leading.  By the time that the right of Lewis’s brigade was reached and the British had begun to deploy, it was evident that the Khalifa’s attack was broken and that his force was in full retreat.  In the near foreground the Arab dead lay thick.  Crowds of fugitives were trooping off in the distance.  The Black Flag alone waved defiantly over the corpses of its defenders.  In the front of the brigade the fight was over.  But those who looked away to the right saw a different spectacle.  What appeared to be an entirely new army was coming down from the Kerreri Hills.  While the soldiers looked and wondered, fresh orders arrived.  A mounted officer galloped up.  There was a report that terrible events were happening in the dust and smoke to the northward.  The spearmen had closed with MacDonald’s brigade; were crumpling his line from the flank; had already broken it.  Such were the rumours.  The orders were more precise.  The nearest regiment—­ the Lincolnshire—­was to hurry to MacDonald’s threatened flank to meet the attack.  The rest of the brigade was to change front half right, and remain in support.  The Lincolnshires, breathless but elated, forthwith started off again at the double.  They began to traverse the rear of MacDonald’s brigade, dimly conscious of rapid movements by its battalions, and to the sound of tremendous independent firing, which did not, however, prevent them from hearing the venomous hiss of bullets.

Had the Khalifa’s attack been simultaneous with that which was now developed, the position of MacDonald’s brigade must have been almost hopeless.  In the actual event it was one of extreme peril.  The attack in his front was weakening every minute, but the far more formidable attack on his right rear grew stronger and nearer in inverse ratio.  Both attacks must be met.  The moment was critical; the danger near.  All depended on MacDonald, and that officer, who by valour and conduct in war had won his way from the rank of a private soldier to the command of a brigade, and will doubtless obtain still higher employment, was equal to the emergency.

To meet the Khalifa’s attack he had arranged his force facing south-west, with three battalions in line and the fourth held back in column of companies in rear of the right flank—­an inverted L-shaped formation.  As the attack from the south-west gradually weakened and the attack from the north-west continually increased, he broke off his battalions and batteries from the longer side of the L and transferred them to the shorter.  He timed these movements so accurately that each face of his brigade was able to exactly sustain the attacks of the enemy.  As soon as the Khalifa’s force began to waver he ordered the XIth Soudanese and a battery on his left to move across the angle in which the brigade was formed, and deploy along the shorter face to meet the impending onslaught of Ali-Wad-Helu.  Perceiving this, the IXth Soudanese, who were the regiment in column on the right of the original front, wheeled to the right