defended by the Emir Mahmud’s personal bodyguard.  These poured a sudden volley into the centre company at close range, and so deadly was the effect that nearly all the company were shot, falling to the ground still in their ranks, so that a British officer passing at a little distance was provoked to inquire ’what they were doing lying down.’  Notwithstanding this severe check the regiment, gallantly led by their colonel and supported by the Xth Soudanese, rushed this last defence and slew its last defenders.  Mahmud was himself captured.  Having duly inspected his defences and made his dispositions, he had sheltered in a specially constructed casemate.  Thence he was now ignominiously dragged, and, on his being recognised, the intervention of a British officer alone saved him from the fury of the excited Soudanese.

Still the advance continued, and it seemed to those who took part in it more like a horrible nightmare than a waking reality.  Captains and subalterns collected whatever men they could, heedless of corps or nationality, and strove to control and direct their fire.  Jibba-clad figures sprang out of the ground, fired or charged, and were destroyed at every step.  And onwards over their bodies—­over pits choked with dead and dying, among heaps of mangled camels and donkeys, among decapitated or eviscerated trunks, the ghastly results of the shell fire; women and little children killed by the bombardment or praying in wild terror for mercy; blacks chained in their trenches, slaughtered in their chains—­always onwards marched the conquerors, with bayonets running blood; clothes, hands, and faces all besmeared; the foul stench of a month’s accumulated filth in their nostrils, and the savage whistle of random bullets in their ears.

But at about twenty minutes past eight the whole force, with the Seaforth Highlanders well forward on the left, arrived at the bank of the Atbara, having marched completely through the position, and shot or bayoneted all in their path.  Hundreds of Dervishes were still visible retiring across the dry bed of the river, and making for the scrub on the opposite bank.  The leading companies of the Seaforth Highlanders and Lincolns, with such odd parties of Camerons as had been carried on with the attack, opened a murderous fire on these fugitives.  Since they would not run their loss was heavy, and it was a strange sight—­the last vivid impression of the day—­ to watch them struggling through the deep sand, with the dust knocked up into clouds by the bullets which struck all round them.  Very few escaped, and the bodies of the killed lay thickly dotting the river-bed with heaps of dirty-white.  Then at 8.25 the ‘Cease fire’ sounded, and the battle of the Atbara ended.

Forthwith the battalions began to re-form, and in every company the roll was called.  The losses had been severe.  In the assault—­a period not exceeding half an hour—­eighteen British, sixteen native officers and 525 men had been killed or wounded, the greater part during the passage of the zeriba.