moved; nay,
with spirits longing for revenge for untold wrongs and insults. Thus for
some minutes in that vast amphitheatre the discipline and calm
confidence of the West stood quietly facing the fanatic fury of the
East. Two worlds were there embattled: the world of Mohammedanism and
the world of Christian civilisation; the empire of untutored force and
the empire of mind.

At last, after some minutes of tense expectancy, the cannon opened fire,
and speedily gaps were seen in the white masses. Yet the crescent never
slackened its advance, except when groups halted to fire their muskets
at impossible ranges. Waving their flags and intoning their prayers, the
Dervishes charged on in utter scorn of death; but when their ranks came
within range of the musketry fire, they went down like swathes of grass
under the scythe. Then was seen a marvellous sight. When the dead were
falling their fastest, a band of about 150 Dervish horsemen formed
near the Khalifa's dark-green standard in the centre and rushed across
the fire zone, determined to snatch at triumph or gain the sensuous joys
of the Moslem paradise. None of them rode far.

[Illustration: THE DERVISH ATTACK ON MACDONALD.]

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.]

Only on the north, where the camel-corps fell into an awkward plight
among the rocks of the Kerreri slope, had the attack any chance of
success; and there the shells of one of the six protecting gunboats
helped to check the assailants. On this side, too, Colonel Broadwood and
his Egyptian cavalry did excellent service by leading no small part of
the Dervish left away from the attack on the zariba. At the middle of
the fiery crescent the assailants did some execution by firing from a
dip in the ground some 400 yards away; but their attempts to rush the
intervening space all ended in mere slaughter. Not long after eight
o'clock the Khalifa, seeing the hopelessness of attempting to cross the
zone of fire around el-Gennuaia, now thickly strewn with his dead, drew
off the survivors beyond the ridge of Gebel Surgham; and those who had
followed Broadwood's horse also gave up their futile pursuit, and began
to muster on the Kerreri ridge.

The Sirdar now sought to force on a fight in the open; and with this aim
in view commanded a general advance on Omdurman. In order, as it would
seem, to keep a fighting formation that would impose respect on the
bands of Dervishes on the Kerreri Hills, he adopted the formation kn