WARS OF THE NINETIES. 90 wellpractisedin theadvance fromKenur to Rasel-Hudi,and the change of camp to Umdabiya, and officers and men were now accustomed to march in large squares, and deploy rapidly into a fighting line. Maxwell's brigade formed on the right ; then in the centre came Mac-Donald's;Gatacre with theBritish brigade was on the left. This was regarded as the post of dangerand honour, for it was expected that the formidable Dervish cavalry would attempt an sand rose and drifted over the mass of marching men, and in the cloud the dull greyand brown of thekhaki-clad soldiers hardly showed against the dark background of the desert. The track was not quite level, the ground rose and fell slightly. To the left,as the squares topped a low ridge, the horizon seemed endless;to the right the palms that rose out of the riversidescrub stood up black against the sky. Orders were passed inalow voice,and thementramped steadily onward over sand and stone. Away to theright rear the camp fires of Umdabiya blazed redly through the moonlight. The garrison of the zereba had been ordered to light the usual number,as if the wholearmy was still there, and tokeep them up through the night, so as to mislead the Dervish scouts.

About nine the army halted on the desert opposite the ruined village of Mutrus, outside the scrub,and about a milefrom the bank oi the Atbara. The squares opened up a little, and seated oh the sand the men took the supper they had brought in their haversacks. The waterhotlies were refilled from tanks brought up on camels. The horses and the mules that attack on thedesert flank. To furtherstrengthen the left, Lewis's Egyptian brigade was kept in reservejust behind it,following about 500 yards after Gatacre's white soldiers. The littlearmycould thus, at the briefest notice, present a front of two brigades (one of them British) to any attack coming from the desert. Two squadrons ofcavalry and two companies of the camel corps scouted well out on front and flanks.

At sunset the march began. The twilight of the Soudan is very short, biit the rising moon gave some light ; nevertheless, though the squares were only some 500 yards apart,it was at times difficult to see one of them from the nearest of the others. Clouds of dust and fine