Both gunboats, having watched the Camel Corps safely into the zeriba, now returned with the current and renewed their attack upon the Arabs.  Opening a heavy and accurate fire upon the river flank, they drove them westward and away from the Nile.  Through the gap thus opened Broadwood and his squadrons trotted to rejoin the main body, picking up on the way the two guns which had been abandoned.

While these things were passing on the northern flank, the frontal attack was in progress.  The debris of the ‘White Flags’ joined the centre, and the whole 14,000 pressed forward against the zeriba, spreading out by degrees and abandoning their dense formations, and gradually slowing down.  At about 800 yards from the British division the advance ceased, and they could make no headway.  Opposite the Soudanese, who were armed only with the Martini-Henry rifle, the assailants came within 300 yards; and one brave old man, carrying a flag, fell at 150 paces from the shelter trench.  But the result was conclusive all along the line.  The attack was shattered.  The leader, clad in his new jibba of many colours, rode on steadfastly towards the inexorable firing line, until, pierced by several bullets, he fell lifeless.  Such was the end of that stubborn warrior of many fights—­wicked Osman Azrak, faithful unto death.  The surviving Dervishes lay down on the ground.  Unable to advance, they were unwilling to retire; and their riflemen, taking advantage of the folds of the plain, opened and maintained an unequal combat.  By eight o’clock it was evident that the whole attack had failed.  The loss of the enemy was more than 2,000 killed, and perhaps as many wounded.  To the infantry, who were busy with their rifles, it had scarcely seemed a fight.  Yet all along the front bullets had whizzed over and into the ranks, and in every battalion there were casualties.  Captain Caldecott, of the Warwicks, was killed; the Camerons had two officers, Captain Clarke and Lieutenant Nicholson, severely wounded; the Grenadiers one, Captain Bagot.  Colonel F. Rhodes, as he sat on his horse near the Maxim battery of the 1st British Brigade, was shot through the shoulder and carried from the field just as the attack reached its climax.  There were, besides these officers, about 150 casualties among the soldiers.

The attack languished.  The enemy’s rifle fire continued, and as soon as the heavy firing ceased it began to be annoying.  The ground, although it appeared flat and level to the eye, nevertheless contained depressions and swellings which afforded good cover to the sharpshooters, and the solid line behind the zeriba was an easy target.  The artillery now began to clear out these depressions by their shells, and in this work they displayed a searching power very remarkable when their flat trajectory is remembered.  As the shells burst accurately above the Dervish skirmishers and spearmen who were taking refuge in the folds of the plain, they rose by hundreds