The advance continued.  The Dervish left began to stretch out across the plain towards Kerreri—­as I thought, to turn our right flank.  Their centre, under the Black Flag, moved directly towards Surgham.  The right pursued a line of advance south of that hill.  This mass of men were the most striking of all.  They could not have mustered fewer than 6,000.  Their array was perfect.  They displayed a great number of flags—­perhaps 500—­which looked at the distance white, though they were really covered with texts from the Koran, and which by their admirable alignment made this division of the Khalifa’s army look like the old representations of the Crusaders in the Bayeux tapestry.

The attack developed.  The left, nearly 20,000 strong, toiled across the plain and approached the Egyptian squadrons.  The leading masses of the centre deployed facing the zeriba and marched forthwith to the direct assault.  As the whole Dervish army continued to advance, the division with the white flags, which had until now been echeloned in rear of their right, moved up into the general line and began to climb the southern slopes of Surgham Hill.  Meanwhile yet another body of the enemy, comparatively insignificant in numbers, who had been drawn up behind the ‘White Flags,’ were moving slowly towards the Nile, echeloned still further behind their right, and not far from the suburbs of Omdurman.  These men had evidently been posted to prevent the Dervish army being cut off from the city and to secure their line of retreat; and with them the 21st Lancers were destined to have a much closer acquaintance about two hours later.

The Dervish centre had come within range.  But it was not the British and Egyptian army that began the battle.  If there was one arm in which the Arabs were beyond all comparison inferior to their adversaries, it was in guns.  Yet it was with this arm that they opened their attack.  In the middle of the Dervish line now marching in frontal assault were two puffs of smoke.  About fifty yards short of the thorn fence two red clouds of sand and dust sprang up, where the projectiles had struck.  It looked like a challenge.  It was immediately answered.  Great clouds of smoke appeared all along the front of the British and Soudanese brigades.  One after another four batteries opened on the enemy at a range of about 3,000 yards.  The sound of the cannonade rolled up to us on the ridge, and was re-echoed by the hills.  Above the heads of the moving masses shells began to burst, dotting the air with smoke-balls and the ground with bodies.  But a nearer tragedy impended.  The ‘White Flags’ were nearly over the crest.  In another minute they would become visible to the batteries.  Did they realise what would come to meet them?  They were in a dense mass, 2,800 yards from the 32nd Field Battery and the gunboats.  The ranges were known.  It was a matter of machinery.  The more distant slaughter passed unnoticed, as the mind was fascinated by the approaching horror.  In