Colonel Kitchener Decided To Retire.
The Decision Having Been Taken, The Next Step Was To Get Beyond The Enemy's
Reach As Quickly As Possible, And The Force Began Their Retreat On The Same
Night.
The homeward march was not less long and trying than the advance,
and neither hopes of distinction nor glamour of excitement cheered the
weary soldiers.
As they toiled gloomily back towards the Nile, the horror
of the accursed land grew upon all. Hideous spectacles of human misery
were added to the desolation of the hot, thorny scrub and stinking pools
of mud. The starving inhabitants had been lured from their holes and
corners by the outward passage of the troops, and hoped to snatch some food
from the field of battle. Disappointed, they now approached the camps at
night in twos and threes, making piteous entreaties for any kind of
nourishment. Their appeals were perforce unregarded; not an ounce
of spare food remained.
Towards the end of the journey the camels, terribly strained by their
privation of water, began to die, and it was evident that the force would
have no time to spare. One young camel, though not apparently exhausted,
refused to proceed, and even when a fire was lighted round him remained
stubborn and motionless; so that, after being terribly scorched, he had
to be shot. Others fell and died all along the route. Their deaths brought
some relief to the starving inhabitants. For as each animal was left behind,
the officers, looking back, might see first one, then another furtive
figure emerge from the bush and pounce on the body like a vulture;
and in many cases before life was extinct the famished natives
were devouring the flesh.
On the 5th of February the column reached Kohi, and the Kordofan
Field Force, having overcome many difficulties and suffered many hardships,
was broken up, unsuccessful through no fault of its commander,
its officers, or its men.
For nearly a year no further operations were undertaken against
the Khalifa, and he remained all through the spring and summer of 1899
supreme in Kordofan, reorganising his adherents and plundering the country
- a chronic danger to the new Government, a curse to the local inhabitants,
and a most serious element of unrest. The barren and almost waterless
regions into which he had withdrawn presented very difficult obstacles to
any military expedition, and although powerful forces were still
concentrated at Khartoum, the dry season and the uncertain whereabouts
of the enemy prevented action. But towards the end of August trustworthy
information was received by the Intelligence Department, through the agency
of friendly tribesmen, that the Khalifa, with all his army, was encamped
at Jebel Gedir - that same mountain in Southern Kordofan to which nearly
twenty years before he and the Mahdi had retreated after the flight from
Abba Island. Here among old memories which his presence revived he became
at once a centre of fanaticism. Night after night he slept upon
the Mahdi's stone; and day after day tales of his dreams were carried
by secret emissaries not only throughout the Western Soudan, but into the
Ghezira and even to Khartoum. And now, his position being definite and his
action highly dangerous, it was decided to move against him.
On the 13th of October the first Soudanese battalion was despatched
in steamers from Khartoum, and by the 19th a force of some 7,000 men,
well equipped with camel transport, was concentrated at Kaka, a village on
the White Nile not far north of Fashoda. The distance from here to Jebel
Gedir was about eighty miles, and as for the first fifty no water existed;
the whole supply had to be carried in tanks. Sir Reginald Wingate, who was
in command of the infantry, reached Fungor, thirty miles from the enemy's
position, with the two leading battalions (IXth and Xth Soudanese) on
the 23rd of October, only to find news that the Khalifa had left his camp
at Jebel Gedir on the 18th and had receded indefinitely into the desert.
The cast having failed, and further progress involving a multiplication of
difficulties, Lord Kitchener, who was at Kaka, stopped the operations,
and the whole of the troops returned to Khartoum, which they reached
in much vexation and disappointment on the 1st of November.
It was at first universally believed that the Khalifa's intention
was to retire to an almost inaccessible distance - to El Obeid or Southern
Darfur - and the officers of the Egyptian army passed an unhappy fortnight
reading the Ladysmith telegrams and accusing their evil fortune which kept
them so far from the scene of action. But soon strange rumours began to
run about the bazaars of Omdurman of buried weapons and whispers of revolt.
For a few days a vague feeling of unrest pervaded the native city,
and then suddenly on the 12th of November came precise and surprising news.
The Khalifa was not retreating to the south or to the west, but advancing
northward with Omdurman, not El Obeid, as his object. Emboldened by the
spectacle of two successive expeditions retreating abortive, and by,
who shall say what wild exaggerated tales of disasters to the Turks far
beyond the limits of the Soudan, Abdullah had resolved to stake all that
yet remained to him in one last desperate attempt to recapture his former
capital; and so, upon the 12th of November, his advanced guard, under the
Emir Ahmed Fedil, struck the Nile opposite Abba Island, and audaciously
fired volleys of musketry at the gunboat Sultan which was patrolling
the river.
The name of Abba Island may perhaps carry the reader back to the very
beginning of this story. Here, eighteen years before, the Mahdi had lived
and prayed after his quarrel with the haughty Sheikh; here Abdullah had
joined him; here the flag of the revolt had been set up, and the first
defeat had been inflicted upon the Egyptian troops; and here, too,
still dwelt - dwells, indeed, to this day - one of those same brothers who
had pursued through all the vicissitudes and convulsions which had shaken
the Soudan his humble industry of building wooden boats.
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