1466 THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES Beneath the descending shower of bullets from a well-placed shrapnel, a little crowd of men would fall torn and bleeding upon the sand, and sometimes a Shell splinter would crash into a horse and hurl the animal with its rider to the ground. Despite this awful fire, the brave Dervishes came steadily on down the slope, though the line of their march was thickly strewn with dead and wounded. At length, to complete their discomfiture, the enemy in this part of the field came within long range of the rifles of the Guards, the Warwicks, and other battalions lining the more southern face of the zeriba. As withering volleys were poured into them, in addition to the incessant shell fire, the remnants of this brave division seemed to realise the hopelessness of a direct advance, and swerved to their left without any disorder to join their comrades who had advanced round Surgham from the west.

‘The main attack upon our position had now fully developed, and it was at this juncture that the Egyptian cavalry and the Camel Corps regained the shelter of their comrades’ trenches after their lucky escape from Sheikh ry e a