Five ranks deep, four thousand of them deployed in irregular lines along a hollow in our front, led by mounted sheikhs and dervishes, clad in richly-embroidered Mahdi camises, and posted at intervals of twenty-five yards apart—conspicuous among them Moussa Abu Hagil, in his Darfour shirt of mail.
They were posted on strong ground westward of the wells, which our soldiers, sorely athirst, were full of anxiety to reach; and as the camels were mostly to be left in the rear, they were knee-haltered, and their stores and saddles used to strengthen the parapets of the detached fortlets.
In the fighting square which now advanced were only one hundred camels for carrying litters, stores, water, and spare ammunition.
The Heavies on this eventful morning were led by Colonel Talbot; the Guards by Colonel Boscawen; the gallant Barrow led the Mounted Infantry, and Lord Beresford the slender Naval Brigade.
Men were being knocked over now on every hand, and among the first who fell was Lord St. Vincent, of the 17th Lancers, who received a wound that proved mortal. Under Barrow the Mounted Infantry went darting forward, and the Arab skirmishers fell back before them, vanishing into the long wavy grass from amid which the smoke of their rifles spirted up. Skene had the spike of his helmet carried away by one ball; his bridle hand sharply grazed by another, but he bound his handkerchief about the wound and rode on.
By this time nearly an hour had elapsed since the zereba and its fortlets had been left in the rear, and only two miles of ground had been covered, and all the while our troops had been under a fire from the sable warriors on the hill slopes.
'Halt!' was now sounded by the bugles, and the faces of the square were redressed and post was to be taken on a slope, which the enemy would have to ascend when attacking.
Their total strength was now estimated at 14,000 men!
Our dead men were left where they fell; but frequent were the halts for picking up the wounded. Yet steady as if on parade in a home barrack square, our little band advanced, over stony crests, through dry water-courses, like some hugh machine, compact and slow, firm and regular, amid the storm of bullets poured into it from the front, from the flanks, and eventually from the rear.
At first the enemy swarmed in dark masses all along our front, and for two or three miles on either flank groups of their horsemen, with floating garments and glittering spears, could be seen watching the advance of the hollow square from black peaks of splintered rock. 'There was no avenue of retreat now for us,' wrote one, 'and no one thought of such a thing. "Let us do or die!" (in the words of Bruce's war song) was the emotion of all; and Colonel Barrow, C.B., with his "handful" of Hussars, became engaged about the same time as the square.'