holding his sword in his right
hand, waited for the rush of the enemy; he was soon surrounded and his
horse wounded in the back; he then dismounted and fought most gallantly
with his sword until he fell, pierced by several spears. The heroism of
these brave men was the admiration of all. After the massacre the bodies
were stripped and mutilated. Even long after the battle those who were
present used to talk of the terrible spectacle of all these bodies lying
with their mouths gaping open and covered with blood. These savages used
to plunge their spears into the bodies of the dead so as to dip them in
the bloody entrails of their enemies, and for long after they talked
and revelled over the yellow-looking fat of the "Turks," which protruded
through their gaping wounds. Baron Seckendorf, who was remarkable for
his enormous size, had been beheaded, and his head was taken to the
Mahdi; it was thought that he must have been General Hicks. A few
escaped by hiding themselves under the heaps of dead bodies or behind
guns or waggons; at the end of the action these were all collected, and
numbered one hundred persons. During the actual fighting no quarter was
given. An Egyptian soldier pursued by some Dervishes fled towards the
Khalifa Sherif and begged to be spared; but the latter laughed at his
fear, and he was at once despatched with spears.

The Dervishes then collected their dead and laid them out in a line. It
seems almost incredible to say so, but there were only three hundred and
fifty in all killed. The Mahdi offered up a prayer over them, and then
they were buried.

The dead bodies of the Egyptians were left a prey to the vultures and
hyenas. Klootz, who said that he understood doctoring, was permitted by
the Mahdi to collect all the medicines in the field, and when doing so
he was enabled to examine the bodies of the Europeans. He told me that
it was with the greatest difficulty he kept himself from breaking down
when he saw the mutilated corpses of those with whom he had but a short
time ago laughed and spoken. The body of a soldier was seen hanging
between earth and sky; he had evidently climbed up an Adansonia tree in
search of water, when a bullet must have killed him, and in falling he
was caught by the branches.

Amongst those who escaped was a man named Abderrahman Ben en Naga Bey,
whose father, then in El Obeid, had entreated the Mahdi to spare him. A
few days before the catastrophe he was found writing lette