1% THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES the scene of their charge and recovered the dead. All the bodies had been horribly mutilated ; the faces were quite unrecognisable, and the flesh of the neck and shoulders was scored and lacerated in every direction with sword cuts and spear thrusts.

Indignation against the Dervishes for such mutilations may easily be exaggerated. Sickening as it is to gaze upon a comrade’s features hacked out of all human semblance, one cannot forget that the men who did the deed had seen thousands of their brethren slain by our awful fire without a possibility of retaliation. It is worth remembering, too, that the mutilation of the human body is not the exclusive monopoly of barbaric peoples ; anyone who has seen the effects of shell fire—bodies ripped open, jaws torn off, and kindred horrors—may find it difficult to differentiate very markedly between the accursed usages inseparable from every system of warfare —civiliséd and barbarous alike.

While the Lancers had met and engaged the enemy beyond Gebel Surgham, the whole of the infantry, artillery, and baggage-train had left the zeriba and advanced in échelon