He started from Shendi with a force which has been estimated at 19,000 souls, but which included many women and children, and may have actually numbered 12,000 fighting men, each and all supplied with a month’s rations and about ninety rounds of ammunition.  The Sirdar immediately ordered the Anglo-Egyptian army, with the exception of the cavalry and Lewis’s Egyptian brigade—­which, with three squadrons, held the fort at the confluence—­to concentrate at Kunur.  Broadwood, with the remaining five squadrons, marched thither on the 16th; and the whole cavalry force, with the Camel Corps in support, on the three subsequent days reconnoitred twenty miles up the Nile and the Atbara.

Meanwhile the concentration was proceeding apace.  The two Soudanese brigades, formed into a division under command of Major-General Hunter, with the artillery, reached Kunur on the night of the 15th.  The British brigade—­the Lincolns, the Warwicks, and the Camerons—­marched thither from Dabeika.  The Seaforth Highlanders, who on the 13th were still at Wady Halfa, were swiftly railed across the desert to Geneinetti.  Thence the first half-battalion were brought to Kunur in steamers.  The second wing—­ since the need was urgent and the steamers few—­were jolted across the desert from Railhead on camels, an experience for which neither their training nor their clothes had prepared them.  By the 16th the whole force was concentrated at Kunur, and on the following day they were reviewed by the Sirdar.  The first three days at Kunur were days of eager expectation.  Rumour was king.  The Dervish army had crossed the Atbara at Hudi, and was within ten miles of the camp.  Mahmud was already making a flank march through the desert to Berber.  A battle was imminent.  A collision must take place in a few hours.  Officers with field-glasses scanned the sandy horizon for the first signs of the enemy.  But the skyline remained unbroken, except by the wheeling dust devils, and gradually the excitement abated, and the British brigade began to regret all the useful articles they had scrupulously left behind them at Dabeika, when they marched in a hurry and the lightest possible order to Kunur.

On the 19th of March the gunboats reported that the Dervishes were leaving the Nile, and Mahmud’s flanking movement became apparent.  The next day the whole force at Kunur marched across the desert angle between the rivers to Hudi.  The appearance of the army would have been formidable.  The cavalry, the Camel Corps, and the Horse Artillery covered the front and right flank; the infantry, with the British on the right, moved in line of brigade masses; the transport followed.  All was, however, shrouded in a fearful dust-storm.  The distance, ten miles, was accomplished in five hours, and the army reached Hudi in time to construct a strong zeriba before the night.  Here they were joined from Atbara fort by Lewis’s brigade of Egyptians—­with the exception of the 15th Battalion, which was left as garrison—­and the troops at the Sirdar’s disposal were thus raised to 14,000 men of all arms.  This force was organised as follows: