a few seconds swift destruction would rush on these brave men.  They topped the crest and drew out into full view of the whole army.  Their white banners made them conspicuous above all.  As they saw the camp of their enemies, they discharged their rifles with a great roar of musketry and quickened their pace.  For a moment the white flags advanced in regular order, and the whole division crossed the crest and were exposed.  Forthwith the gunboats, the 32nd British Field Battery, and other guns from the zeriba opened on them.  About twenty shells struck them in the first minute.  Some burst high in the air, others exactly in their faces.  Others, again, plunged into the sand and, exploding, dashed clouds of red dust, splinters, and bullets amid their ranks.  The white banners toppled over in all directions.  Yet they rose again immediately, as other men pressed forward to die for the Mahdi’s sacred cause and in the defence of the successor of the True Prophet.  It was a terrible sight, for as yet they had not hurt us at all, and it seemed an unfair advantage to strike thus cruelly when they could not reply.  Under the influence of the shells the mass of the ‘White Flags’ dissolved into thin lines of spearmen and skirmishers, and came on in altered formation and diminished numbers, but with unabated enthusiasm.  And now, the whole attack being thoroughly exposed, it became the duty of the cavalry to clear the front as quickly as possible, and leave the further conduct of the debate to the infantry and the Maxim guns.  All the patrols trotted or cantered back to their squadrons, and the regiment retired swiftly into the zeriba, while the shells from the gunboats screamed overhead and the whole length of the position began to burst into flame and smoke.  Nor was it long before the tremendous banging of the artillery was swollen by the roar of musketry.

Taking advantage of the shelter of the river-bank, the cavalry dismounted; we watered our horses, waited, and wondered what was happening.  And every moment the tumult grew louder and more intense, until even the flickering stutter of the Maxims could scarcely be heard above the continuous din.  Eighty yards away, and perhaps twenty feet above us, the 32nd Field Battery was in action.  The nimble figures of the gunners darted about as they busied themselves in their complicated process of destruction.  The officers, some standing on biscuit-boxes, peered through their glasses and studied the effect.  Of this I had one glimpse.  Eight hundred yards away a ragged line of men were coming on desperately, struggling forward in the face of the pitiless fire—­white banners tossing and collapsing; white figures subsiding in dozens to the ground; little white puffs from their rifles, larger white puffs spreading in a row all along their front from the bursting shrapnel.