When the gunboats had completed their bombardment, had sunk a Dervish steamer, had silenced all the hostile batteries, and had sorely battered the Mahdi’s Tomb, they returned leisurely to the camp, and lay moored close to the bank to lend the assistance of their guns in case of attack.  As the darkness became complete they threw their powerful searchlights over the front of the zeriba and on to the distant hills.  The wheeling beams of dazzling light swept across the desolate, yet not deserted, plain.  The Dervish army lay for the night along the eastern slope of the Shambat depression.  All the 50,000 faithful warriors rested in their companies near the flags of their Emirs.  The Khalifa slept in rear of the centre of his host, surrounded by his generals.  Suddenly the whole scene was lit by a pale glare.  Abdullah and the chiefs sprang up.  Everything around them was bathed in an awful white illumination.  Far away by the river there gleamed a brilliant circle of light—­the cold, pitiless eye of a demon.  The Khalifa put his hand on Osman Azrak’s shoulder—­Osman, who was to lead the frontal attack at dawn—­and whispered, ‘What is this strange thing?’ ‘Sire,’ replied Osman, ‘they are looking at us.’  Thereat a great fear filled all their minds.  The Khalifa had a small tent, which showed conspicuously in the searchlight.  He had it hurriedly pulled down.  Some of the Emirs covered their faces, lest the baleful rays should blind them.  All feared that some terrible projectile would follow in the path of the light.  And then suddenly it passed on—­for the sapper who worked the lens could see nothing at that distance but the brown plain—­and swept along the ranks of the sleeping army, rousing up the startled warriors, as a wind sweeps over a field of standing corn.

The Anglo-Egyptian army had not formed a quadrilateral camp, as on other nights, but had lain down to rest in the formation for attack they had assumed in the afternoon.  Every fifty yards behind the thorn-bushes were double sentries.  Every hundred yards a patrol with an officer was to be met.  Fifty yards in rear of this line lay the battalions, the men in all their ranks, armed and accoutred, but sprawled into every conceivable attitude which utter weariness could suggest or dictate.  The enemy, twice as strong as the Expeditionary Force, were within five miles.  They had advanced that day with confidence and determination.  But it seemed impossible to believe that they would attack by daylight across the open ground.  Two explanations of their advance and halt presented themselves.  Either they had offered battle in a position where they could not themselves be attacked until four o’clock in the afternoon, and hoped that the Sirdar’s army, even though victorious, would have to fight a rear-guard action in the darkness to the river; or they intended to make a night attack.  It was not likely that an experienced commander would accept battle at so late an hour in the day.  If the Dervishes were anxious to attack, so much the worse for them.  But the army would remain strictly on the defensive—­at any rate, until there was plenty of daylight.  The alternative remained—­a night attack.