders marched out six miles towards Tamai and formed an encampment there, defending it with bushes interlaced with wire, this kind of defence being known among the natives as a zareba. The next afternoon the rest of the infantry marched out and joined them. Next morning the cavalry moved out, and in the afternoon the whole force started, the cavalry thrown out ahead. A few shots were exchanged with parties of the enemy, but there was no serious fighting. The march was slow, for the ground was thickly covered with bushes, through which the troops with the ambulance and commissariat camels moved but slowly. The sailors had very hard work dragging their guns through the deep sand, and it took four hours before they reached a spot suitable for encampment, within two miles of the enemy's position.

The spot selected for the halt was a space free from bushes, and large enough to afford room for the encampment and to leave a clear margin of some fifty yards wide between it and the bushes. As soon as the column halted the cavalry and part of the infantry took up their position as outposts to prevent a surprise on the part of the enemy, and the rest set to work to cut down bushes and drag them across the sand to form a fresh zareba. When this was completed the cavalry trotted back to the post held on the previous night, as they would be useless in case of a night attack, and their horses might suffer from a distant fire of the enemy.

Inside the zareba the greatest vigilance was observed. Fully ten thousand determined enemies lay but a short distance away, and might creep up through the bushes and make a sudden onslaught at any time. The moon was full, and its light would show any object advancing across the open space. Had it not been for this the general would not have been justified in encamping at so short a distance from the enemy. The march had been a short one, but the heat had been great and the dust terrible, and the troops threw themselves down on the ground exhausted when the work of constructing the zareba was completed; but after a short rest they took up their posts in readiness to repel an attack.

During the early part of the night all remained under arms. But Commander Rolfe of the Royal Navy crept out at the rear of the camp, gained the bushes, and crawled among them until he came within sight of the enemy. He saw them in great numbers sitting round their fires or stretched upon the ground, and returned to camp with the news that whatever might be the case later on, certainly no attack was meditated at present. The greater part of the troops were thereupon allowed to lie down and get what sleep they could.

The cavalry felt much anxiety respecting those they had left behind them; but the moon was sufficiently bright to permit signals to be flashed to them from the camp, and they learnt to their satisfaction that all was quiet.