Rundle, who was at Merawi when the Jaalin messenger found him, lost no time.  A large amount of ammunition and 1,100 Remington rifles were speedily collected and hurried on camels across the desert by the Korti-Metemma route, escorted by a strong detachment of the Camel Corps.  The Khalifa did not receive his letter until the 27th of June.  But he acted with even greater promptitude.  Part of Mahmud’s army had already started for the north.  Mahmud and the rest followed on the 28th.  On the 30th the advanced guard arrived before Metemma.  The Jaalin prepared to resist desperately.  Nearly the whole tribe had responded to the summons of their chief, and more than 2,500 men were collected behind the walls of the town.  But in all this force there were only eighty serviceable rifles, and only fifteen rounds of ammunition each.  Abdalla expected that the Dervishes would make their heaviest attack on the south side of Metemma, and he therefore disposed his few riflemen along that front.  The defence of the rest of the town had perforce to be entrusted to the valour of the spearmen.

On the morning of the 1st of July, Mahmud, with a force variously estimated at 10,000 or 12,000 men, began his assault.  The first attack fell, as the chief had anticipated, on the southern face.  It was repulsed with severe loss by the Jaalin riflemen.  A second attack followed immediately.  The enemy had meanwhile surrounded the whole town, and just as the Jaalin ammunition was exhausted a strong force of the Dervishes penetrated the northern face of their defences, which was held only by spearmen.  The whole of Mahmud’s army poured in through the gap, and the garrison, after a stubborn resistance, were methodically exterminated.  An inhuman butchery of the children and some of the women followed.  Abdalla-Wad-Saad was among the killed.

A few of the Jaalin who had escaped from the general destruction fled towards Gakdul.  Here they found the Camel Corps with their caravan of rifles and ammunition.  Like another force that had advanced by this very road to carry succour to men in desperate distress, the relief had arrived too late.  The remnants of the Jaalin were left in occupation of Gakdul Wells.  The convoy and its escort returned to Korti.

But while the attention of the Khalifa was directed to these matters, a far more serious menace offered from another quarter.  Unnoticed by the Dervishes, or, if noticed, unappreciated, the railway was stretching farther and farther into the desert.  By the middle of July it had reached the 130th mile, and, as is related in the last chapter, work had to be suspended until Abu Hamed was in the hands of the Egyptian forces.  The Nile was rising fast.  Very soon steamers would be able to pass the Fourth Cataract.  It should have been evident that the next movement in the advance of the ‘Turks’ impended.  The Khalifa seems, indeed, to have understood that the rise of the river increased his peril, for throughout July