THE WEEK BEFORE THE BATTLE 107 at the rate of one and a half miles an hour.

It 1s an open secret that the new gunboats built for the Nile service by Thorneycrofts are regarded as failures by naval experts. One of them, the Shezéh, can only make two miles an hour against the ordinary Nile current in August. | Even in the moonlight one could realise the amount of damage which might have been inflicted by an effective occupation of Shabluka, upon a force advancing up the river. When we passed the forts, constructed, after the manner of Dervish engineers, on a level with the water, we found them deserted, and their guns had been removed. But if the enemy, who were posted here up to last May, had maintained their position, we should have been compelled to halt and drive them out of it from the land side, for none of our slow gunboats could have forced the gorge had it been lined with artillery. | We arrived at Rojan Island before daybreak on the 28th, and were aroused out of sleep in the dark by the pleasing intelligence that an order had arrived from the Sirdar that we were to be turned out of the gunboat, bag