They returned, therefore, empty-handed, and returned, as it chanced, just in time to have a hand in certain great events which were about to take place on Atbara River.
Meanwhile Bimbashi Jones slept very soundly and dreamed very absurdly. He dreamed that he had arrived at Atbara in the nick of time. A terrific battle had raged for many hours, and the result up to the moment of his arrival had been most disastrous to the Anglo-Egyptian forces. The Khalifa himself and two of his emirs, hearing of the bimbashi's approach, had personally pursued the hero almost up to the muzzles of the British guns, in order to prevent the great disaster to their hosts which his arrival among the British and Egyptian forces would be sure to entail. He would lead them, the Khalifa knew, to victory, once he placed himself at their head, and triumph would at the last moment be snatched from his hand. For, indeed, every English officer from the Sirdar to the youngest subaltern of a British regiment was already either killed or incapacitated. Our troops were on the point of collapsing. Already the Soudanese and Egyptian regiments were throwing down their rifles and looking over their shoulders for the safest point of the compass, with an eye to successful flight. Far away on the left a long line of hussars disappeared in the dim distance, pursued by countless hosts of Bagghara horsemen, shouting "Allah," and shaking spears like leaves in the south-west wind. English sergeants went along the lines with tears in their eyes, crying like babies, entreating, imploring, threatening; the Sirdar sat with his back to a gun-carriage, badly wounded.
"The Khalifa himself and two of his emirs pursued the hero."
Page 87.
"Is that you, Bimbashi Jones?" he cried faintly. "Thank Heaven! hurrah! We shall save the show yet.—Orderly, ride round and spread the news quickly; say Bimbashi Jones is here and about to take the field. Let the enemy know it too; let Mahmoud know it—the rascal! He would attack us before Jones could arrive, would he?"
The effect of the news was electric—nay, magic! From company to company, from regiment to regiment, from brigade to brigade, the word went round. Then a low murmur began to spread; it grew and grew; like the sound of the wind in the tree-tops it widened and thickened, until the whole air was cleft and shivered with the mighty roar that spread from end to end of the battle plain. "Bimbashi Jones has arrived! The bimbashi has taken the field! Die, Dervishes, like dogs!"
And a wail, like the cry of a million souls in torment, rose from the Dervish ranks. "The bimbashi has come! We are lost! Run for your lives, ye servants of Mohammed, for your lives!"
The Khalifa heard it as he sat and trembled in his palace at Omdurman, to which he had quickly returned, seeing that the bimbashi had escaped him. (Jones, it will be observed, had, like most dreamers, annihilated time and space.) The Khalifa ordered his best white Arab steed, and mounted it, and rode forth to learn what the noise was about. Jones met him as he and his troops chased the Dervish host towards Khartoum, and shouted to him to yield.
"I surrender to no one but the Sirdar or Bimbashi Jones!" cried Abdullah, who, during the late pursuit, had not caught sight of the hero's face.