276 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

mettle and resolutely assaulted the town and forts of which he had so long been governor. <A desperate action ensued, but Fadl was beaten off with a loss of 700, it is said, in killed and wounded. The casualties in Colonel Parsons’ force were about 100. But the dervishes, though severely beaten, soon returned to attack the forts. With increased numbers they sat down before the place and began to harass sorely the Egyptian troops, cutting their communications with Kassala, whence by wire to Massowah over the Italian lines and up the Red Sea to Egypt the Sirdar was able to keep in touch with Colonel Parsons. They endeavoured again, on several occasions, to storm one or other of the forts, which were about half a mile apart, but happily they were invariably repulsed.

Still they persisted in their tactics of worrying, evidently determined to recapture the place. At last matters grew so serious that Major-General Rundle was sent with a brigade of infantry and_ several batteries to deal with Ahmed Fadl’s_ dervishes. Advancing up the Blue Nile in gunboats, the Egyptian force cleared the banks of all the many wandering armed bands of the enemy. Through the aid of the wily Abyssinian scouts, information was sent to and received from Colonel Parsons and a plan arranged for catching Fadl and his men between two attacking columns. Seventeen hundred men of the Omdurman force attacked the dervishes on one side, whilst Colonel Parsons’ garrison assailed them from the..other. The enemy were completely routed and scattered in all directions. Hundreds of dervishes