With Kitchener in the Soudan: A Story of Atbara and Omdurman

by G. A. Henty

Here the Soudanese were joined by the irregulars who had first crossed, and a terrible fire was maintained, from the sand hills, upon the crowded mass on the bare sand, cut off from all retreat by the deep river. Some tried to swim across, to join their friends on the west bank. A few succeeded in doing so, among them the Emir who had given battle to Colonel Parsons' force, near Gedareh.

Many took refuge from the fire by standing in the river, up to their necks. Some four hundred succeeded in escaping, by a ford, to a small island lower down; but they found no cover there, and after suffering heavily from the musketry fire, the survivors, three hundred strong, surrendered.

Major Ferguson's company, however, was still exposed to a heavy fire, turned upon them by the force on the other side of the river. He himself was severely wounded, and a third of his men hit. The Maxims were accordingly carried over the river to the island, and placed so as to command the west bank, which they soon cleared of the riflemen.

Over five hundred Arabs lay dead on the two islands. Two thousand one hundred and seventy-five fighting men surrendered, and several hundred women and children. Fadil, with the force that had escaped, crossed the desert to Rung, on the White Nile, where on the 22nd of January they surrendered to the English gunboats; their leader, with ten or twelve of his followers only, escaping to join the Khalifa.

Our casualties were heavy. Twenty-five non-commissioned officers and men were killed; one British officer, six native officers, and one hundred and seventeen non-commissioned officers and men wounded of the 10th Soudanese, out of a total strength of five hundred and eleven. The remaining casualties were among the irregulars.

Never was there a better proof of the gallantry of the black regiments of Egypt; for, including the commander and medical officer, there were but five British officers, and two British sergeants, to direct and lead them.

After the battle of Rosaires, there was a lull in the fighting on the east of the White Nile. The whole country had been cleared of the Dervishes, and it was now time for the Sirdar, who had just returned from England, to turn his attention to the Khalifa. The latter was known to be near El Obeid, where he had now collected a force, of whose strength very different reports were received.

Gregory, whose exertions in the fight, and the march through the scrub from Karkoj, had brought on a slight return of fever, went down in the gunboat, with the wounded, to Omdurman. Zaki was with him, but as a patient. He had been hit through the leg, while charging forward with the Soudanese. At Omdurman, Gregory fell into regular work again. So many of the officers of the Egyptian battalions had fallen in battle, or were down with fever, that Colonel Wingate took him as his assistant, and his time was now spent in listening to the stories of tribesmen; who, as soon as the Khalifa's force had passed, had brought in very varying accounts of his strength. Then there were villagers who had complaints to make of robbery, of ill usage--for this the Arab irregulars, who had been disbanded after the capture of Omdurman, were largely responsible. Besides these, there were many petitions by fugitives, who had returned to find their houses occupied, and their land seized by others.

Gregory was constantly sent off to investigate and decide in these disputes, and was sometimes away for a week at a time. Zaki had recovered rapidly and, as soon as he was able to rise, accompanied his master; who obtained valuable assistance from him as, while Gregory was hearing the stories of witnesses, Zaki went quietly about the villages, talking to the old men and women, and frequently obtained evidence that showed that many of the witnesses were perjured; and so enabled his master to give decisions which astonished the people by their justness.

Indeed, the reports of the extraordinary manner in which he seemed able to pick out truth from falsehood, and to decide in favour of the rightful claimant, spread so rapidly from village to village, that claimants who came in to Colonel Wingate often requested, urgently, that the young Bimbashi should be sent out to investigate the matter.