THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN __187 | yards of the line before they were shot down in detail, One determined standard - bearer, with nothing in his hands except his flagstaff, struggled on heroically to within a dozen yards of the blacks before he fell, riddled with bullets.

Efforts had, of course, been made all along the line to lend assistance to Macdonald in his one-handed struggle. The gunboats had joined with his own three batteries in shelling the dense masses under Sheikh Ed-Din, while on the left other batteries had galloped up, and now from the northern slopes of Surgham poured round after round of shell upon the indomitable enemy. Three battalions, too, of the rst British Brigade had come up at the double, and the Lincolns had been dispatched to aid in the final dispersion of Ed-Din’s Dervishes amongst the rugged ‘slopes of Kerreri. | Still, valuable as this help was in completing the rout of the Dervishes, and driving them off finally beyond the hills to the west, there is no doubt that the repulse of the enemy was already a fazt accompli long before the British battalions had wheeled to the right and