Iiq CHAPTER XXI.

PROGRESS OF OTHER EXPEDITIONS IN THE SOUDAN.

BEFORE telling the story of the march on Khartoum it will be well to take some note of what was passing during Dervishes, and the officer in charge of the picket seems to have been completely surprised. He fell back on the camp,firing as he retired,but closely pressedby a mass of Dervish spearmen. In the dark the fireof the Belgians did verylittle harm. The camp was a large zereba, which enclosed the houses of the white officers, and a large storehouse or magazine containing arms, ammunitionand supplies. The soldiers rushed to their posts,butat the same time the Dervishes penetrated into the zereba by its north-west gate, coming in on the heels of the retiring picket. Other parties of them attacked the zereba at various points, and some of them got overits hedgeof thorns.

the spring and summer in variousparts of the Soudan,far awayfrom the Egyptian outposts on theUpper Nile.

Early in 1807— as we have already seen— the Belgians,underChaltin,had turned the Dervishes out of Regaf, in the far south of the Soudan. They thus entered into effective possession of some of that portion of the British sphere of influence on the Nile which had been leased to KingLeopold by LordRosebery'sConvention of 1894. A little further up the Nile the British outpostshad establishedthemselves to thenorth of the Albert Nyanza, and our flag had been actuallyhoistedat Dufile, thelocal chief accepting a British protectorate.

The situation was critical in the extreme. The' Free State troops, mostly natives, were fighting in detached groups under their white officers, in almost complete darkness, against enemieswhomtheycouldbarely see,andof whose numbers they could form no idea. The white officers rallied their men amongthe houses and at the magazine. TheDervishes evidently knew the plan of the place well, and their chief efforts were directed against the magazine. Captains DesnSux and Bartholi were killed leading a gallant charge, which temporarily relieved the pressure on the garrison. Captain Hanolet and several other officers were wounded. All the wounds were spear-thrusts. The fust rush had been made just after one o'clock. The light event ontillnear three, when,finding the surprise had failed,and that in face of the Belgian rifle fire they could not penetrateinto the buildings, the Arabs retired,carrying off most of theirdead and wounded with them. Forty-two Mahdists were found lying dead in the zereba, among them the Emir El Gali. Tt was a narrow 1 for the Regafgarrison.

The DervishesexpelledfromRegafhadretired to Bohr, a hundred and twenty miles further north,on theNile. The}' hadhad someinsignificant skirmishes with Belgian scouting parties, but on the whole they had remained quiet, evidently expecting to be attacked, andmeaning to stand on the defensive. They were under the command of the Emir Arabi. In the last week oi May a messenger from Omdurman reached Bohr in a canoe, bringing a letter from the Khalifa. He told Arabi that he was expecting to be attacked by the English at an early date, and directed him to attack, or at ti ist to harass.

their white allies at Regaf, to kill as manyof them as possible, and carry off their arms and ammunition.

Arabi therefore decided upon a raid,and he made his preparations so rapidly, and advanced with such secrecy, that the Belgians had noidea he wason the move. He sent 1iff anexpedition under his colleague, the Emir Adam Bishara, who succeeded in evading and capturing the outlying scoutsof the garrison, and about one in the morning of Saturday, June 4th, rushed the outposts ofRegaf on the north side.

After this the Free State sent reinforcements from Stanley Pool to all its advanced posts between the Congo and the Upper Nile. This was a precaution against a possible dangerarising from the Anglo-EgyptianadvanceonOmdurman. Night attacks are very unusual with the