WARS OF THE NINETIES. 146 Dervishes had abandoned her. Luckily she was so little damaged by the shots fired into her that she proved very useful as a ferry boat on the Nile after the capture of Omdurman. These old steamers,dating from Gordon's days, seem to have been of singularly solid construction. They have survived twenty years of service on the Nile, in which they had their fair share of the perils ofbattleand shipwreck.

wounded by a bullet. But this was the only casualty.

The howitzers meanwhile were sending their shells curving high in air overthe gunboats and dropping into the city beyond. As each exploded there was a deafening crash, a great flash seen even in the bright sunlight, and a dense cloud of black smoke. One of them smashed in the side of the white dome on the Mahdi's tomb, another wrecked the central building of his palace. Gaps wide enough to drive a carriage through were torn in the riverside wall,the masonry being fairly blasted away by the explosions. Some of these terrible shells were dropped on the fortsaway to the left of the gunboatattack.

We must now turn to the events that were occurring on the v/est bank during thebombardment. The collapse of the riverside defences and the widespreaddestruction in the city itself gave the Dervishes a newidea of the kind of attack they would have to face if they held on to their fortifications. The Khalifa Abdullahi andhis Emirs hadnever been under such a fire before, andit soon dawned on them that to sit fast in Omdurman was to run the risk of being killed in detail without having the chance of even striking a blow before the end came. The Khalifa determined, therefore, to come out andrisk the chance of warin the open.

" These shells," wrote Mr. Frederic Villiers, "and the projectiles from our twelve-pounders wereresponsible for overwhelming slaughter of Dervishes who stuck to their guns within the forts. Yet someheldon to their batteries with remarkable pluck, for when, apparently, a fort hadlongsince been silenced,apuff ofsmoke and whizzof a shell,coming as it were from a heap ofruins,would astonish us all;for it was, seemingly, so hopeless that any being could have existed under the terrible fire brought to bear on the works. On entering some of the forts after the fight, so mangled were the remains ot the brave defenders that it was difficult for the moment to recognisethat the scatteredremnants wereof human flesh."

The mounted troops with the horse batter)-, all under Colonel Broadwood's command, had pushedforward to the hollow of Khor Shamba to watch the northern suburbs of Omdurman. A little before noon the heliograph station on Jebel Surgham signalled to the camp that the enemy were advancing in force, and that the cavalry were retiring. From the hill-top the Dervish army could be seen marching forward in three great lines,each about two and ahalf miles long. Each had a number of flagsr every flag denoting the presence of an Emir. In the midst flew the black banner of the Khalifa himself. Hundreds of drums were beating, and round the black banner, the ombevas, the great ivory war-horns were sounding. The cavalry moved in by the river bank;the Lancers and the heliograph station were withdrawn from Jebel Surgham; only a few scouts remained on the hill to watch the expectedDervish advance to battle.

Having silenced the Omdurman batteries, the flotilla steamed on to attack a fort on the point of land between the twoNiles close to the ruins of Khartoum— the Mukran Fort of Gordon's diaries. On the way the ships had to pass a point where it wasknown theKhalifa hadplaced aminein the river. The Sultantried to grapple the cable, but failed. There was some anxiety as to a possible explosion. " As each ship passed over the interesting spot," says Mr. Villiers, " there was a disquieting uncertainty in the men's breasts as to whether they wouldrequire their rations when tea-time came round." Luckily the apparatus of the Dervish mine was not in good working order, and nothing happened. After a short fight the garrison of Mukran Fort were driven out and fled inland, and then Keppel led his flotilla back to the point where the army had just formed its riverside camp. On the way a steamer, oneof Sir Charles Wilson's old ships, was seen lying up a creek near Omdurman, and a few shells weresent into her,but it was thenefeitSrraj the m—i— is_7ii -4..

The cavalry sent in word that the Dervish army was 30,000 strong. The Sirdar, who ridden forward to Jebel Surgham at noon to have a look at his enemy, estimated them a: 35,000. but he says in his report: "from subsequent information this figure was probably under-estimated, their actual strength b between forty and fifty thousand."

The number was probably nearer the higher figure than the lower. There is no doubt that in quality as well as in mere numbersit wasthe