204 WITH HITCHEHEE IN THE SOUDAN The lad had not forgotten the object with which he had come to the front. After Atbara he had questioned many of the prisoners who from their age might have fought at El Obeid, but none of these had done so. The forces of the Khalifa came and went as there was occasion for them. The Baggara were always under arms, but only when danger threatened were the great levies of foot assembled; for it would have been impossible, in the now desolate state of the Soudan, to find food for an army of a hundred thousand men. All agreed, however, that, with the exception of the Egyptian artillerymen, they heard that no single white man had escaped. Numbers of the black soldiers had been made slaves; the whites had perished—all save one had fallen on the field. That one had accompanied a black battalion who had held together, and, repulsing all attacks, had marched away. They had been followed, however, and after repeated attacks had dwindled away until they had finally been broken and massacred.

With the Khalifa’s army were several emirs who had fought at El Obeid, and these would no doubt be able to tell him more; but none of those who were taken prisoners at the Atbara had heard of any white man having escaped the slaughter of Hicks’s army.

Just as the general movement began, the force was joined by three companies of Soudanese. These had marched from Suakim to Berber, two hundred and eighty-eight miles, in fifteen days, an average of nineteen miles a day,—a record for such a march, and one that no European force could have performed. One day, after marching thirty miles, they came to a well and found it dry, and had to march thirty miles farther to another water-hole, a feat probably altogether without precedent.

“ You had better fall back upon your old work, Hilliard,” the General said the day before they started. “ As my aide ’ I shall find plenty for you to do, now that I command the whole division.”