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of a dance. In two minutes the brigade was together again in a new place. The field in front was hastening towards us in a whitey-brown cloud of dervishes. An order. Macdonald's jaws gripped and hardened as the flame spurted out again, and the whitey-brown cloud quivered and stood still. He saw everything; knew what to do; knew how to do it; did it. At the fire he was ever brooding watchfully behind his firing-line; at the cease fire he was instantly in front of it: all saw him, and knew that they were being nursed to triumph.

His blacks of the 9th, 10th, and 11th, the historic fighting regiments of the Egyptian army, were worthy of their chief. The 2nd Egyptian, brigaded with them and fighting in the line, were worthy of their comrades, and of their own reputation as the best disciplined battalion in the world. A few had feared that the blacks would be too forward, the yellows too backward: except that the blacks, as always, looked happier, there was no difference at all between them. The Egyptians sprang to the advance at the bugle; the Sudanese ceased fire in an instant silence at the whistle. They were losing men, too, for though eyes were clamped on the dervish charges, the dervish fire was brisk. Man after man dropped out behind the firing-line. Here was a white officer with a redlathered charger; there a black stretched straight, bare-headed in the sun, dry-lipped, uncomplaining, a bullet through his liver; two yards away a dead

driver by a dead battery mule, his whip still glued in his hand. The table of loss topped 100-150— neared 200. Still they stood, fired, advanced, fired, changed front, fired-firing, firing always, deaf in the din, blind in the smarting smoke, hot, dry, bleeding, bloodthirsty, enduring the devilish fight to the end. And the Dervishes? The honour of the fight must still go with the men who died. Our men were perfect, but the Dervishes were superb-beyond perfection. It was their largest, best, and bravest army that ever fought against us for Mahdism, and it died worthily of the huge empire that Mahdism won and kept so long. Their riflemen, mangled by every kind of death and torment that man can devise, clung round the black flag and the green, emptying their poor, rotten, home-made cartridges dauntlessly. Their spearmen charged death at every minute hopelessly. Their horsemen led each attack, riding into the bullets till nothing was left but three horses trotting up to our line, heads down, saying, "For goodness' sake, let us in out of this." Not one rush, or two, or ten-but rush on rush, company on company, never stopping, though all their view that was not unshaken enemy was the bodies of the men who had rushed before them. A dusky line got up and stormed forward: it bent, broke up, fell apart, and disappeared. Before the smoke had cleared, another line was bending and storming forward in the same track.

It was over. The avenging squadrons of the Egyp

THE LAST DERVISH.

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tian cavalry swept over the field. The Khalifa and the Sheikh-ed-Din had galloped back to Omdurman. Ali Wad Helu was borne away on an angareb with a bullet through his thigh-bone. Yakub lay dead under his brother's banner. From the green army there now came only death-enamoured desperadoes, strolling one by one towards the rifles, pausing to shake a spear, turning aside to recognise a corpse, then, caught by a sudden jet of fury, bounding forward, checking, sinking limply to the ground. Now under the black flag in a ring of bodies stood only three men, facing the three thousand of the Third Brigade. They folded their arms about the staff and gazed steadily forward. Two fell. The last dervish stood up and filled his chest; he shouted the name of his God and hurled his spear. still, waiting. It took him full; he quivered, gave at the knees, and toppled with his head on his arms. and his face towards the legions of his conquerors.

Then he stood quite

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XXXIII.

ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM.

OVER 11,000 killed, 16,000 wounded, 4000 prisoners, -that was the astounding bill of dervish casualties officially presented after the battle of Omdurman. Some people had estimated the whole dervish army at 1000 less than this total: few had put it above 50,000. The Anglo-Egyptian army on the day of battle numbered, perhaps, 22,000 men: if the Allies had done the same proportional execution at Waterloo, not one Frenchman would have escaped.

How the figures of wounded were arrived at I do not know. The wounded of a dervish army ought not really to be counted at all, since the badly wounded die and the slightly wounded are just as dangerous as if they were whole. It is conceivable that some of the wounded may have been counted twice over—either as dead, when they were certain to perish of their wounds or of thirst, or else as prisoners when they gave themselves up. Yet, with all the deductions that moderation can suggest, it was

AN APPALLING SLAUGHTER.

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a most appalling slaughter. The dervish army was killed out as hardly an army has been killed out in the history of war.

It will shock you, but it was simply unavoidable. Not a man was killed except resisting - very few except attacking. Many wounded were killed, it is true, but that again was absolutely unavoidable. At the very end of the battle, when Macdonald's brigade was advancing after its long fight, the leading files of the 9th Sudanese passed by a young Baggara who was not quite dead. In a second he was up and at the nearest mounted white officer. The first spear flew like a streak, but just missed. The officer assailed put a man-stopping revolver bullet into him, but it did not stop him. He whipped up another spear, and only a swerve in the saddle saved the Englishman's body at the expense of a wounded right hand. This happened not once but a hundred times, and all over the field. It was impossible not to kill the dervishes: they refused to go back alive. At the very finish- the 11,000 killed, the Khalifa fled, the army hopelessly smashed to pieces

-a band of some 3000 men stood firm against the pursuing Egyptian cavalry. "They were very sticky," said an officer simply, "and we couldn't take 'em on." Later they admitted they were beaten, and came in. But except for sheer weariness of our troops, that 3000 would have been added to the eleven. As it was, they outmarched our advance, slipped into Omdurman