Bennet Burleigh

“ In sheer blundering brutishness, the ferocious dervishes tried to stem the storm. Wave followed wave of men, they surged together, inviting greater disaster, but always striving to get nearer us. Their front had covered the whole slopes of Jebel Surgham and their left overlapped part of the Khalifa's right. Death was reaping a gigantic harvest. Hecatombs of slain were being spread everywhere in front. The fight was terrible, the slaughter dreadful. So far we had scarcely suffered loss, only a few of the enemy's riflemen having paused and thought of firing at us. ”

“ There suddenly sprang into threatening proximity before us, a force of at least fifteen odd thousand men, with a wide surf-line of white, red, and gold lettered banners, less than a mile away. Brandishing their weapons and shouting "Allah!" down the slopes they ran towards the zereba. Emirs rode in front, and gaunt, black riflemen sped like hounds, keeping pace with the horses. The guns of one battery, then another, and finally all three, upon General Lyttelton's left, were turned upon them. Maxims also were swung round, and the long-distance volleys were dropped for shorter ranges. ”

“ General Hunter came over to the headquarters-staff galloping to get assistance, and rode back with Wauchope's brigade, which doubled for a considerable distance, so serious was the situation and nervous the tension of that thrilling ten minutes. Had the brilliant, the splendid deed of arms wrought by Macdonald been done under the eyes of a sovereign, or in some other armies, he had surely been created a General on the spot. If the public are in search of the real hero of the battle of Omdurman there he is, ready made—one who committed no blunder to be redeemed by courageous conduct afterwards. ”

“ After fifteen vexatious years spent in trying to get here, an Anglo-Egyptian army has recovered Khartoum and occupied Omdurman. Gordon has been avenged and justified. The dervishes have been overwhelmingly routed, Mahdism has been "smashed," whilst the Khalifa's capital of Omdurman has been stripped of its barbaric halo of sanctity and invulnerability. Striking and dramatic as has been the manner in which the ending of the curse of the Soudan has come about, the tale need lose none of its force by being simply told. The grandeur of the plain story requires no straining after catchwords. ”

“ There is no dustier journey by rail, or one of an altogether more uncomfortable nature, than from Cairo to Shellal. It is bad enough in the so-called winter season, for you have to breathe an atmosphere of dust the whole way, and are powdered and almost suffocated before you reach Luxor. The same trip taken in midsummer, in the stuffy, crowded carriages of the Egyptian lines, is real martyrdom, or something akin thereto. High speed or over twenty-five miles an hour is not attempted. ”

“ Few will ever see again so great and brave a show. A vast army, with a front of three miles, covering an undulating plain—warriors mounted and afoot, clad in quaint and picturesque drapery, with gorgeous barbaric display of banners, burnished metal, and sheen of steel—came sweeping upon us with the speed of cavalry. Half-a-dozen batteries smote them, a score of Maxims and 10,000 rifles unceasingly buffeted them, making great gaps and rending their ranks in all directions. ”

“ One hundred black-flag Taaisha, the Khalifa's own Baggara tribesmen and part of his body-guard, charged impetuously. Spurring their horses to their utmost speed leading the footmen, down they came straight for the brigade. Cannon, Maxims, and rifles roared, and, bold as the Taaisha rode, neither horse nor man lived to get within one hundred yards of our Soudanese and Gippies. ”

“ Whilst our batteries were hurling death and destruction from the zereba at the Khalifa's army, Major Elmslie's battery of 50-pounder howitzers was battering the Mahdi's tomb to pieces and breaching the great stone wall in Omdurman. The practice with the terrible Lyddite shells was better than before, and the dervishes, even more clearly than we, must have seen from the volcanic upheavals when the missiles struck, that their capital was being wrecked. ”

“ The country itself—river and wilderness—the rival leaders, the soldiery, their appearance, arms, and uniform, their eating and drinking, their lying down and their rising up, their marching and the final rush of battle—these are all here before us in a living picture, making the book in reality an invaluable 'vade mecum' for those who wish to realise just what it is that our men are doing to-day between the Atbara and Omdurman. ”

“ Scores of Emirs and lesser leaders, with spearmen and swordsmen, fell only a few feet from the guns and the unshaken Khedivial infantry. It is said one or two threw spears across the indomitable soldiery, and other dervishes turned the flanks, but were instantly despatched. A few salvoes and volleys shook the looser attacking columns of dervishes. The Khalifa's division had at length received such a surfeit of withering fire that the rear lines began to hold back, and the desperate rushes of the chiefs and their personal retainers grew fewer and feebler. ”

“ From the reckless, magnificent manner in which the dervishes comported themselves in the earlier stages of the fight that ensued, I incline to the belief that the Khalifa and his men, true to their crass, credulous notions, were overweeningly confident in themselves. A fatal fault, they underrated their opponents. His Emirs, Jehadieh, and Baggara had so often proved themselves invincible in their combats against natives of the Soudan, that they had come to hold that none would face their battle shock. ”

“ Wavering, and driven before the murderous tornado of exploding bombs and pitiless lead, they too swung round and made for cover beyond range, flying towards the west and slightly to the rear. Yacoub and Melik followed the black flag in the same direction, and the dervish left wing edged off to Um Mutragan. They had come, first of all, direct, as if intending to assault the western angles of the zereba. Then Yacoub and Melik had led them to the right, so that they covered Surgham and came on in front of the British division. ”

“ To reflect is not to despair—on the contrary. The experiences of this world teach us that the sum of our sorrows is not greater than that of our joys. The more the black period may be prolonged the more quickly will approach the dawn of proud aspirations at length realised. And the granite Sphinx which near at hand dreams on the desert sands, the Sphinx which saw the passage of Bonaparte, which saw Lesseps and his work, has not yet uttered its last word, has not murmured the supreme sentence. ”

“ Dead animals in all stages of decomposition lay there in hundreds and thousands. There were besides littering the place camels, horses, donkeys, dead and wounded fresh from the battle-field. And there were many other ghastly sights. Dead and wounded dervishes lay in pools of blood in the roadway. Several of the dying enemy grimly saluted the staff as we passed. An Emir who, horribly mauled by a shell, lay pinned under his dead horse waved his hand and fell back a corpse. Our guns and Maxims had opened once or twice to turn the armed fugitives from the town. ”

“ At a swinging gait came the vast army of Mahdism. I was still near Surgham and believed that I could discern the Khalifa himself in the centre of a jostling, excited throng of footmen and horsemen. He was seated upon a richly caparisoned Arab steed, guarded on all sides by stalwart [Pg 154] natives armed with rifles and swords. A troop of mounted Emirs in front and a big retinue of Baggara and other chiefs on horseback riding behind surely proclaimed him to be Abdullah, the Mahdi's successor. ”

“ Cheap maudlin sentiment may profess a pity for those "dervish homes ruined" by the suc [Pg 340] cesses of British arms. The dervishes in their day had no homes. Nay, they made honest profession that their mission was to destroy other people's, and do without carking domesticity, as that detracted from the merit of preparation for paradise. As I have elsewhere said, one of the "fads" of the day is to hold that liberalism of mind is always characterised by being a friend to every country and race but your own. Exact truth is as illusive to discovery by that as other pernicious methods. ”

“ In the course of time, no doubt, an education of some sort, and administered by some hands, will be set on foot. But if Khartoum could be made forthwith the centre of an education supported by British funds and organised from Britain, there would be secured to this country indisputably the first place in Africa as a civilising power, and an effect would be created which would be felt for good throughout the central regions of that continent. ”

“ The heat bore down like a load upon head and shoulders and enveloped us like a blast from a roaring furnace. About noontide it was ordinarily 120 degrees Fahr. in my tent. Still, I am sure it was by no means so oppressive as at Korti in March 1885. The Atbara and the Nile helped to temper the fiery glow that radiated from the desert rocks and sands. At best, the heat is a sore trial, but to be borne with more patience than the "devils" and sand storms that bother by night as well as by day. Snow-drifts are mild visitations of Providence compared with a dust storm or whirlwind. ”

“ Constant trudging to and fro, making and breaking camps with the hardships of marches and raw ground for bivouacs, furnish a bigger mortality bill than an ordinary battle. One of the smart things done by the Sirdar, which served to show that he had closely knit all the ends of the new frontier lines together, was to bring troops up from the Dongola province and the Red Sea Littoral, to swell the strength of his army in the field. The 5th Egyptian battalion under Colonel Abd El Borham marched across from Suakin to Berber in eighteen days. ”

“ The 1st British brigade, Major-General Wauchope's, was behind, and had turned to the left to follow the 2nd brigade. Behind, in succession, were Maxwell's, Lewis's, and Macdonald's Egyptian or Khedivial brigades. The nature of the ground [Pg 182] forced some of them out of their true relative positions. Macdonald had marched out due west. The dervishes, like wolves upon the scent for prey, suddenly sprang from unexpected lairs. With swifter feet and fiercer courage than ever they dashed for the comparatively isolated brigade of Colonel Macdonald. ”

“ The Khalifa asserted he liked white men, admired their knowledge and ability, and would, were he permitted, have many of them in Khartoum. As everybody knew, he befriended the Greeks, because he could do that with safety, for the natives were not so jealous of them as of other white men. The Taaisha were, he declared, absurdly suspicious of his intercourse with Neufeld, and were always bringing him tales, to try and get him to kill all the white men without exception. ”

“ Within twenty-four hours after the Sirdar's entry Omdurman began to assume the signs of orderly government. Thousands of the prisoners as well as the natives were set to work to clean up the place. The wounded were all carried into temporary hospitals and the dead were decently interred in Moslem burial-places out upon the desert. Then the thoroughfares were scrupulously scavengered by gangs of yesterday's furious foemen, blacks and Baggara. The dead things were put under ground, and the stagnant pools were drained or filled in. ”

“ During a dust-storm everybody has the appearance of a toiling hodman. Feminine relations would have wept had they seen and recognised their soldier lads in that sorry state. Even the dashing officers and men of the Grenadier Guards ceased to be objects of admiration, and the War Office would have howled with exquisite torture at sight of their hair and clothes. ”

“ The army was again equipped for action as though it had not fired a shot. Camels were reloaded, and all was in readiness for a start. We could see bodies of the enemy still flaunting their banners, and watching our every movement from the western hills. Wounded dervishes were crawling and dragging wearily back from their fated field towards Omdurman. There was the occasional crack of a rifle as some dervish sniped us, or invited a shot from the Egyptian battalions. Many of our black soldiers actually wept with vexation on being withdrawn from the firing line to make room for guns and Maxims. ”

“ A hackneyism lacks the picturesqueness of originality, but is as useful in its way as a public road to a desired destination. The quotation which I am at the moment anxious to make use of is, "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small." Time the avenger had all but fulfilled the meed of punishment for the evil day of 26th January 1885, when the streets of Khartoum ran with blood, and the headless body of General Gordon was left to be hacked and hewn by ferocious hordes of dervishes. ”

“ The Queen's soldiers were ranged in mass of companies, column of fours right, whilst the native soldiery were brigaded in line, Macdonald upon the extreme right, with Collinson's brigade in reserve. The troops wheeled into column, deployed, changed front, and engaged in firing exercise. As might have been expected, there was more celerity and accuracy in changing formation displayed by the British than in the native brigades. All the men were very keen at their work, the expectation of being about to engage the enemy doubtless lending special interest to their field-day. ”