With the cool of the evening the army left its bed of torment on the ridge and returned to Umdabia.  The homeward march was a severe trial; the troops were exhausted; the ground was broken; the guides, less careful or less fortunate than on the previous night, lost their way.  The columns were encumbered with wounded, most of whom were already in a high state of fever, and whose sufferings were painful to witness.  It was not until after midnight that the camp was reached.  The infantry had been continuously under arms—­marching, fighting, or sweltering in the sun—­ for thirty hours, and most of them had hardly closed their eyes for two days.  Officers and soldiers—­British, Soudanese, and Egyptian—­struggled into their bivouacs, and fell asleep, very weary but victorious.

British and Egyptian casualties on the Atbara included 20 officers and 539 men killed or wounded.  The Dervish loss was officially estimated at 40 Emirs and 3,000 dervishes killed.  No statistics as to their wounded are forthcoming.

. . . . . . . . . .

As the battle of the Atbara had been decisive, the whole Expeditionary Force went into summer quarters.  The Egyptian army was distributed into three principal garrisons—­four battalions at Atbara camp, six battalions and the cavalry at Berber, three battalions at Abadia.  The artillery and transport were proportionately divided.  The British brigade encamped with two battalions at Darmali and two at the village of Selim, about a mile and a half distant.

For the final phase of the campaign three new gunboats had been ordered from England.  These were now sent in sections over the Desert Railway.  Special arrangements were made to admit of the clumsy loads passing trains on the ordinary sidings.  As usual, the contrivances of the railway subalterns were attended with success.  Sir H. Kitchener himself proceeded to Abadia to accelerate by his personal activity and ingenuity the construction of the vessels on which so much depended.  Here during the heat of the summer he remained, nursing his gunboats, maturing his plans, and waiting only for the rise of the river to complete the downfall of his foes.

CHAPTER XIII:  THE GRAND ADVANCE

All through the early months of the summer the preparations for the final advance were steadily proceeding.  A second British brigade was ordered to the Soudan.  A new battery of Howitzer artillery—­the 37th—­firing enormous shells charged with lyddite, was despatched from England.  Two large 40-pounder guns were sent from Cairo.  Another British Maxim battery of four guns was formed in Cairo from men of the Royal Irish Fusiliers.  Three new screw gunboats of the largest size and most formidable pattern had been passed over the indefatigable railway in sections, and were now launched on the clear waterway south of the Atbara encampment; and last, but not least,