rough the
scattered bush and scrub, presently to emerge upon a large plateau which
overlooked Mahmud's zeriba from a distance of about 900 yards.

It was still dark, and the haze that shrouded the Dervish camp was
broken only by the glare of the watch-fires. The silence was profound.
It seemed impossible to believe that more than 25,000 men were ready to
join battle at scarcely the distance of half a mile. Yet the advance had
not been unperceived, and the Arabs knew that their terrible antagonists
crouched on the ridge waiting for the morning; For a while the suspense
was prolonged. At last, after what seemed to many an interminable
period, the uniform blackness of the horizon was broken by the first
glimmer of the dawn. Gradually the light grew stronger until, as a
theatre curtain is pulled up, the darkness rolled away, the vague
outlines in the haze became definite, and the whole scene was revealed.

The British and Egyptian army lay along the low ridge in the form of
a great bow--the British brigade on the left, MacDonald in the centre,
Maxwell curving forward on the right. The whole crest of the swell of
ground was crowned with a bristle of bayonets and the tiny figures of
thousands of men sitting or lying down and gazing curiously before them.
Behind them, in a solid square, was the transport, guarded by Lewis's
brigade. The leading squadrons of the cavalry were forming leisurely
towards the left flank. The four batteries and a rocket detachment,
moving between the infantry, ranged themselves on two convenient
positions about a hundred yards in front of the line of battalions. All
was ready. Yet everything was very quiet, and in the stillness of the
dawn it almost seemed that Nature held her breath.

Half a mile away, at the foot of the ridge, a long irregular black line
of thorn bushes enclosed the Dervish defences. Behind this zeriba low
palisades and entrenchments bent back to the scrub by the river. Odd
shapeless mounds indicated the positions of the gun-emplacements, and
various casemates could be seen in the middle of the enclosure. Without,
the bushes had been cleared away, and the smooth sand stretched in a
gentle slope to where the army waited. Within were crowds of little
straw huts and scattered bushes, growing thicker to the southward. From
among this rose the palm-trees, between whose stems the dry bed of the
Atbara was exposed, and a single pool of water gleamed in the early
sunlight. Such was Mahmu