96 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

though the position was not the best that might have been found if the troops had moved to a greater distance, it was soon rendered pretty secure. There was a gravel terrace about threequarters of a mile from the Nile, and the intervening space was filled by a cultivated plain, at the end of which the ground sloped rather abruptly to the river, and it was on this slope that the camp was formed, so that it was concealed from the land side but exposed to the opposite island on the river side, which was at first guarded by one of the steamers, and afterwards by the Egyptians who occupied a redoubt or earthwork on the island itself. It may be supposed that the men employed in this duty were the Turco-Egyptians or Circassians on whose removal Gordon had insisted, and who were accordingly left behind when Sir Charles Wilson started for Khartum, to which he now ex[)ected he would have to fight his way, as he knew that the jNIahdi had taken Omdurman, and Khashm-el-Mus had reported that there were several batteries on the river like those that had been seen on the recent excursion beyond Sayal.

The plan of operations that had first been laid down had to be still further departed from. Beresford, who was to have manned two of the steamers with the naval brigade, and to take Sir Charles Wilson to Khartum with about fifty men of the Sussex Regiment, was unable to walk, all his ofificers and many of the petty ofificers and the best of the seamen had been killed, and on the way back from the reconnaissance on the Nile he had asked Sir Charles to appoint Mr. Ingram of the Duke of Cambridge's Hussars to be an acting lieutenant of the naval brigade, as there were no ofificers and he (Beresford) could not go about alone. Mr. Ingram had already earned the reputation of a keen and able soldier, and though he had gone up the Nile as a correspondent of some minor ncAvspaper, as a means of getting to the front had taken out a steam-launch, out of which he had to take the engine somewhere on the cataracts, but contrived to get the boat itself to Korti, and joining the desert column had fought in the front rank as a volunteer both at Abu-Klea and Metammeh. Mr. Ingram had proved himself by his coolness and determination to be able to take a