96 Seven Years tn the Soudan.

possible, and on October 11th, 1875, I set out with an escort of Europeans and Arabs Avhom I had enlisted to put together the steamer at Dufile.

Two days before starting Halet Pasha wrote a letter to me, giving me some instructions to protect the loassage of an official bearing important letters for the governor of Central Africa, who on his part had also orders to go to Gordon Pasha.

I therefore set out on my way on October 11th, taking with me the official bearing the dispatches. 1 arrived at midnight of October 16th with the steamer Ismailia at Fashoda, and Yussuf Bey, who was preparing to go to Gordon, asked forty-eight hours' time for this ])urpose. While I was waiting for him, he informed me that the garrison of Khaka was in danger of being massacred by five or six thousand Shilluks, who were besieging them. Yussuf proposed to me to descend as far as Khaka with a reinforcement of troops, and 1 consented. In an hour the hmailla was ready for departure with fifty soldiers, eleven special guards, and Yussuf Bey. We arrived at Khaka in six hours. Yussuf Bey landed and took at Khaka a reinforcement of another eighty men and two Yusbashi.

To protect the lauding and tactics of Yussuf Bey, which did not seem to me too safe, I made the Ismailia advance as much as possible, and having some cases of guns and ammunition which I had taken on board at Khartoum for Central Africa, I caused some to be opened, and armed all the crew, so that they might attack the flank of the Shilluks who were at three hundred metres distance from the boat.

Yussuf Bey divided his column into two parts. The first band of fifty men led the way, whilst the rest, commanded by Yussuf Bey himself, followed.

The Shilluks, whom, as we have already said, were in number from five to six thousand, were divided into some thirty groups, and hidden among the grass and doora. They had remarked from a distance