The actual concentration may be said to have begun on the 1st of June, when the Sirdar started for the front from Halfa, whither he had returned after the cavalry skirmish.  Construction work on the railway came to a full stop.  The railway battalions, dropping their picks and shovels, shouldered their Remington rifles and became the garrisons of the posts on the line of communications.  On the 2nd of June the correspondents were permitted to proceed to Akasha.  On the 3rd the Xth Soudanese passed through Ambigole and marched south.  The Horse battery from Halfa followed.  The Egyptian battalions and squadrons which had been camped along the river at convenient spots from Ambigole to Akasha marched to a point opposite Okma.  Between this place and the advanced post an extensive camp, stretching three miles along the Nile bank, arose with magic swiftness.  On the 4th the 7th Egyptians moved from Railhead, and with these the last battalion reached the front.  Nine thousand men, with ample supplies, were collected within striking distance of the enemy.

All this time the Dervishes at Firket watched in senseless apathy the deliberate, machine-like preparations for their destruction.  They should have had good information, for although the Egyptian cavalry patrolled ceaselessly, and the outpost line was impassable to scouts, their spies, as camel-drivers, water-carriers, and the like, were in the camp.  They may not, perhaps, have known the exact moment of the intended blow, for the utmost secrecy was observed.  But though they must have realised that it was imminent, they did nothing.  There was, indeed, no course open to them but retreat.  Once the army was concentrated with sufficient supplies at Akasha, their position was utterly untenable.  The Emir-in-Chief, Hammuda, then had scarcely 3,000 men around his flag.  Their rifles and ammunition were bad; their supplies scanty.  Nor could the valour of fifty-seven notable Emirs sustain the odds against them.  There was still time to fall back on Kosheh, or even on Suarda—­anywhere outside the sweep of their terrible enemy’s sword.  They would not budge.  Obstinate and fatuous to the last, they dallied and paltered on the fatal ground, until sudden, blinding, inevitable catastrophe fell upon them from all sides at once, and swept them out of existence as a military force.

CHAPTER VI:  FIRKET

June 7, 1896

Since the end of 1895 the Dervish force in Firket had been under the command of the Emir Hammuda, and it was through the indolence and neglect of this dissipated Arab that the Egyptian army had been able to make good its position at Akasha without any fighting.  Week after week the convoys had straggled unmolested through the difficult country between Sarras and the advanced base.  No attack had been made upon the brigade at Akasha.  No enterprise was directed against its communications.  This fatal inactivity did not pass unnoticed by Wad Bishara, the Governor of Dongola; but although he was nominally in supreme command of all the Dervish forces in the province he had hardly any means of enforcing his authority.  His rebukes and exhortations, however, gradually roused Hammuda, and during May two or three minor raids were planned and executed, and the Egyptian position at Akasha was several times reconnoitred.