The Sirdar, accompanied by Colonel Bundle, his Chief of Staff, had left Cairo on the 22nd of March, and after a short stay at Assuan reached Wady Halfa on the 29th.  Here he remained during the month of April, superintending and pressing the extension of the railroad and the accumulation of supplies.  On the 1st of May he arrived at Akasha, with a squadron of cavalry, under Major Burn-Murdoch, as his escort.  It happened that a convoy had come in the previous day, so that there were two extra cavalry squadrons at the advanced post.  Almost at the same moment that Sir H. Kitchener entered the camp, a party of friendly Arabs came in with the news that they had been surprised some four miles to the eastward by a score of Dervish camel-men, and had only succeeded in escaping with the loss of two of their number.  In the belief that the enemy in the immediate vicinity were not in force, the Sirdar ordered the three squadrons of Egyptian cavalry, supported by the XIth Soudanese, to go out and reconnoitre towards Firket and endeavour to cut off any hostile patrols that might be found.

At ten o’clock Major Burn-Murdoch started with four British officers and 240 lances.  After moving for seven or eight miles among the hills which surround Akasha, the cavalry passed through a long, sandy defile, flanked on either side by rocky peaks and impracticable ravines.  As the head of the column was about to debouch from this, the advanced scouts reported that there was a body of Dervishes in the open ground in front of the defile.  The cavalry commander rode forward to look at them, and found himself confronted, not, as he had expected, by a score of camel-men, but by a strong force of Dervishes, numbering at least 1,500 foot and 250 horse.  The cavalry, by trotting, had left the supporting infantry some distance behind them.  The appearance of the enemy was threatening.  The horsemen, who were drawn up scarcely 300 yards away, were already advancing to the attack, their right flank protected by a small force of camelry; and behind was the solid array of the spearmen.

Major Burn-Murdoch determined to fall back on his infantry support and escape from the bad ground.  He gave the order, and the squadrons wheeled about by troops and began to retire.  Forthwith the Dervish horse charged, and, galloping furiously into the defile, attacked the cavalry in rear.  Both sides were crowded in the narrow space.  The wildest confusion followed, and the dust raised by the horses’ hoofs hung over all like a yellow London fog, amid which the bewildered combatants discharged their pistols and thrust at random.  The Egyptian cavalry, thus highly tried, showed at first no disposition to turn to meet the attack.  The tumult drowned all words of command.  A disaster appeared imminent.  But the British officers, who had naturally been at the head of the column during its advance, were now at the rear and nearest the enemy.  Collecting a score of troopers, they made such resistance with