WARS OF THE NINETIES. 170 and fruit. It was with some difficulty that they werepersuaded that there was noneed of bringing even such poor ransom to the conquerors of the city. On the landside, too,crowds came out with white flags to meet the advancing battalions,and while they welcomed the Sirdar, it was evident that there had been a lurking fear that the city would be sacked after the battle,in the oldsavage fashion ofArab warfare.

As the Soudanese battalions entered the suburbs there was an unpleasant change from this friendly reception. Desperate groups of Dervishes were holding out here and there among the houses, making a flat parapeted roof their post of vantage, or firing from werestillclearingitof the last desperateremnant of Abdullahi's bodyguard. The Khalifa himself had ridden away only a few minutes before, accompanied by a few of his chiefs, some of his wives,and a small escort. For some time it was supposed thathe was still in thepalace.

It was at this point that a most unfortunate incident occurred. The Hon. Hubert Howard, a son of the Earl of Carlisle, had accompanied the expedition as warcorrespondentof the Times and the New York Herald. He had already seen some service in South Africa, andhad there displayed the same venturous disposition that led him, during the battle of Omdurman, to ride with the 21st Lancers in their desperate charge. Out of that dangerhe had come scatheless. But now, when the fighting was all but over, he was to meet his death by the fire of his own friends. He had ridden with the staff closeup to the enclosureof the Khalifa's palace, near the Mahdi's tomb. It was just sunset, and the light was rapidly decreasing, but Howard, nevertheless,told a comrade who was with him that he would push on into the courtyard in the hope of taking some snapshot photographs with a hand camera which he carried. He went in,but he had hardly done so whena shell,fired by oneof the British batteries,exploded in the enclosure and killed him on the spot. The battery commander had received orders to drop ashell from time to timeintothe neighbourhood of the Mahdi's tomb in order to break up any rally of the Dervishes there. But he had not beeninformedof therapidprogress ofMaxwell's men and the Sirdar and his staff, who had reached the tomb much sooner than was anticipated. Young Howard's death was the result. The death roll of war correspondents in the Soudan is alonger one than for any other country,andon this day theylost,in proportion to their small numbers, more heavily than the combatant officers or the rank and file.

windows andhalf-open doors. There werealso ghastly signs of what the Baggara horsemen had done as they galloped away through the suburbs from the battlefield. Corpses lay in the deserted street, for the most part women and young girls, slaves of those barbarous masters whom they had speared or cut down as they caught them escaping from the houses. The Soudanese cleared the suburb with bullet and bayonet, the gunboats occasionally giving effective help by bringingtheir Maxims to bear on a housetop, sweeping it with a jet of hot lead as a fireman sweeps a roof with a stream of water. While this desultory fighting was still going on, and the bullets were flying in the mud-walled streets, the Sirdar rode in at the headof his staff.

The Soudanese had gotround the north-east angleof the central walledenclosure of the city by wading through the water of the Nile, where it ran close to the foot of the fortifications. They entered by the breaches which the shells had made in the wall on the river front, and once inside, met with no organised resistance, though there was some desultory skirmishing. The Sirdar and his staff, with their escort,had ridden down the broad street that runs from the centre of Omdurman through the northern juburbs. Crowds of the townsfolk waited to welcome him, some sincerely glad of the downfall of the Khalifa, others eagerto make their peace with the victor. As he approached the Mahdi's tomb and the central enclosure there were fewer of these more or less sincere congratulations, and then came the experience of being occasionally firedat from roofs and walls.

All resistance being now at an end, and it having been definitely ascertained that the Khalifa had escaped from the city, the Sirdar and his officers paid a brief visit to the Mahdi's tomb. The evening light coming in through the great rent in the dome showed how the interior had been wrecked by the bursting Lyddite shell. The tomb itself, and the gilded railings round it, were badly damaged ;of the lamps that hung from the roof only one remained, and the doors, with their carved panels, had been blown openand shattered.

Guided by Slatin,the Sirdar enteredthe inner walled city by oneof the large openings on the landside, andreached the neighbourhood of the Khalifa's half-ruined palace,while the Soudanese Ordershad alreadybeen given for Broadwood s