CHAPTER XII.

STORIES OF THE BaTrLE—OMDURMAN.

TERE are numberless incidents and details remaining untold of the great battle and the fall of Omdurman. So singular and interesting an action is almost without parallel. ‘That villainous gunpowder ” of former days was so sparingly used in the fight by the Sirdar’s army that every part of the battle-field could be plainly seen.

In the first stage the heaviest firing was by the British ; the Lee-Metfords with cordite made little or no smoke. Maxwell's men of the Khedivial army, with their Martini-Henrys, never fired so fast as to cause any thick white cloud to shut out the view and hang between them and the enemy. Lewis's and Macdonald’s brigades were never very heavily engaged whilst the troops remained zerebaed. Perhaps it was the light south wind which blew the men’s rifle smoke behind us at once, but that was not what I thought. There seemed to be none to blow away. I recall that in the thick of the battle of Tamai with Davis's square, and at Abu Klea, the smoke cloud that hung like a curtain before our eyes was a source of danger. Save for the erratic, occasional whizzing of the enemy's