flank by two hundred Dervishes admirably placed on
a knoll. Major Fergusson was detached with one company to dislodge them.
The remaining four companies continued the attack.

The Dervish musketry now became intense. The whole front of the island
position was lined with smoke, and behind it, from the high cliff of
the west bank, a long half-circle of riflemen directed a second tier
of converging bullets upon the 400 charging men. The shingle jumped and
stirred in all directions as it was struck. A hideous whistling filled
the air. The Soudanese began to drop on all sides, 'just like the
Dervishes at Omdurman,' and the ground was soon dotted with the bodies
of the killed and wounded. 'We did not,' said an officer, 'dare to
look back.' But undaunted by fire and cross-fire, the heroic black
soldiers--demons who would not be denied--pressed forward without the
slightest check or hesitation, and, increasing their pace to a swift run
in their eagerness to close with the enemy, reached the first sandhills
and found cover beneath them. A quarter of the battalion had already
fallen, and lay strewn on the shingle.

The rapidity of their advance had exhausted the Soudanese, and Lewis
ordered Nason to halt under cover of the sandhills for a few minutes,
so that the soldiers might get their breath before the final effort.
Thereupon the Dervishes, seeing that the troops were no longer
advancing, and believing that the attack was repulsed, resolved to
clinch the matter. Ahmed Fedil from the west bank sounded the charge on
drum and bugle, and with loud shouts of triumph and enthusiasm the whole
force on the island rose from among the upper sandhills, and, waving
their banners, advanced impetuously in counter-attack. But the Xth
Soudanese, panting yet unconquerable, responded to the call of their
two white officers, and, crowning the little dunes behind which they had
sheltered, met the exultant enemy with a withering fire and a responding
shout.

The range was short and the fire effective. The astonished Arabs wavered
and broke; and then the soldiers, nobly led, swept forward in a
long scattered line and drove the enemy from one sandy ridge to
another--drove them across the rolling and uneven ground, every fold of
which contained Dervishes--drove them steadily back over the sandhills,
until all who were not killed or wounded were penned at the extreme
southern end of the island, with the deep unfordable arm of the river
behind them