OMDUEMAN 231 were coming on at the double, but they were farther away than Ed Din’s host, and the latter were running like deer.

He felt a deep sense of relief when the 9th Soudanese were thrown back, performing the movement as quietly and steadily as if on a drill-ground, and two batteries of artillery galloped across to their support. He had hardly expected such calm courage from the black battalion. As to the bravery of the Soudanese troops there was no question. They were of the same blood and race as their foes, and had shown how bravely they could fight in many a previous battle, but he was not prepared for the steady way in which they worked under such novel circumstances ; and although they too must have known that every moment was of consequence, they moved without haste or hurry into the new position, scarcely glancing at the torrent which was rushing on towards them.

Hot less steadily and quietly did the 11th, considered to be the crack regiment of the brigade, swing round, and as calmly and firmly did the Egyptian battalion—composed of the peasants who, but twenty years before, had been considered among the most cowardly of people, a host of whom would have fled before a dozen of the dreaded Dervishes march into the gap between the two black regiments and manfully hold their own. And yet he could not but feel sorry for the valiant savages who under so awful a fire still pressed forward to certain death, their numbers withering away at every step until they dwindled to nothing, only to be replaced by a fresh band, which darted forward to meet a similar fate; and yet, when he remembered the wholesale slaughter at Metemmeh, the annihilation of countless villages and of their inhabitants, and, above all, the absolute destruction of the army of Hicks Pasha, the capture of Khartoum, the murder of Gordon, and the reduction to a state of slavery of all the peaceful tribes of the Soudan, he could not but feel that the annihilation of these human tigers and the wiping out of their false creed was a necessity.

When the last shot was fired he dismounted and leant