134 CHAPTER XXIV, IN TOUCH WITH THE ENEMY '"TVHE advance from Wad Hamed camp began in the early morning of Wednesday, August 24th. The night before wellthat until the day of the battle the Khalifa had no clear idea of what was the precise strength the Sirdar was bringing against him. Broadwood's horsemen let no one pass to the southward beyond their outlying vedettes. But every day they let in a number of fugitives and deserters from Omdurman, and these brought useful information, which was duly sifted and classifiedby Colonel Wingate and Slatin Pasha.

had been a miserable time for the troops. Soon after midnight a furious stormof thunder, wind, and rain broke over the river. The lightning flickered and flashed incessantly. Tents and straw shelters were blown down, and everyone was wet to the skin. The boats and steamers moored along the bank tugged at their moorings, and one of the large native craft, laden withbaggageof an Egyptian battalion,got adrift and sank in the Nile. The storm swept the river bank for miles to the northward. Scores of telegraph poles were thrown down,and the wet madeit useless to try to send a message on the wire.

Hunter's first march was only nine miles. His troops bivouacked in the desert, and next day made a twelve miles' march to the concentration campoppositeJebelRoyanMountain, near the deserted village of ElHajir. A couple of the gunboats had come up the Cataract and seized an island just opposite Jebel Royan, which was to be the new store depot. From the summit of themountain Sir Charles Wilson, on his wayup to Khartoumin1885. hadmade an attempt to communicateby heliograph with Khartoum. The attempt was a failure,for that morning the place was already in possession ol the Dervishes. The Sirdar had ordered the mountain to be occupied as a look-out station, and from its summit with a good telescope there couldbe seen far away on the southern horizon a whitespeck, which was identified as the dome of the Mahdi's tomb rising over the houses of Omdurman,andglittering inthe sun. Curiously enough, the officer who first picked it out was noother than Gordon's nephew,Major Gordon, R.E., who had come up in charge of the gunboatMelik.

The army was no longer operating in the rainless regions of Upper Egypt and Nubia; but though the rainy season proper was over, there was still for awhile the chance ofa sudden storm such as this. And the experience was especially trying to the Egyptian troops, who never saw rain from year's end to year's end in their sunny villagesby the NorthernNile.

Before daybreak, while the wind was still lashing the river and driving gusty showers of rainover the camp,General Hunter had formed up the first and third brigades of his division (MacDonald's andLewis's),and they marched off by the light of the dawn. The weather was clearingrapidly by sunrise, and the rain hadlaid the dust,and madethe march past the Shabluka Hills fairly easy going. The two other brigades of the Egyptian army (Maxwell's and Collinson's) marched in the afternoon. They were followed by the artillery, with the exception of the 40-pounders and the howitzers, which were to go up by water. The column made a detain to the right, to avoid the rocky ridges near the Cataract. A whole fleet of native boats,under their long brown lateen sails, were already sailing up the Shabluka Gorge, conveying the baggage of Hunter's division. Out in front beyond the hills Broadwood's cavalry were scouting, and they screened the movement so The British division moved off from Wad Hamed camp on the Thursday, the battalions marching side by side in parallel columns at wide intervals. They joined the camp at El Hajir early on the 27th. That day the force was complete again, and there was a stir ot excitement in the camp when word came in from the cavalry in front that they had caught sight of Dervishscouts retiring onboth banks of the river.

The Sirdar joined his army after a voyage up the Cataract in one of the steamers. The Shabluka is known to the Arabs as "theninety