construction were indefatigable, and as fast as the materials came up, it was pushed on towards the Atbara. Complete as had been the victory on that river, the Sirdar saw that the force which had been sufficient to defeat the twenty thousand men under Mahmud was not sufficiently strong for the more onerous task of coping with three times that number, fighting under the eye of the Khalifa, and certain to consist of his.best and bravest troops. He therefore telegraphed home for another British brigade and additional artillery, with at least one regiment of cavalry—an arm in which the Egyptian army was weak.
Preparations were at once made for complying with the request. The 21st Lancers, 1st battalion of Grenadier Guards, 2nd battalion of the Rifle Brigade, 2nd battalion of the 5th Lancashire Fusiliers, a field-battery, a howitzer- battery, and two forty-pounders to batter the defences of Omdurman should the Khalifa take his stand, were sent. A strong detachment of the Army Service Corps and the Royal Army Medical Corps was to accompany them, but they had yet some months to wait, for the advance would not be made until the Nile was full and the gun-boats could ascend the cataract. However, there was much to be done, and the troops did not pass the time in idleness. Atbara Fort was to be the base, and here the Egyptian battalions built huts and storehouses. The Soudanese brigades returned to Berber, and the transport of provisions and stores for them was thus saved. The British at Darmali were made as comfortable as possible, and no effort was spared to keep them in good health during the ensuing hot weather. A small theatre was constructed, and here smoking concerts were held. There was also a race meeting, and one of the steamers took parties of the men who were most affected by the heat for a trip down the Nile. They were practised in long marches early in the morning, and although, of course, there was some illness, the troops on the whole bore the heat well. Had there been a prospect of an indefinitely long stay the result might have been otherwise, but they knew that in a few months they would be engaged in even sterner work than the last battle, that Khartoum was their goal, and with its capture the power of the Khalifa would be broken for ever and Gordon avenged.
Early in April the railway reached Abadia, a few miles from Berber, and in a short time a wonderful transformation took place here. From a sandy desert, with scarce a human being in sight, it became the scene of a busy industry. Stores were sorted and piled as they came up by rail. Three gun-boats arrived in sections, and these were put together. They were stronger and much better defended by steel plates than the first gun-boats, and each of them carried two six-pounder quick-firing guns, a small howitzer, four Maxims, and a searchlight. They were, however, much slower than the old boats, and could do very little in the way of towing.
Besides these, eight steel double-deck troop barges were brought up in sections and put together. Three Egyptian battalions came up from Merawi to aid in the work, which not only included building the gun-boats and barges, but executing the repairs to all the native craft and putting them in a thoroughly serviceable state. In June the railway reached the Atbara, and for the first time for two years and a half the officers who had superintended its construction had a temporary rest. The stores were now transferred from Abadia to the Atbara, and two trains ran every day, each bringing up something like two hundred tons of stores. In the middle of July two Egyptian battalions left Atbara and proceeded up the Nile, one on each bank, cutting down trees and piling them for fuel for the steamers. As the river rose, four steamers came up from Dongola, together with a number of sailing boats, and in the beginning of August the whole flotilla, consisting of ten gun-boats, five unarmed steamers, eight troop barges, and three or four hundred sailing boats, were all assembled.
By this time the reinforcements from home were all at Cairo, and their stores had already been sent up. It was arranged that they Avere to come by half-battalions, by squadrons, and by batteries, each one day behind the other. To make room for them, two Egyptian battalions were sent up to the foot of the Shabluka cataract. The six black battalions left Berber on July 30th, and arrived at Atbara the next day.
There were now four brigades in the infantry divisions instead of three, two battalions having been raised from the Dervishes taken at the battle of Atbara. These were as eager as any to join in the fight against their late comrades. This was scarcely surprising. The Baggara, the tyrants of the desert, are horsemen. The infantry were for the most part drawn from the conquered tribes. They had enlisted in the Khalifa's force partly because they had no other means of subsistence, partly from their innate love of fighting. They had, in fact, been little better than slaves; and their condition as soldiers in the Egyptian army was immeasurably superior to that which they had before occupied.
Broadwood, with nine squadrons of Egyptian cavalry, was already on the western bank of the river opposite Atbara, and was to be joined at Metemmeh by the camel corps and another squadron of horse from Merawi. On the 3rd of August the six Soudanese battalions left Fort Atbara for the point of concentration a few miles below the cataract. To the sides of each gun-boat were attached two of the steel barges; behind each were two native craft. All were filled as tightly as they could be crammed with troops. They were packed as in slavers, squatting by the side of each other as closeby as sardines in a box. The seven steamers and the craft they took with them contained six thousand men, so crowded that a spectator remarked that planks might have been laid on their heads, and that you could have walked about on them, while another testified that he could not have shoved a walking-stick between them anywhere. White men could not have supported it for an hour, but these blacks and Egyptians had a hundred miles to go, and the steamers could not make more than a knot an hour against the rapid stream, now swollen to its fullest.
While they were leaving, the first four companies of the Rifle Brigade arrived. Every day boats laden with stores went forward, every day white troops came up. Vast as was the quantity of stores sent off, the piles at Atbara did not seem to diminish. Ninety days' provisions, forage, and necessaries for the whole force had been accumulated there, and as fast as these were taken away they were replaced by others from Berber. Like everyone connected with the transport or store department, Gregory had to work from daybreak till dark. Accustomed to a warm climate, light in figure, without an ounce of spare flesh, he was able to support the heat, dust, and fatigue better than most, and as he himself said, it was less trying to be at work even in the blazing sun than to lie listless and sweating under the shade of a blanket. There was no necessity now to go down the line to make enquiries as to the progress of the stores or of the laden craft on their way up; the telegraph was established, and the Sirdar at Atbara knew the exact position of every one of the units between Cairo and himself, and from every station he received messages constantly and dispatched his orders as frequently. There was no hitch whatever. The arrangements were all so perfect that the vast machine, with its numerous parts, moved with the precision of clock-work. Everything was up to time. For a train or steamer, or even a native boat, to arrive half an hour after the time calculated for it was almost unheard of.
The Sirdar's force of will seemed to communicate itself to every officer under him, and it is safe to say that never before was an expedition so perfectly organized and so marvellously carried out. At Atbara the Sirdar saw to everything himself. A brief word of commendation to those working under him cheered them through long days of toil—an equally curt reproof depressed them to the depths. Twice when Gregory was directing some of the blacks piling large cases as they were emptied from the train, anathematizing the stupid, urging on the willing, and himself occasionally lending a hand in order to show how it should be done, the Sirdar, who, unknown to him, had been looking on, rode up and said shortly, 'You are doing well, Mr. Hilliard!' and he felt that his offence of jumping overboard had been condoned. General Hunter, himself indefatigable, had more occasion to notice Gregory's work, and his commendations were frequent and warm.
The lad had not forgotten the object with which he had come to the front. After Atbara he had questioned many of the prisoners who from their age might have fought at El Obeid, but none of these had done so. The forces of the Khalifa came and went as there was occasion for them. The Baggara were always under arms, but only when danger threatened were the great levies of foot assembled; for it would have been impossible, in the now desolate state of the Soudan, to find food for an army of a hundred thousand men. All agreed, however, that, with the exception of the Egyptian artillerymen, they heard that no single white man had escaped. Numbers of the black soldiers had been made slaves; the whites had perished—all save one had fallen on the field. That one had accompanied a black battalion who had held together, and, repulsing all attacks, had marched away. They had been followed, however, and after repeated attacks had dwindled away until they had finally been broken and massacred.
With the Khalifa's army were several emirs who had fought at El Obeid, and these would no doubt be able to tell him more; but none of those who were taken prisoners at the Atbara had heard of any white man having escaped the slaughter of Hicks's army.
Just as the general movement began, the force was joined by three companies of Soudanese. These had marched from Suakim to Berber, two hundred and eighty-eight miles, in fifteen days, an average of nineteen miles a day,—a record for
