THE RECONQUEST OF THE SOUDAN. 135 of the ambulance men fell, shot through the body as he handed a drink to a patient in the field hospital. Two others of these gallant fellows, Private Davidson and Corporal Taylor, of the Army Medical Corps, were carrying a woundedman on a stretcher from the fighting line, when Taylor was woundedby a bullet in the head, and at the same moment Davidson was badly wounded by a Dervish ball in his arm.

standard. At one time it wasin the hands of a gigantic negro. He stood like a statue,holding andpartlyleaning against the long bamboo shaft which he had fixed in the sand. Five minutes passed, and still he stood unwounded; after nearly five minutes more he fell, and another hand at oncegrasped the fatal banner and held it up as proudly as before.

So heavy was the fire from the British front that the rifles rapidly became too hot to hold. They were carriedby the leather slings back to the companies waiting in reserve behind the firing line,who handed their still cool weapons to their comrades standing at the hedge. Occasionally the reserve men were themselves calledup to fire, while the men who had already been in action rested and refilled their cartridge pouches. By half-past seven the fury of the Dervish onset began to visibly diminish. Thousands of their bravest had fallen. They were beginning to realise thatit was impossible to get beyond the limit of between five and six hundred yards from the Anglo-Egyptian front. There for full a mile along the desert lay the dead and dying, piled up in heaps or stretched in ghastly rows, like the line of wreckage and debris that marks the limit of the tides on a beach after a storm. Few had passed that deadly boundary,and all of even these few had fallen here and there on the level space beyond. A last effort wasmade in the centre against the Egyptian front, even after the Mahdists had given up the attack on the British and were falling back along the death-strewn slopes of Jebel Surgham. This attack, too, gradually flickered and went out in a patter of musketry from the Jehadia, whohad found cover here and there along the front. Towards eight o'clock the rifle fire from the Sirdar's line had all but ceased. The guns were still booming as the batteries and the gunboats shelled the hills over which the Dervishes were withdrawing, or shot to dislodge the enemy's riflemen from the hollows,whence they still kept up a dropping fire. There was a sense of elation at the idea that the great battle was won and the way to Omdurman open. But there was still a lot of hard sighting before the Sirdar's army. The repulse of the Dervish onslaught proved to be only the first phase in the struggle, and many a brave life on both sides was yet tobe sacrificed as part of the price of victory.

But at the time these incidents were hardlynoticed, for the attention of all in the camp was riveted on the terrible spectacle of the Dervishes marching bravely on through the storm of fire that blazed and roared from the long front of the camp. The guns on the left and the Maxims had been run out till they formed almosta right angle with the south side of the zereba, so as to get them to bear better on the enemy's attack. For half an hour through the hail of bullet and shell the Dervishes came on. Led bv their mounted Emirs, they moved forward till they fell, and then others appeared, comingon to take their places in the front. It was noticed that many even of their riflemen were so intent on pressing forward that they never stopped to fire, but bounded onwards among the spearmen, brandishing their Remingtons over their heads. Few got as far as 400 yards from our front. The man who fell nearest the line of the British division was a splendidly-built young Arab, who rushed forward with his broad-bladed spear at the charge till a bullet brought him down just 200 yards from the zereba. In front of Maxwell's brigade an old white-bearded man, bearing a flag and accompanied by five spearmen, dashed out from the rest of the Dervishes. One by onehis comrades fell,but he seemed to have a charmed life,till about two hundredand fifty yards from the 14th Soudanese he dropped, still grasping his banner. The Khalifa's black standard,a flag about six feet square,flying from a long bamboo lance ornamented with silver, was in the front of the array that bore down upon Maxwell's brigade. Naturally the black standard attracteda heavy fire, and through the field-glasses man after man was seen to fall while carrying it. But it was hardly down when it wasflying again in the hands of another warrior. TheDervishes seemedto consider it an honour thus to court death under their chieftain's