round to shoot. The XIth Soudanese
encountered the most severe resistance after the defences were
penetrated. As their three deployed companies pressed on through the
enclosure, they were confronted by a small inner zeriba stubbornly
defended by the Emir Mahmud's personal bodyguard. These poured a sudden
volley into the centre company at close range, and so deadly was the
effect that nearly all the company were shot, falling to the ground
still in their ranks, so that a British officer passing at a little
distance was provoked to inquire 'what they were doing lying down.'
Notwithstanding this severe check the regiment, gallantly led by their
colonel and supported by the Xth Soudanese, rushed this last defence
and slew its last defenders. Mahmud was himself captured. Having duly
inspected his defences and made his dispositions, he had sheltered in a
specially constructed casemate. Thence he was now ignominiously dragged,
and, on his being recognised, the intervention of a British officer
alone saved him from the fury of the excited Soudanese.

Still the advance continued, and it seemed to those who took part in
it more like a horrible nightmare than a waking reality. Captains and
subalterns collected whatever men they could, heedless of corps or
nationality, and strove to control and direct their fire. Jibba-clad
figures sprang out of the ground, fired or charged, and were destroyed
at every step. And onwards over their bodies--over pits choked with dead
and dying, among heaps of mangled camels and donkeys, among decapitated
or eviscerated trunks, the ghastly results of the shell fire; women and
little children killed by the bombardment or praying in wild terror
for mercy; blacks chained in their trenches, slaughtered in their
chains--always onwards marched the conquerors, with bayonets running
blood; clothes, hands, and faces all besmeared; the foul stench of a
month's accumulated filth in their nostrils, and the savage whistle of
random bullets in their ears.

But at about twenty minutes past eight the whole force, with the
Seaforth Highlanders well forward on the left, arrived at the bank of
the Atbara, having marched completely through the position, and shot or
bayoneted all in their path. Hundreds of Dervishes were still visible
retiring across the dry bed of the river, and making for the scrub on
the opposite bank. The leading companies of the Seaforth Highlanders and
Lincolns, with such odd parties of Camerons a