THE FINAL ADVANCE 215 into touch with the Dervish patrols, but the latter, although numerous, avoided combat. In one of the deserted villages was found one of Wingate’s spies in Dervish attire. He had left Omdurman thirty hours before, and brought the news that the Khalifa intended to attack at Kerreri.

This place had been chosen because there was current an old prophecy by a Persian sheik to the effect that English soldiers would one day fight at Kerreri and be destroyed there. It had therefore become an almost holy place to the Mahdists, and was called the death-place of all the infidels, and once a year the Khalifa and his followers made a pilgrimage to it. A few shots were fired during the night, and fires blazed on the hills to notify to Omdurman our precise position.

The troops started again soon after daylight, facing now to the right and marching westward, to leave the bush and broken ground and get out in the open desert stretching away to Omdurman. The cavalry were widely spread out, and the Lancers ascended to the top of the hill of El Teb, from which a view of the Dervish camp was obtained.

It lay some ten miles due south. The Dervishes were disposed in three long lines stretching from within two thousand yards of the Kile out into the desert, being careful to get, as they believed, beyond the range of the four gun-boats that steamed quietly up. After a short march the force halted near the river, two miles north of Kerreri. The place was convenient for camping, but the banks of the river were steep, and there was much difficulty in watering the horses and transport animals.

“We are in for another bad night,” one of the General’s staff said to Gregory as the evening approached.

“ It looks like it ; clouds are banking up fast. If the rain would but come in the daytime instead of at night one would not object to it much. It would lay the dust and cool the air ; besides, on the march we have other things to think of, and though of course we should be drenched to the skin, we