71 CAMEL CORPS MOUNTING.

CHAPTER XIV.

MAHMOUD AN THE SIRDAR.

wounded duringthe bombardment ofHafir. In the course of a week or ten daysMahmoud had transferred to the right bank near Shendy all his men, guns, and stores. Of these last he formed twolarge depots,onein Shendy itself,the other at the wellsof Hosh-en-Naga,five miles to the south-west, where, no doubt, he thought it would be safer from the gunboats than in any place on the river bank.

Colonel Wingate's agents almost immediately brought news, not only of Mahmoud's movement to Shendy,but also of the orders he had received from Omdurman. The Khalifa had written to him that he was to advanceonBerber, capture it, and then push on to the northwards and destroy the railway. The line had reached a point between Abu Hamed and the Fifth Cataract. Supplies were brought up by train to railhead,and there embarked on boats which landed them at the foot of the Cataract, for the Nile had fallen so far that it was no easy task to bring up boats through the short rapid. From the landing-place .camel convoys conveyed the supplies to Berber, and the fort and camp at the mouth of the Atbara.

The British brigade under General Gatacre was at once ordered up to the front, Kenur village, south of Berber, being named as the if concentration. StartingonFebruary 25, MAHMOUD remainedquiet inhis camp at Metemneh during the wholeof January and part of February, so that even at the Egyptian headquarters the opinion began to prevail that he had given up his plan for a dash at Berber. It was supposed ti.at the presence of a British brigade at Wady Haifa (now reinforced by a second Highland battalion) had induced him to regard prudence as the better part of valour. In the middle of February it looked as if, after all, nothing serious would happen on the Upper Nile till the Sirdargave the word for the advance beyond the Atbarain the summer.

But on Friday, February 25, the MahommedanSabbath, and therefore a dayoften chosen by the Dervishes to begin a march ormake an attack. Mahmoud began tomove the bulk ofhis force across theNile to Shendy. He had more than 18,000 fighting men with him, the largest army theDervishes had put into the field since the fall of Khartoum. Amongst them were 4,000 cavalry and some thousands of riflemen, and he took with him all the Krupp guns that had been mounted in the riverside batteries at MetL-mneh. Amongst the emirs who held commands under him were Osman Digna and Wad Bishara, who had been the Dervish nor of Dongola in i8'i6, and who was