CHAPTER XI THE AVENGING OF GORDON THE last year of this admirably planned and organised campaign had now dawned. Sir Herbert Kitchener's advanced post was at Ed Damer, about seven miles above the point at which the Nile receives its confluent, the Atbara. To his keen and far-reaching eye the end was doubtless already in sight. But not a chance was to be thrown away, not a single needless peril was to be risked. Warned by the threatening movements of the Dervishes in the neighbourhood of Dongola, the British commander applied at the beginning of 1898 for reinforcements, and the first two months of the year were spent in massing a powerful and well-equipped army for the final descent upon Mahdism. At the beginning of March the advanced post was withdrawn from Ed Damer, which had been destroyed, and was established at Fort Atbara in the northern angle of the two rivers. Between that point and Berber, twenty-three miles north, was stationed the army with which it was proposed to meet the threatened attack of Osman Digna and Mahmud. This threatened attack of Mahmud on the Anglo-Egyptian forces, however, became ultimately an attack of the AngloEgyptian forces upon Mahmud. His strength and his whereabouts were for the moment alike unknown. His force, for all they knew, might have numbered anything from 10,000 to twice that number. It was known that he had taken over his men from Metemmeh, which had hitherto been his headquarters, to join those of Osman at Shendy. De tachments of the latter, it was reported, had begun to drift northward, but whether this was really in preparation for an attack on Berber was at present in doubt. The Sirdar, however, took his own means of ascertaining the truth. Having been joined by the last detachment of his troops, who had made a magnificent forced march from Abu Dis, a distance of 118 miles, within four days, he struck his camp at Debeika on 12th March, and advanced up the Nile to Damarli, which he again quitted on the 16th of the month for Kenur, a few miles further up the river. Here he completed the concentration of his forces, and on the 20th March moved on to Fort Atbara, to which place, as above stated, his advanced guard had already been retired. At Kenur the Anglo-Egyptian army had received, and been overjoyed by, the report that Mahmud was before them on the Atbara river. He had seized Hudi ford, it was said, some seven miles from the junction of the two rivers, and to Hudi they were to push forward at once. They were doomed, however, to disappointment. Hudi was reached, and Ras-elHudi, a few miles further on, but not a Dervish was to be seen. At Ras-el-Hudi the forces were chafing with impatience for nearly a fortnight. It was still impossible to locate the enemy, and the problem of maintaining a force of 13,000 men, who had left Kenur with the expectation of fighting the next day or the day after, was becoming a serious one. The really formidable enemy was not the Dervish but the Sudanese desert, and that foe had never been so formidable as now. That Mahmud and his army must be somewhere near was quite certain, for their cavalry was seen almost daily, and they were assuredly camped somewhere on the Atbara, for there was nowhere else whence they could obtain water. On the 27th of March a reconnaissance of the opposite bank of the Atbara was carried as high up as to Menawi, some 18 miles distant, but no trace of the Dervishes was to be discovered. At last, on the 30th March, General Hunter XI.] MAHMUD AT NAKHEILA 173 went out with a force of cavalry, the horse battery, and four Maxims, while two battalions of infantry and a field battery were advanced to Khor Abadar to support him. He returned in the evening bringing with him the solution of the mystery. He had simply pushed on until he reached Mahmud's position: he had ridden up to within 300 yards of it, and looked in. Mahmud was at Nakheila, 18 miles away, encamped in a position facing the open desert, and with the dry bed of the Atbara in its rear. Around it ran an impracticable-looking zariba, reported-though its size ultimately proved to have been exaggerated-to be three miles long, and within the circuit of the zariba was a triple trench, from which its defenders could deliver fire in three tiers upon an assaulting force. For the next two days the plans of the Sirdar remained a matter of speculation. He could hold his own position, of course, if he chose, and starve the Dervishes out. But there was the question of supplies to be considered, and the question of prestige. The prolonged victualling of a force 13,000 strong, and 17 miles from their base at Fort Atbara, by camel transport alone, was a work of the gravest difficulty; and even had it not been, the spectacle of so large a British force remaining inactive at a distance of only 18 miles from a barbarous enemy would be the reverse of edifying to the native mind. Again, a defeat of the Dervishes in the open field would go much further to demoralise them than their dispersal or retirement under pressure of starvation. Under the circumstances, therefore, the Sirdar resolved to attack. On the 3rd April his forces quitted the scene of their weary wait at Ras-el-Hudi, and pushed on to Abadar. By the 5th they were at Umdabieh. There they rested a day, and on the evening of the 7th, Maundy Thursday, they were to start for their last march before closing with the enemy. At six o'clock the order was given to advance, and the troops issued from Umdabieh, and set out in the gathering darkness in the direc tion of Mahmud's camp. At a little after four they halted for a couple of hours' sleep. By six on the morning of Good Friday they were within a mile and a half of the enemy's position; at 6.20 A.M. the attack commenced. The artillery opened fire on the Dervish zariba, and a fierce and destructive cannonade was kept up, the Dervishes replying but feebly. Their cavalry formed up on their right, and made as though they would charge; but the fire of the Maxim was too hot, and they retired again within their defences. At length, after the gunners had been busy for an hour and twenty minutes, the artillery was silent; the order was given for an advance along the whole line, and the Anglo-Egyptian force of 12,000 pressed sternly and steadily forward towards the stronghold on their front. Maxwell's brigade, consisting of the 12th, 13th, and 14th Sudanese and the 8th Egyptian, was on the right; next to it marched General Macdonald with the 9th, 10th, and 11th Sudanese; the centre attack was made by the British brigade, having the Camerons in line along its whole front, with the Lincolns, Seaforths, and Warwicks behind them; while in the left rear was Lewis's three-battalion brigade, consisting of the 3rd, 4th, and 7th Egyptians. The Camerons led the advance, and were the first of the British troops-if indeed they did not run a dead-heat with the Seaforths-to force the position. Halting on the top of a ridge only 300 yards from the zariba, they poured into the Dervish camp a deadly volley, to which its defenders vigorously responded. Then rushing forward till they reached the zariba, they halted before its apparently impenetrable hedge; and then it was seized, plucked up, dashed down, scattered aside, and the Highlanders-Seaforths mingling with the Camerons-poured in through yawning gaps, and all was a mêlée of charging British and flying and firing, and again flying and firing, Dervishes. The slaughter within the inclosure was hideous; for by this time the Lincolns had forced their way in on the right, and the Maxim battery, galloping up XI.] BATTLE OF THE ATBARA 175 close to the stockade, were strewing the enemy's left with their dead. Onward and onward the assailants pressed, clearing the ground of every living man as they went; onward till they had bayoneted their way through the whole encampment, and stood on the high bank of the Atbara behind it. But all was not over yet; for as the wretched fugitives scrambled down into the sandy river-bed in the attempt to escape, they were cut off and laid low in heaps by the men of Lewis's brigade, who had skirted the camp on the left, and reached the bank of the Atbara before them. To the native troops, Sudanese and Egyptian, belonged, it was believed, the honour of being the first into the Dervish camp, their line formation favouring them. Their loss was heavier, for their firing was less deadly than that of the Camerons; but they never wavered, and their pluck and steadiness afforded a new proof of the completeness of their military education, and redounded to their credit, and to the credit of those British instructors who had patiently and skilfully fashioned them into soldiers. The engagement lasted forty minutes only, but it was the most decisive that had yet been fought-the direst blow to Mahdism that had as yet been delivered. The British killed numbered but 24, and their wounded 104; the Egyptian and Sudanese losses were heavier. But it is computed that the enemy left more than 3,000 dead on the field of battle, among them nearly all their Emirs, including Wad-el-Bishara, who was governor of Dongola in 1896. Mahmud himself was taken prisoner by some men of the 10th Sudanese. But apart from their actual losses by shell and bullet and bayonet, the results to Mahmud's army were overwhelmingly disastrous, and the event bore testimony to the strategic wisdom of the Sirdar in giving battle to the Dervishes at this particular spot. Had he closed with Mahmud on the Nile, the defeated army could have escaped up the stream. Had he done so on the Atbara nearer to its confluence with the Nile, it would still have been possible for fugitives to make their way across the narrow apex of the |