With Kitchener in the Soudan: A Story of Atbara and Omdurman Read online

  WITH KITCHENER IN THE SOUDAN:

  A Story of Atbara and Omdurman

  by

  G. A. HENTY.

  Contents

  Preface.Chapter 1: Disinherited.Chapter 2: The Rising In Alexandria.Chapter 3: A Terrible Disaster.Chapter 4: An Appointment.Chapter 5: Southward.Chapter 6: Gregory Volunteers.Chapter 7: To Metemmeh.Chapter 8: Among The Dervishes.Chapter 9: Safely Back.Chapter 10: Afloat.Chapter 11: A Prisoner.Chapter 12: The Battle Of Atbara.Chapter 13: The Final Advance.Chapter 14: Omdurman.Chapter 15: Khartoum.Chapter 16: A Voice From The Dead.Chapter 17: A Fugitive.Chapter 18: A Hakim.Chapter 19: The Last Page.Chapter 20: A Momentous Communication.Chapter 21: Gedareh.Chapter 22: The Crowning Victory.Chapter 23: An Unexpected Discovery.

  Preface.

  The reconquest of the Soudan will ever be mentioned as one of the mostdifficult, and at the same time the most successful, enterprises everundertaken. The task of carrying an army hundreds of miles across awaterless desert; conveying it up a great river, bristling withobstacles; defeating an enormously superior force, unsurpassed in theworld for courage; and, finally, killing the leader of the enemy andcrushing out the last spark of opposition; was a stupendous one.

  After the death of Gordon, and the retirement of the British troops,there was no force in existence that could have barred the advance ofthe fanatical hordes of the Mahdi, had they poured down into Egypt. Thenative Egyptian army was, as yet, in the earliest stage oforganization; and could not be relied upon to stand firm against thewild rush of the Dervishes. Fortunately, time was given for thatorganization to be completed; and when, at last, the Dervish forcesmarched north, they were repulsed. Assouan was saved, and Wady Halfabecame the Egyptian outpost.

  Gradually, preparations were made for taking the offensive. A railwaywas constructed along the banks of the Nile, and a mixed force ofBritish and Egyptians drove the enemy beyond Dongola; then, bysplendidly organized labour, a railroad was made from Wady Halfa,across the desert, towards the elbow of the great bend from Dongola toAbu Hamed. The latter place was captured, by an Egyptian brigade movingup from the former place; and from that moment, the movement wascarried on with irresistible energy.

  The railway was pushed forward to Abu Hamed; and then southward, pastBerber, up to the Atbara river. An army of twenty thousand men, underone of the Khalifa's sons, was attacked in a strong position anddefeated with immense loss. Fresh British troops were then brought up;and, escorted by gunboats and steamers carrying provisions, the armymarched up the Nile, crushed the Khalifa's great host before Omdurman,and recovered possession of Khartoum.

  Then, the moving spirit of this enterprise, the man whose marvellouspower of organization had secured its success, was called to otherwork. Fortunately, he had a worthy successor in Colonel Wingate; who,with a native force, encountered that which the Khalifa had againgathered, near El Obeid, the scene of the total destruction of the armyunder Hicks Pasha; routed it with ease, killing the Khalifa and all hisprincipal emirs. Thus a land that had been turned into a desert, by theterrible tyranny of the Mahdi and his successor, was wrested frombarbarism and restored to civilization; and the stain upon Britishhonour, caused by the desertion of Gordon by the British ministry ofthe day, was wiped out.

  It was a marvellous campaign--marvellous in the perfection of itsorganization, marvellous in the completeness of its success.

  G. A. Henty.