144 WITH KITCHENER IN THE SOUDAN should have heard before this, had they been there. Do you think that they would have remained so long in the town if they had learned that there are but two hundred of us and one steamer ? Mahmud would never have forgiven them had they not fallen upon us and annihilated us. I only hope that two hundred will have been left there ; it will add to our glory to have won a battle as well as taken the town. Your children will talk of it in their tents, your women will be proud of you, and the men of the black regiments will say that we have shown ourselves to be as brave as they are. We will halt for half an hour, rest the camels, and then push on at full speed again; but mind, you have my orders: if you should see the enemy coming in force, you are to ride at once to the river bank, dismount, and make the camels lie down in a semicircle; then we have but to keep calm and shoot straight and we need not fear the Dervishes, however many of them there may be.”

After the halt they again pushed forward. Gregory saw with pleasure that the Arabs were now thoroughly wound up to fighting point. The same vigilant watch was kept up as before, but the air of gloom that had hung over them when they first started had now disappeared; each man was ready to fight to the last. As the town was seen, the tension was at its highest, but the pace quickened rather than relaxed. “Mow is the moment!” the Bey shouted. “If they are there they will come out to fight us; if in five minutes they do not appear, it will be because they have all gone.”

But there were no signs of the enemy, no clouds of dust rising in the town that would tell of a hasty gathering. At last they entered a straggling street; the women looked timidly from the windows, and then, on seeing that their robes did not bear the black patches worn by the Dervishes, they broke into loud cries of welcome.

“ Are the Dervishes all gone ? ” Ahmed Bey asked, reining in his camel.

“ They are all gone, the last left four days ago.”