and round about it are perceived the
mud houses and walls of Omdurman. Between the town and the attacking
army stretches a level sandy plain scantily clothed with yellow grass;
and here took place a battle which will not be forgotten for centuries
throughout the Sudan.

On the morning of September 2, Kitchener's forces are drawn up in order
of battle. Single horsemen emerge from the dust on the hillocks,
increase in number, and then come in clouds like locusts--an army of
50,000 dervishes. Their fanatical war-cry rises up to heaven, gathers
strength, grows louder, and rolls along like a storm wind coming in
from the sea. They charge at a furious pace in an unbroken line, and it
looks as though they would ride like a crushing avalanche right over the
enemy. But the moment they come within range fire issues from thousands
of rifles, and the dervishes find themselves in a perfect hail of
bullets. Their ranks are thinned, but they check their course only for a
moment, and ride on in blind fury and with a bravery which only
religious conviction can inspire. The English machine guns scatter their
death-bolts so rapidly that a continuous roll of thunder is heard, and
the dervishes fall in heaps like ripe corn before the scythe. The fallen
ranks are constantly replaced by fresh reinforcements, but at last the
dervishes have had enough and beat a retreat. At once Kitchener pressed
on to Omdurman, but the bloody day is not yet at an end. The dervish
horsemen rally yet once more. The Khalifa's standard is planted in the
ground on a mound, and beside it the Prophet's green banner calls the
faithful together for a last desperate struggle. The English and their
Egyptian allies fight with admirable courage, and the dervishes strike
with a bravery and contempt of death to which no words can do justice.
Under the holy banner a detachment advances into the fire, wavers, is
mown down, and falls, and almost before the smoke of the powder has
cleared away, another presses forward on the track of the slain, only to
meet the same fate and join their comrades in the happy hunting-grounds
of eternity.

At length the day was ended and the Khalifa's army annihilated--11,000
killed, 16,000 wounded, and 4000 prisoners! The Khalifa himself escaped.
His harem and servants deserted him, and he who in the morning had been
absolute ruler over an immense kingdom, wandered about in the woods like
an outlaw. He fled to the south-west and succeeded in coll