164 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

had charged up the hill alone when the Staffords stormed it. He, at all events, was an exception, or rather, he perhaps afforded a proof that the " hens " gather courage when they are led and supported by Europeans. Leaving the two companies of the Black Watch on the koppies and sending two companies to bivouac on a high island of the Nile at the head of the rapid.

General Brackenbury ordered the remaining troops back to camp.

Colonel Buller with his handful of hussars had early in the day proceeded to the river bank and thence to the entrance of the Shukook Pass, and in the rugged gorge had found the deserted camp of the enemy with standards, camels, and donkeys, with some of which, without any casualities caused by the fire of the enemy from the adjacent hills, he returned to the camp.

The fight at Kirbekan had lasted for five hours, and throughout that time the hospital service had been admirably accomplished; dressing stations had been established at various points, and the medical officers had accompanied their men into action though both they and the wounded were unavoidably much exposed to the cross-fire during the engagement, at the close of which the bodies of General Earle, Colonel Eyre, and Colonel Coveney were carried into camp, while those of the other brave men who had fallen were committed to a grave on the river bank.

At sunset, an appropriate hour for a ceremony so sad and solemn, the bodies of General Earle, Colonel Eyre, and Colonel Coveney were laid side by side in deep graves near the foot of a solitary palm-tree amidst a silence scarcely disturbed except by the low boom of the minute-guns echoed from the dreary hills where the battle had been fought.

But the word was still "Onward," onward to Berber; and immediate arrangements were made by General Brackenbury to advance the troops which had more recently arrived and had not been engaged at Kirbekan, and to push through the Shukook Pass to Salamat and to Hebbeh, the scene of the murder of Colonel Stewart and his companions, where further punishment was to be inflicted by the destruction of the village and of the property of Fakri Wad Etman, the accomplice of Suleiman Wad Gamr.