flying clouds of dust. It was as though a khamsin wind had torn over them. The terrible sound of the Maxim gun followed close behind the spray of bullets. The troop of men and horse disintegrated, blown away like dead leaves.
The gun traversed back towards Osman, but before the dancing pattern of bullets reached him, al’Buq lunged over the crest. Osman swung down from the saddle. He was still stunned by the enormity and menace of the machine, but he ran to where his men lay. Most of them were dead. Only al-Noor and Mooman Digna were still on their feet. “See to the others,” Osman ordered. He threw himself flat on the top of the dune and peered down the far side. He watched the long train of wagons wind away along the floor of the valley towards Akasha.
In the few moments that they had been exposed to the fire of the Maxim gun, eight of his men had been killed outright, four were gravely wounded and would die. Four had survived. Five horses were untouched. Osman destroyed the wounded animals, left a waters king with the wounded men to ease their passing, gathered up his surviving aggagiers and rode back to Firket.
Now that he had had his first glimpse of the juggernaut that was rolling down on them, he realized that his options were limited. There was little he could do to oppose and hold the enemy here at Firket. He determined to assemble and concentrate all his array on the banks of the Atbara jiver and strike the enemy there in overwhelming force.
He replaced the depraved and ineffectual Emir Hammuda with the Emir Azrak. This man was completely different from Hammuda: he was a fanatical devotee of the Mahdi; he had carried out many daring and brutal raids on the Turk and the infidel; his name was well known in Cairo, and he could expect little mercy if he were captured; he would fight to the death. Osman gave Azrak orders to delay the enemy at Firket for as long as possible, but at the last moment to fall back on the Atbara river with all his army. He left him, and rode back to Omdurman.
No sooner had Osman ridden away than Hammuda refused to accept that he had been replaced and engaged in a bitter dispute with Azrak, which left both men powerless.
While they wrangled the sirdar built up his base at Akasha. Men and equipment, supplies and munitions were brought down the railway line with machine-like efficiency. Then, with nine thousand men under his personal command, General Kitchener fell upon the town of Firket. The Dervish were decimated and the survivors driven out helter-skelter.
Hammuda died in the first charge. Azrak escaped with less than a thousand men and rode southwards to the confluence of the Atbara to meet Osman. With his Camel Corps Kitchener followed the fleeing Dervish along the riverbank, and captured hundreds of men and horses and great stores of grain.
Within weeks the entire Dervish province of Dongola had fallen to the sirdar. The juggernaut resumed its deliberate and ponderous advance southwards towards the Atbara river. Month after month and mile after weary mile the railway line unreeled like a silken thread across the desert. On most days the track advanced a mile or so, but on occasions up to three miles.
The workmen encountered unexpected hardships and setbacks. Cholera broke out and hundreds of graves were hastily dug in the empty desert. The first false flood of the inundation brought the ‘green tide’, all the sewerage that had settled on the exposed banks during the Low Nile, downstream. There was no other water to drink. Dysentery racked the army camps. Terrible thunderstorms poured out of a sky that usually never rained. Miles of track were washed away, miles more were swamped under six feet of water.
Zafir, the first of the new stern-wheel gunboats, was brought in sections from Wadi Haifa, and reassembled in a makeshift boatyard at Koshesh on the clear-water section above the cataracts. Her appearance was stately and impressive, and she was launched with General Kitchener and his staff on board. As the boilers built up a full head of steam there was an explosion like a salvo of heavy artillery as they burst. The Zafir was out of action until new boilers could be brought out from England and installed.
Yet the remorseless advance continued. The Dervish garrisons at Abu Hamed and Metemma were overrun, and driven back on the Atbara river. Here Kitchener bombarded Osman Atalan’s great defensive zareba, then smashed it wide open with bullet and bayonet. The Arabs either fled or fought to the death. The black Sudanese troops who would fight as willingly for the infidel as they had for the Dervish were recruited into the sirdar’s army.
Victory on the Atbara was decisive. Kitchener’s expeditionary force went into summer quarters. He planned and mustered his powers and waited for the river to rise before the final advance on Omdurman.
Penrod, who had received a spear wound through the thigh during the fighting, was granted convalescent leave. He travelled back, by rail and river steamer from Aswan, to Cairo.
When Penrod limped into Cairo, Amber was beside herself with joy to have him at her side, and in her bed. Lady Jane Ballantyne had returned to Clercastle at the insistence of her husband. What had been planned as a three-month sojourn had extended to almost two years. Sir Peter had long ago tired of the bachelor existence.
Ryder Courtney had returned from a highly successful visit to the United States and Canada. The wheat he had purchased was already offloading in Alexandria docks. He had arrived home just in time for the birth of his son. He had learnt that as soon as the Sudanese campaign ended, Sir Evelyn Baring would turn all his energy and the resources of the Khedive to the building of the great irrigation works on the upper Nile, which had been long projected. Almost two hundred thousand acres of rich black soil would be brought under permanent irrigation and would no longer be dependent on the annual inundation from the Nile. Ryder had purchased twenty thousand of these acres in a speculative move. It was a wise decision that, within ten years, would make him a cotton millionaire.
Penrod’s wound healed cleanly, and he discovered that he had been gazetted for the Distinguished Service Order for his conduct in the battles of Firket and Atbara. Amber missed her moon, but on Saffron’s advice she did not tell Penrod of this momentous occurrence. “Wait until you are certain,” Saffron told her.
“What if he guesses the truth before I tell him?” Amber was nervous. “He would take that hard.”
“My darling, Penrod is a man. He would not recognize a pregnancy if he tripped over it.”
With the approaching cool season heralding High Nile, and conditions conducive to resuming campaigning, Penrod kissed Amber farewell and, oblivious of his impending elevation to fatherhood, returned upriver to the great military camp on the Atbara.
When he arrived he found that the encampment now stretched for many miles along the riverbank, and the Nile itself resembled the port of some prosperous European city. It was a forest of masts and funnels. Feluccas and gyassas, barges, steamers and gunboats crowded the anchorage. There were six newly assembled armoured’screw gunboats. They were a hundred and forty feet long and twenty-four wide. They were armed with twelve-and six- pounder quick-firing guns, and with batteries of Maxim machine-guns on their upper decks. They were equipped with modern machinery: ammunition hoists, searchlights and steam winches. Yet they drew only thirty-nine inches of water, and their stern screws could drive them at speeds of up to twelve knots. In addition there were four elderly stern-wheel gunboats, dating from Chinese Gordon’s era, which also carried twelve-pounders and Maxim guns.
The sirdar had asked London for first-line British troops to reinforce his already formidable new Egyptian army. His request had been granted and battalions of the Royal Warwickshires, Lincolns, Seaforth Highlanders, Cameron Highlanders, Grenadier Guards, Northumberland Fusiliers, Lancashire Fusiliers, the Rifle Brigade and the 21st Lancers had already joined and were encamped in the great zareba. The array of artillery was formidable and ranged from forty-pounder howitzers to field and horse batteries. The sirdar’s large white tent stood on an eminence in the centre of the zareba, with the Egyptian flag waving on a tall staff above it.
Penrod found his camels fat and strong and his men in much the same condition. Life in summer quarters, without the presence of their commander, had been restful. Penrod stirred them into action with a vengeance.
As the first green flood of the rising Nile had poured down through the Shabluka gorge, the grand advance began. Thirty thousand fighting men and their battle train moved southwards to the first staging camp at the entrance to the gorge. Here the mile-wide river was compressed into a mere two hundred yards between the black and precipitous cliffs. They were fifty-six miles from Khartoum and Omdurman. The next staging camp was only seven miles upstream opposite Royan Island above the gorge, but these were seven difficult and dangerous miles.
The gunboats thrashed their way up through the racing, whirling rapids, towing the barges behind them. The ill-fated gunboat Zafir now sprang a leak and sank by the bows in the jaws of the gorge. Her officers and men had barely time to escape with their lives.
For the infantry and cavalry the march to Royan Island was doubled in length. To avoid the rocky Shabluka
