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however, on my right was working his regulation MartiniMetford carbine with perhaps more moral effect than anything else, when a huge Sudanese, who was evidently the leader, crept round to his right, and finding myself, after shooting my fourth man, comparatively neglected, I turned to give him my fifth round. I took a steady aim at about seven yards, but missed fire. The magazine had accidentally become cut off. The Shawish, however, plied his carbine vigorously, and I got a cart ridge into the chamber and was able to look up just as the tall black leader fell dead almost on the top of us, and the remainder turned and fled. We jumped back on to the bank, and, after hurling insults at our retreating foe, we started to run back to camp, scarcely able to credit our escape.

There had been about thirty riflemen, as far as we could judge-tall, finely-built Baggaras and blacks, all wearing the usual dervish dress, but without the coloured patches.

The whole affair had scarcely occupied a minute. Seeing us to be only two men, they made straight for us, evidently anticipating no trouble. But, having fortunately escaped their first volley, we were protected by the river-bank, and at the same time had every opportunity of taking a perfectly steady aim. Their atTheir attempt to encircle us was defeated by our having our backs on the river. Bullets flew all round as they discharged their

VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXXXVIII.

muskets in our faces, but we were absolutely untouched.

The Shawish, who was somewhat excited, had simply fired off his carbine as fast as he could, and, until he killed their Emir dead, his fire does not appear to have been effective. The dervish powder makes a terrible amount of smoke, and, after their first volley, owing to the absence of light or breeze inside the burned forest, everything was so much obscured that we could only see plainly the men who pushed to the very front, the rest of them showing up indistinctly in the smoke as they leaped about among the branches, and fired at us some ten yards away.

On reaching our bivouac we told our story, and camels were at once brought in and preparations made for pursuit. They had heard our shots, but not those of the dervishes, and had not the smallest idea of what had been going on. If only M'Murdo had been with me instead of my excellent Shawish, the dervishes would indeed have received a shock.

As soon as we got away we proceeded on foot to the spot where we had been attacked, leaving the camels outside in the open. There was blood upon the ground and traces of several bodies having been dragged. Following up the retreating tracks, which were found to be those of twentyfour sound men, we soon came to a place where they had hastily buried one of their number, and, under a thin covering of sand, we found the body of the big black Baggara,

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the last to fall, shot through the head from front to rear. We buried him decently, but the jungle was now so thick that we could not pursue our search for the remainder, so, joining our camels outside, we pushed along parallel to the river towards a spot where our guide assured us they would probably cross. On arriving here-the name of the place was Obir-at about 4.30 P.M., we left the servants and a soldier with the camels behind a ridge, and ran on with the remainder towards the river. Here we were just too late, however, to complete our victory by demanding the surrender of our late assailants, and great was our disappointment when we saw some of them climbing up the opposite bank, 800 yards away, and four men ferrying themselves over on some logs.

The remainder, who had already crossed, were waiting in the bushes, and in reply our invitations to come back and surrender, opened fire upon us.

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In reply to this, M'Murdo dropped one of the hindmost fugitives as he was in the act of firing, and we thought one other fell as he ran up the bank, but it was too far for very accurate shooting, and finally they all got under cover, and the battle was at an end.

As they absolutely refused to come to us-we were now eight strong in the fighting line, besides the cook and the servants and one soldier with the camels, and as we had no means of going to them, we

finally left them and resumed our journey.

Two days later we met Sheikh Abd El Azim with 80 camelmen proceeding with orders to clear both banks of the Atbara as far as Goz Regeb. We explained what had happened, and, on his return, he brought in 27 men out of a total of about 80, who had stayed about Ogir after the battle of the Atbara. The remainder escaped, but the prisoners said that, when our tents were seen on the opposite bank, a party of 30 men was sent to kill us while we slept and capture our camels, which were urgently required to enable them to cross the waterless desert which lay between them and Khartum. They said they suddenly came upon two men, an Englishman and a Sudanese, whom they took to be an outpost, and who shot so many of their party that, when their leader fell, they decided to withdraw. He was dead, so they stopped, as soon as they dared, to bury him, and, leaving the others, some said four and some said five,-who were all shot in the body, concealed in the bushes, they got away as fast as they could to their improvised ferry.

I was using a 303 MartiniMetford sporting carbine, with ordinary solid service bullets, and, in order to make certain of getting a man with every shot, which was my only possible chance of escape, I was careful to give each his bullet fair in the body, so that, as he collapsed and was drawn to the rear, I was able

to deal as promptly with the next.

Four days later, early in the morning we rode over the site of the battle of the Atbara, and the same afternoon we reached the Nile at Dakhila, now the site of the Atbara bridge. Our unexpected arrival with ten men, including cook and servants, out of the unknown, was the source of much amusement and surprise.

What I really wanted was to stay and see the impending fight at Omdurman, but it was not expected that this would take place for another two months, and, for various reasons, it was impossible for us to wait till then.

So after availing ourselves of an invitation to accompany the Commandant on a four days' trip on board a gunboat, the Zafi, to Metemma, Shendy, Kab El Habashi, where Lord Charles Beresford fought his action in 1884, and as far as Shabluka, where the sniping of the dervish riflemen made it desirable that we should go no farther, we turned northwards in a gunboat as far as railhead -the railway was laid into Dakhila the day we left, and then we made our way to Berber. Here we stayed five days until

the Sirdar arrived, after which we left in his comfortable travelling carriage for Abu Hamed and Wady Halfa.

Continually I had marched on foot and on camels across the "waterless sea," as this desert is known among the Arabs, always hoping for the day when I should go forward in earnest with the men whose preparation had been my constant care for 80 many years.

The monotony of our frontier life had been relieved from time to time by raids, and personally I was never dull, but it was a curious fate that after two years spent upon the Gordon Relief Expedition and the Ginnes-Kosheh operations with my British regiment, and ten years' service subsequently in the Egyptian Army, I should now have to turn my back upon the grand finale and return to read about it in the press. But 66 Destiny," the Arabs say, "strikes out of the darkness like a blind camel," and, in my disappointment, I could not help feeling some small measure of consolation in the reflection that, at any rate, my private battle of the 28th June had been worth the journey.

A PRIMITIVE DRAMA.

I.

A RENAISSANCE.

PROFESSOR STUMBELDORF'S discoveries would have ranked beside Darwin's, if he had not been eaten by the descendants of the Primitives. He himself was the supreme instance of his theory that evolution is never steadily progressive, but that it moves in cycles, first upwards to a point of hypercivilisation, then downwards through physical and intellectual decay, shedding its healthy functions one by one until nothing is left but a kind of fertilising mould, out of which spring more primitive and vigorous forms of life-just as autumn leaves fertilise the seed-germs of a new year. The Professor's brains were thrown into the aboriginal pot, and his manuscript was employed to light the fire which cooked them. The episode was rather a cynical vindication of his theories. But Stumbeldorf lived for truth only.

Of Stumbeldorf's work nothing remains to modern science but what has filtered through a vague unscientific mind like mine.

The script points to a civilisation more advanced than that of the aboriginals of the present day. Yet it was Simian-there is no doubt of that. The rockfriezes and the references to the tail and the slighting comments about the Primitives who lived

in trees are collective proof enough. The frequent allusions to the Renaissance puzzled the Doctor at first. It seemed that the most extraordinary advance in civilisation had taken place in a single generation, and that the elders, whose philosophy might have been indited by Miss Marie Corelli, remembered a time when they ate raw food and had hardly discovered the use of fire, when the head priest himself only knew a hundred and thirty nouns and fifteen verbs. The Professor at first believed that he had chanced upon a record of phenomenal longevity. How otherwise could he explain the suit for damages brought by Slug against Ug, the author of an abstruse work on Monism, for laying a rock on his tail while he was sleeping "in the days of the cave-dwelling"?

The simple hieroglyphics of the Primitives had offered Stumbeldorf no difficulty from the beginning, and after a few months of research he was able by a happy chance to discover a clue to the Oultaie text in which the Unt, or the sacred scriptures of the Intellectuals, was written. It appears that the Primitive character was used by the Intellectuals for many years after the Renais

sance.

Had Stumbeldorf lived he

would have initiated me into the mysteries of the Oultaie and the Unt. All that I know and can hand on was communicated in a single night. Before another day had closed he was destined to the stew of the Huri Huri Hua Huans, whose ancestors destroyed Flinden and the Intellectuals, and I was flying precipitately to the

coast.

The Doctor stumbled on the clue to the Oultaie text in the edict pillars of Sopwis, on which the Laws and Penalties were inscribed in double lines in the old and reformed characters. When he had mastered it he applied himself to the Unt. He discovered that the Renaissance had been immediate. The first book of the Oultaie scriptures told how Out swam over to the Island of Yinn and came back enlightened after eating of the nut. He grew in power and wisdom, and little by little he revealed the secret to his clan, until all became initiate, and the new cult grew up. In the first generation these Intellectuals had established schools and law courts, but they jealously preserved their knowledge for their own sept.

Afraid lest the Primitives should discover the secret of wisdom, they deforested the Island of Yinn, but first they carried over a few seedlings to the mainland. Around these they built a wall, and around this wall a second and a third. And in the inner enclosure they built the temple of Out within the sacred grove. The shrine was not visible from the perimeter, beyond which no Primi

tive might approach. The uninitiated prostrated themselves upon the fosse, beating their heads upon the ground, and cried aloud to the gods within.

And if the shadow of an Intellectual fell upon them from the wall they counted themselves blessed. For it was known that the gods descended into the precincts and took part in the rites. And on still nights they could hear the call for the holy dew which refreshed the grove at all seasons. And they were aware that if any power of evil could draw one of them into the enclosure and instil into him the thirst of madness, a blight would fall upon him and his race for ever.

But all this reverence and awe was not the growth of a day. The Primitives were subdued with miracles, swift healing, and retribution, and sundry executions. Stumbeldorf could read this everywhere. The supreme penalty was inscribed on all the caves: "He shall hang by his tail from a tree until he dies." And there were pictures of it on the rock-friezes. The hands and feet of the victims were cut off lest they should untie the tail by which they swung,-or it may have been, as Stumbeldorf suggested, lest they should escape if they fell to earth. The Stiff-tails of Faltu were secured with a rattan wisp, and they are represented as swinging thus in all the friezes.

There was malice in this tail-hanging. It meant more than the mere prolonging of the agony,-it was symbolical. There was no doubt that the

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