Halfway they had to pass up the sixth cataract, there losing two days more, and not till the 28th had they left the rapids behind them. The noonday sun was shining brightly when the English soldiers and their officers saw Khartum straight in front of them on the point between the White and Blue Niles. All glasses were turned on the tall palace; every one was in the greatest excitement and dared hardly breathe, much less speak. There stood Gordon's palace, but no flag waved from the roof.
The boats go on, but no shouts of gladness greet their crews as long-looked-for rescuers. When they are within range the dervishes open fire, and wild troops intoxicated with victory gather on the bank. Khartum is in the hands of the Mahdi, and help has come 48 hours too late.
Two days before, January 26, the dervishes, furious at their continual losses and the obstinate resistance of the town, had flocked together for a final assault. The attack was made during the darkest hour of the night, after the moon had set. The defenders were worn out and rendered indifferent by the pangs of hunger. The dervishes rushed into the town, filling the streets and lanes with their savage howling. It was then that Gordon gathered together his twenty remaining faithful soldiers and servants, and dashed sword in hand out of the palace. It was growing light in the east, and the outlines of bushes and thickets on the Blue Nile were becoming clear. The small party took their way across an open square to the Austrian Mission church, which had previously been put in order for a last refuge. On the way they were met by a crowd of dervishes and were killed to the last man. Foremost among the slain was Gordon.
The Conquest of the Sudan
The Mahdi did not long enjoy the fruits of his victory, for he died five months to the day after the fall of Khartum. His successor, Abdullah, bore the title of Khalifa, and for thirteen years was a scourge to the unfortunate land. The tribes of the Sudan, tired of the oppression of Egypt, had welcomed the Mahdi as a deliverer, but they had only exchanged Turkish pashas for a tyrant unmatched in cruelty and shamelessness. Abdullah plundered and exhausted the country, but with the money and agricultural produce he extorted from the people he was able to maintain a splendid army always ready for the field. His capital was Omdurman, where the Mahdi was buried under a dome; but he did not fortify the town, for long before any Christian dogs could advance so far their bones would whiten in the sands of Nubia.
Yet after many years the hour of vengeance was at hand. The British Government had taken the pacification of the Sudan in hand, and in 1898 an army composed of British and Egyptian troops was advancing quietly and surely up the Nile. There was no need to hurry, and every step was made with prudence and consideration. The leader, General Kitchener, the last man to send a letter to Gordon, made his plans with such foresight and skill that he could calculate two years in advance almost the very day when Khartum and Omdurman would be in his hands.
At the Atbara, the great tributary of the Nile which flows down from the mountains of Abyssinia, Kitchener inflicted his first great defeat on the Khalifa's army in a bloody battle. From Atbara the troops pushed on to Metemma without further fighting, and on August 28 they were only four days' march from Khartum.
The green of acacia and mimosa is now conspicuous on the banks of the river, which is very high. The grey gunboats pass slowly up the Nile in the blazing sun, and the troops push on as steadily and as surely as they have from the start of the expedition. Small parties of mounted dervishes are seen in the far distance. The country becomes more diversified, and the route runs through clumps of bushes and between hillocks. A short distance in front are seen white tents, flags, and horsemen, and the roll of drums is heard. It is the Khalifa calling his men to the fight; but at the last moment the position is abandoned, the dervishes retire, and Kitchener's army continues its march.
At length the vaulted dome over the Mahdi's grave beside the Nile bank rises above the southern horizon, and round about it are perceived the mud houses and walls of Omdurman. Between the town and the attacking army stretches a level sandy plain scantily clothed with yellow grass; and here took place a battle which will not be forgotten for centuries throughout the Sudan.
On the morning of September 2, Kitchener's forces are drawn up in order of battle. Single horsemen emerge from the dust on the hillocks, increase in number, and then come in clouds like locusts—an army of 50,000 dervishes. Their fanatical war-cry rises up to heaven, gathers strength, grows louder, and rolls along like a storm wind coming in from the sea. They charge at a furious pace in an unbroken line, and it looks as though they would ride like a crushing avalanche right over the enemy. But the moment they come within range fire issues from thousands of rifles, and the dervishes find themselves in a perfect hail of bullets. Their ranks are thinned, but they check their course only for a moment, and ride on in blind fury and with a bravery which only religious conviction can inspire. The English machine guns scatter their death-bolts so rapidly that a continuous roll of thunder is heard, and the dervishes fall in heaps like ripe corn before the scythe. The fallen ranks are constantly replaced by fresh reinforcements, but at last the dervishes have had enough and beat a retreat. At once Kitchener pressed on to Omdurman, but the bloody day is not yet at an end. The dervish horsemen rally yet once more. The Khalifa's standard is planted in the ground on a mound, and beside it the Prophet's green banner calls the faithful together for a last desperate struggle. The English and their Egyptian allies fight with admirable courage, and the dervishes strike with a bravery and contempt of death to which no words can do justice. Under the holy banner a detachment advances into the fire, wavers, is mown down, and falls, and almost before the smoke of the powder has cleared away, another presses forward on the track of the slain, only to meet the same fate and join their comrades in the happy hunting-grounds of eternity.