Three strong detached posts complete the defences of Suakin.  Ten miles to the northward, on the scene of Sir H. Kitchener’s unfortunate enterprise, is the fort of Handub.  Tambuk is twenty-five miles inland and among the hills.  Situate upon a high rock, and consisting only of a store, a formidable blockhouse, and a lookout tower, this place is safe from any enemy unprovided with artillery.  Both Handub and Tambuk were at the outset of the campaign provisioned for four months.  The third post, Tokar Fort, lies fifty miles along the coast to the south.  Its function is to deprive the Arabs of a base in the fertile delta of the Tokar river.  The fort is strong, defended by artillery, and requires for its garrison an entire battalion of infantry.

No description of Suakin would be complete without some allusion to the man to whom it owes its fame.  Osman Digna had been for many years a most successful and enterprising Arab slave dealer.  The attempted suppression of his trade by the Egyptian Government drove him naturally into opposition.  He joined in the revolt of the Mahdi, and by his influence roused the whole of the Hadendoa and other powerful tribes of the Red Sea shore.  The rest is upon record.  Year after year, at a horrid sacrifice of men and money, the Imperial Government and the old slaver fought like wolves over the dry bone of Suakin.  Baker’s Teb, El Teb, Tamai, Tofrek, Hashin, Handub, Gemaiza, Afafit—­such were the fights of Osman Digna, and through all he passed unscathed.  Often defeated, but never crushed, the wily Arab might justly boast to have run further and fought more than any Emir in the Dervish armies.

It had scarcely seemed possible that the advance on Dongola could influence the situation around Kassala, yet the course of events encouraged the belief that the British diversion in favour of Italy had been effective; for at the end of March—­as soon, that is to say, as the news of the occupation of Akasha reached him—­Osman Digna separated himself from the army threatening Kassala, and marched with 300 cavalry, 70 camelry, and 2,500 foot towards his old base in the Tokar Delta.  On the first rumour of his advance the orders of the Xth Soudanese to move via Kossier and Kena to the Nile were cancelled, and they remained in garrison at Tokar.  At home the War Office, touched in a tender spot, quivered apprehensively, and began forthwith to make plans to strengthen the Suakin garrison with powerful forces.

The state of affairs in the Eastern Soudan has always been turbulent.  The authority of the Governor of the Red Sea Littoral was not at this time respected beyond the extreme range of the guns of Suakin.  The Hadendoa and other tribes who lived under the walls of the town professed loyalty to the Egyptian Government, not from any conviction that their rule was preferable to that of Osman Digna, but simply for the sake of a quiet life.  As their distance from Suakin increased, the loyalty of the tribesmen