200 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

bullets, the thud of a hit and the dropping, weltering in his blood, of a man here and there, watched from our firing lines the combat enlisted and fascinated the attention with barely a suggestion of danger to the onlooker. Few will ever see again so great and brave a show. A vast army, with a front of three miles, covering an undulating plain—warriors mounted and a-foot, clad in quaint and picturesque drapery, with gorgeous barbaric display of banners, burnished metal, and sheen of steel—came sweeping upon us with the speed of cavalry. Half-a-dozen batteries smote them, a score of Maxims and 10,000 rifles unceasingly buffeted them, making great gaps and rending their ranks in all directions. With magnificent courage, without pause, the survivors invariably drew together, furiously, frenziedly running to cross steel with us. Their ardour and mad devotion won admiration on all sides in our own ranks. Poor, misguided Jehadieh and hocussed Arabs of the spacious and cruel Soudan !

With such troops disciplined and trained by English officers the policing of Africa would be an easy affair.

Try and try as they did, they could not moving openly pass through our blasts of fire. Some few there were who got by subtler means to within 600 yards of the British front and 200 yards from Maxwell’s blacks, there to yield their lives.

Among the earliest, if not the first man, wounded in the zereba on 2nd September was Corporal Mackenzie, of “C” Company Seaforth Highlanders. About 6.10 am. he was hit in the leg by a ricochet. The -wound was dressed, and Mackenzie stuck to his post.