It was still dark, and the haze that shrouded the Dervish camp was broken only by the glare of the watch-fires.  The silence was profound.  It seemed impossible to believe that more than 25,000 men were ready to join battle at scarcely the distance of half a mile.  Yet the advance had not been unperceived, and the Arabs knew that their terrible antagonists crouched on the ridge waiting for the morning; For a while the suspense was prolonged.  At last, after what seemed to many an interminable period, the uniform blackness of the horizon was broken by the first glimmer of the dawn.  Gradually the light grew stronger until, as a theatre curtain is pulled up, the darkness rolled away, the vague outlines in the haze became definite, and the whole scene was revealed.

The British and Egyptian army lay along the low ridge in the form of a great bow—­the British brigade on the left, MacDonald in the centre, Maxwell curving forward on the right.  The whole crest of the swell of ground was crowned with a bristle of bayonets and the tiny figures of thousands of men sitting or lying down and gazing curiously before them.  Behind them, in a solid square, was the transport, guarded by Lewis’s brigade.  The leading squadrons of the cavalry were forming leisurely towards the left flank.  The four batteries and a rocket detachment, moving between the infantry, ranged themselves on two convenient positions about a hundred yards in front of the line of battalions.  All was ready.  Yet everything was very quiet, and in the stillness of the dawn it almost seemed that Nature held her breath.

Half a mile away, at the foot of the ridge, a long irregular black line of thorn bushes enclosed the Dervish defences.  Behind this zeriba low palisades and entrenchments bent back to the scrub by the river.  Odd shapeless mounds indicated the positions of the gun-emplacements, and various casemates could be seen in the middle of the enclosure.  Without, the bushes had been cleared away, and the smooth sand stretched in a gentle slope to where the army waited.  Within were crowds of little straw huts and scattered bushes, growing thicker to the southward.  From among this rose the palm-trees, between whose stems the dry bed of the Atbara was exposed, and a single pool of water gleamed in the early sunlight.  Such was Mahmud’s famous zeriba, which for more than a month had been the predominant thought in the minds of the troops.  It was scarcely imposing, and at first the soldiers thought it deserted.  Only a dozen stray horsemen sat silently on their horses outside the entrenchment, watching their enemies, and inside a few dirty-white figures appeared and disappeared behind the parapets.  Yet, insignificant as the zeriba looked, the smoke of many fires cooking the morning meal—­never to be eaten—­showed that it was occupied by men; and gay banners of varied colour and device, flaunting along the entrenchments or within the enclosure, declared that some at least were prepared to die in its defence.