Colonel Lewis now determined to turn the enemy’s left from the north, attack them in flank, and roll them into the deep part of the river.  With the Xth Soudanese, under Colonel Nason and Major Fergusson, he marched northwards along the river’s edge, sheltering as far as possible under the curve of the bank from the fire, which now began to cause casualties.  Having reached the position from which it was determined to deliver the attack, the battalion deployed into line, and, changing front half left, advanced obliquely by alternate companies across the bare shingle towards the sandhills.  As they advanced, a galling fire was opened upon the left flank by two hundred Dervishes admirably placed on a knoll.  Major Fergusson was detached with one company to dislodge them.  The remaining four companies continued the attack.

The Dervish musketry now became intense.  The whole front of the island position was lined with smoke, and behind it, from the high cliff of the west bank, a long half-circle of riflemen directed a second tier of converging bullets upon the 400 charging men.  The shingle jumped and stirred in all directions as it was struck.  A hideous whistling filled the air.  The Soudanese began to drop on all sides, ’just like the Dervishes at Omdurman,’ and the ground was soon dotted with the bodies of the killed and wounded.  ‘We did not,’ said an officer, ’dare to look back.’  But undaunted by fire and cross-fire, the heroic black soldiers—­demons who would not be denied—­pressed forward without the slightest check or hesitation, and, increasing their pace to a swift run in their eagerness to close with the enemy, reached the first sandhills and found cover beneath them.  A quarter of the battalion had already fallen, and lay strewn on the shingle.

The rapidity of their advance had exhausted the Soudanese, and Lewis ordered Nason to halt under cover of the sandhills for a few minutes, so that the soldiers might get their breath before the final effort.  Thereupon the Dervishes, seeing that the troops were no longer advancing, and believing that the attack was repulsed, resolved to clinch the matter.  Ahmed Fedil from the west bank sounded the charge on drum and bugle, and with loud shouts of triumph and enthusiasm the whole force on the island rose from among the upper sandhills, and, waving their banners, advanced impetuously in counter-attack.  But the Xth Soudanese, panting yet unconquerable, responded to the call of their two white officers, and, crowning the little dunes behind which they had sheltered, met the exultant enemy with a withering fire and a responding shout.

The range was short and the fire effective.  The astonished Arabs wavered and broke; and then the soldiers, nobly led, swept forward in a long scattered line and drove the enemy from one sandy ridge to another—­drove them across the rolling and uneven ground, every fold of which contained Dervishes—­drove them steadily back over the sandhills, until all who were not killed or wounded were penned at the extreme southern end of the island, with the deep unfordable arm of the river behind them and the fierce black soldiers, roused to fury by their losses, in front.