Meanwhile Ahmed Fedil was working his way slowly southward along a deep khor which runs almost parallel to the Blue Nile and is perhaps twenty miles from it.  As soon as the position of the Dervish Emir was definitely known, Colonel Lewis moved his force, which had been strengthened by detachments of the Xth Soudanese, from Karkoj to Rosaires.  Here he remained for several days, with but little hope of obstructing the enemy’s passage of the river.  On the 20th of December, however, full—­though, as was afterwards found, not very accurate—­information was received.  It was reported that on the 18th Ahmed Fedil had reached the village of Dakhila, about twenty miles south of the Rosaires post; that he himself had immediately crossed with his advanced guard, and was busily passing the women and children across the river on rafts.

On the 22nd, therefore, Colonel Lewis hurried the Sheikh Bakr up the west bank to cut off their flocks and harass the Dervishes who had already crossed the river.  The irregulars accordingly departed; and the next day news was brought that the Dervish force was almost equally divided by the Blue Nile, half being on one bank and half on the other.  At midday on the 24th the gunboats Melik and Dal arrived from Omdurman with a detachment of 200 more men of the Xth Soudanese under Major Fergusson, and thirty men of the IXth Soudanese under Captain Sir Henry Hill.  With this addition the force at Colonel Lewis’s disposal consisted of half the Xth Soudanese, a small detachment of the IXth Soudanese, two Maxim guns, and a doctor.  Besides the regular troops, there were also the band of irregulars under the Sheikh Bakr, numbering 380 men, 100 men under the Sheikh of Rosaires, and a few other unclassified scallywags.

Colonel Lewis determined to attack what part of Ahmed Fedil’s force still remained on the east bank of the river, and on Christmas Day, at five o’clock in the afternoon, he marched with every man he could muster in the direction of Dakhila.

Moving in single file along a track which led through a dense forest of thorny trees, the column reached Adu Zogholi, a village thought to be half, but really not one-third, of the way to Dakhila, at eleven o’clock on Christmas night.  Here they bivouacked until 3 A.M. on the 26th, when the march was resumed in the same straggling order through the same tangled scrub.  Daylight found them still several miles from the Dervish position, and it was not until eight o’clock that the enemy’s outposts were discovered.  After a few shots the Arab picket fell back, and the advance guard, hurrying after them, emerged from the forest upon the open ground of the river bank, broken only by palms and patches of high grass.  Into this space the whole column gradually debouched.  Before them the Blue Nile, shining in the early sunlight like a silver band, flowed swiftly; and beyond its nearest waters rose a long, bare, gravel island crowned with clumps of sandhills, to the shelter of which several hundred Dervishes, surprised by the sudden arrival of the troops, were scampering.  Beyond the island, on the tall tree-clad cliff of the further bank, other minute figures moved and bustled.  The discordant sound of horns and drums floating across the waters, and the unfurling of many bright flags, proclaimed the presence and the intention of the hostile force.