PAST GEBEL ES SERGAIN. 115 ground in front, and the hills on either flank crowned with sentries. It happened to be my turn for outpost duty ; and little did I think, when scrambling my rounds that night in pitch darkness, that some nine or ten thousand of the enemy were within half a day's march of us. Everybody was firmly convinced we should have no fighting till we got to the river, if then ; and no one anticipated much of a resistance, least of all in the desert.

Next morning we started before daybreak, and pursued our way over a large gravelly plain, sanddrifts alternating with stretches of level black rock.

Expecting to make the wells of Abu Klea by the evening, the column halted about eleven in a small valley at the far end of the plain, just where the ranges of hills (a mile off on either flank up till now), approached one another. The track ahead we saw led up a steepish hill over rocky ground, and then through a regular pass commanded by the hills on each side.

According to the map, the wells lay some three miles the other side of this pass in a sandy valley.

Directly the Hussars had finished their meal, they I 2