'I am supposed to be on sick leave, sir, but I feel quite strong now, and shall be glad to join you if you will have me.'
' I can have no possible objection, Mr. Hilliard. I know that you did good service with Colonel Parsons, and it is quite possible that we shall find ourselves in as tight a place as he was. So many of our white officers have been sent down with fever that I am very short-handed, and shall be glad if you will temporarily serve as my assistant.'
On the 20th the news came that Fadil was crossing the river at Dakhila, twenty miles farther to the south. He himself had crossed, and the women and children had been taken over on a raft. On the 22nd the Darfur Sheik was sent off up the west bank to harass the Dervishes who had already crossed. On the 24th two gun-boats arrived with two hundred more men of the 10th Soudanese and a small detachment of the 9th. On the following day the little force started at five in the afternoon, and at eleven at night halted at a little village. At three in the morning they again advanced, and at eight o'clock came in contact with the Dervish outposts. Colonel Lewis had already learned that instead of half the Dervish force having crossed only one division had done so, and that he had by far the greater part of Fadil's army opposed to him. It was a serious matter to attack some four or five thousand men with so small a force at his disposal, for he had but half the 10th Soudanese, a handful of the 9 th, and two Maxim guns. As to the Darfur irregulars, no great reliance could be placed upon them.
As the force issued from the wood through which they had been marching, they saw the river in front of them. In its midst rose a large island a mile and a quarter long and more than three-quarters of a mile wide. There were clumps of sand-hills upon it. They had learned that the intervening stream was rapid but not deep, while that on the other side of the island was very deep, with a precipitous bank. It was upon this island that Fadil's force was established. The position was a strong one—the sand-hills rose from an almost flat plain a thousand yards away, and this would have to be crossed by the assailants without any shelter whatever. The Dervishes were bound to fight their hardest, as there was no possibility of escape if defeated. At nine o'clock the Soudanese and irregulars lined the bank and opened fire, while the two Maxims came into action. The Dervishes replied briskly, and it was soon evident that at so long a range they could not be driven from their position. Several fords were found, and the irregulars, supported by a company of the 10th, crossed the river and took up a position two hundred yards in advance to cover the passage of the rest. These crossed with some difficulty, for the water was three and a half feet deep, and the current very strong, and they were, moreover, exposed to the fire of Fadil's riflemen from the high cliff on the opposite bank.
Colonel Lewis, determined to turn the left flank of the Dervishes, and kept along the river's edge until he reached the required position, then wheeled the battalion into line and advanced across the bare shingle against the sand-hills. Major Ferguson Avith one company was detached to attack a knoll on the right held by two hundred Dervishes; the remaining four companies under Colonel Mason kept straight on towards the main position. A very heavy fire was concentrated upon them, not only from the sand-hills but from Fadil's riflemen. The Soudanese fell fast, but held on, increasing their pace to a run, until they reached the foot of the first sand-hill, where they lay down in shelter to take breath. A quarter of the force had already fallen, and their doctor, Captain Jennings, remained out in the open, binding up their wounds, although exposed to a continuous fire. This halt was mistaken by the Dervishes, who thought that the courage of the Soudanese was exhausted, and Fadil from the opposite bank sounded the charge on drum and bugle, and the whole Dervish force with banners waving and exultant shouts poured down to annihilate their assailants.
But the Soudanese, led by Colonels Lewis and Mason, who were accompanied by Gregory, leapt to their feet, ran up the low bank behind which they were sheltering, and opened a terrible fire. The Dervishes were already close at hand, and every shot told among them. Astonished at so unlooked-for a reception, and doubtless remembering the heavy loss they had suffered at Gedareh, they speedily broke. Like dogs slipped from their leash the black troops dashed on with triumphant shouts, driving the Dervishes from sand-hill to sand-hill until the latter reached the southern end of the island. Here the Soudanese were joined by the irregulars who had first crossed, and a terrible fire was maintained from the sand-hills upon the crowded mass on the bare sand, cut off from all retreat by the deep river. Some tried to swim across to join their friends on the west bank; a few succeeded in doing so, among them the Emir who had given battle to Colonel Parsons' force near Gedareh.
Many took refuge from the fire by standing in the river up to their necks. Some four hundred succeeded in escaping by a ford to a small island lower down, but they found no cover there, and after suffering heavily from the musketry fire the survivors, three hundred strong, surrendered. Major Ferguson's company, however, was still exposed to a heavy fire turned upon them by the force on the other side of the river; he himself was severely wounded and a third of his men hit. The Maxims were accordingly carried over the river to the island and placed so as to command the west bank, which they soon cleared of the riflemen. Over five hundred Arabs lay dead on the two islands. Two thousand one hundred and seventy-five fighting men surrendered, and several hundred women and children. Fadil, with the force that had escaped, crossed the desert to Rung, on the White Nile, where on the 22nd of January they surrendered to the English gun-boats, their leader, with ten or twelve of his followers only, escaping to join the Khalifa. Our casualties were heavy. Twenty-five non-commissioned officers and men were killed, one British officer, six native officers, and one hundred and seventeen, non-commissioned officers and men wounded of the 10th Soudanese, out of a total strength of five hundred and eleven. The remaining casualties were among the irregulars.
Never was there a better proof of the gallantry of the black regiments of Egypt, for, including the commander and medical officer, there were but five British officers and two British sergeants to direct and lead them.
After the battle of Rosaires there was a lull in the fighting on the east of the White Nile. The whole country had been cleared of the Dervishes, and it was now time for the Sirdar, who had just returned from England, to turn his attention to the Khalifa. The latter was known to be near El Obeid, where he had now collected a force of whose strength very different reports were received. Gregory, whose exertions in the fight and the march through the scrub from Karkoj had brought on a slight return of fever, went down in the gun-boat with the wounded to Omdurman.
Zaki was with him, but as a patient; he had been hit through the leg while charging forward with the Soudanese. At Omdurman Gregory fell into regular work again. So many of the officers of the Egyptian battalions had fallen in battle, or were down with fever, that Colonel Wingate took him as his assistant, and his time was now spent in listening to the stories of tribesmen, who, as soon as the Khalifa's force had passed, had brought in very varying accounts of his strength. Then there were villagers who had complaints to make of robbery, of ill-usage—for this the Arab irregulars, who had been disbanded after the capture of Omdurman, were largely responsible. Besides these there were many petitions by fugitives, who had returned to find their houses occupied and their land seized by others. Gregory was constantly sent off to investigate and decide in these disputes, and was sometimes away for a week at a time. Zaki had recovered rapidly, and as soon as he was able to rise accompanied his master, who obtained valuable assistance from him, as, while Gregory was hearing the stories of witnesses, Zaki went quietly about the villages talking to the old men and women, and frequently obtained evidence that showed that many of the witnesses were perjured, and so enabled his master to give decisions which astonished the people by their justness.
Indeed, the reports of the extraordinary manner in which he seemed able to pick out truth from falsehood, and to decide in favour of the rightful claimant, spread so rapidly from village to village that claimants who came in to Colonel Wingate often requested urgently that the young Bimbashi should be sent out to investigate the matter. ' You seem to be attaining the position of a modern Solomon, Hilliard,' the Colonel said one day with a smile; 'how do you do itl'
Gregory laughed, and told him the manner in which he got at the truth.
' An excellent plan,' he said, ' and one which it would be well to adopt genei^ally by sending men beforehand to a village. The only objection is, that you could not rely much more upon the reports of your spies than on those of the villagers. The chances are that the claimant who could bid highest would receive their support.'
Matters were quiet until the Sirdar returned from England, and determined to make an attempt to capture the Khalifa, whose force was reported not to exceed one thousand men. Two squadrons of Egyptian cavalry and a Soudanese brigade, two Maxims, two mule-guns, and a company of camel corps were placed under the command of Colonel Kitchener. The great difficulty was the lack of water along the route to be traversed. Camels were brought from the Atbara and the Blue Nile, and the whole were collected at Kawa on the White Nile. They started from that point, but the wells were found to be dry, and the force had to retrace its steps and to start afresh from Koli, some forty miles farther up the river.
