The officers were compelled to fight for their lives.
Several were killed. A year was consumed in suppressing the mutiny and the
revolt which arose out of it. If the object of the expedition was to reach
the Upper Nile, it was soon obviously unattainable, and the Government were
glad to employ the officers in making geographical surveys.
At the beginning of 1898 it was clear to those who, with the fullest
information, directed the foreign policy of Great Britain that no results
affecting the situation in the Soudan could be expected from the Macdonald
Expedition. The advance to Khartoum and the reconquest of the lost
provinces had been irrevocably undertaken. An Anglo-Egyptian force was
already concentrating at Berber. Lastly, the Marchand Mission was known
to be moving towards the Upper Nile, and it was a probable contingency
that it would arrive at its destination within a few months. It was
therefore evident that the line of advance of the powerful army moving
south from the Mediterranean and of the tiny expedition moving east from
the Atlantic must intersect before the end of the year, and that
intersection would involve a collision between the Powers of Great Britain
and France.
I do not pretend to any special information not hitherto given to
the public in this further matter, but the reader may consider for himself
whether the conciliatory policy which Lord Salisbury pursued towards Russia
in China at this time - a policy which excited hostile criticism in England
- was designed to influence the impending conflict on the Upper Nile and
make it certain, or at least likely, that when Great Britain and France
should be placed in direct opposition, France should find herself alone.
With these introductory reflections we may return to the theatre of
the war.
On the 7th of September, five days after the battle and capture
of Omdurman, the Tewfikia, a small Dervish steamer - one of those formerly
used by General Gordon - came drifting and paddling down the river.
Her Arab crew soon perceived by the Egyptian flags which were hoisted on
the principal buildings, and by the battered condition of the Mahdi's Tomb,
that all was not well in the city; and then, drifting a little further,
they found themselves surrounded by the white gunboats of the 'Turks,'
and so incontinently surrendered. The story they told their captors was a
strange one. They had left Omdurman a month earlier, in company with the
steamer Safia, carrying a force of 500 men, with the Khalifa's orders to
go up the White Nile and collect grain. For some time all had been well;
but on approaching the old Government station of Fashoda they had been
fired on by black troops commanded by white officers under a strange flag
- and fired on with such effect that they had lost some forty men killed
and wounded. Doubting who these formidable enemies might be, the foraging
expedition had turned back, and the Emir in command, having disembarked
and formed a camp at a place on the east bank called Reng, had sent the
Tewfikia back to ask the Khalifa for instructions and reinforcements.
The story was carried to the Sirdar and ran like wildfire through the camp.
Many officers made their way to the river, where the steamer lay, to test
for themselves the truth of the report. The woodwork of the hull was marked
with many newly made holes, and cutting into these with their penknives the
officers extracted bullets - not the roughly cast leaden balls, the bits of
telegraph wire, or old iron which savages use, but the conical
nickel-covered bullets of small-bore rifles such as are fired by civilised
forces alone. Here was positive proof. A European Power was on the Upper
Nile: which? Some said it was the Belgians from the Congo; some that an
Italian expedition had arrived; others thought that the strangers were
French; others, again, believed in the Foreign Office - it was a British
expedition, after all. The Arab crew were cross-examined as to the flag
they had seen. Their replies were inconclusive. It had bright colours,
they declared; but what those colours were and what their arrangement
might be they could not tell; they were poor men, and God was very great.
Curiosity found no comfort but in patience or speculation.
The camp for the most part received the news with a shrug. After their
easy victory the soldiers walked delicately. They knew that they belonged
to the most powerful force that had ever penetrated the heart of Africa.
If there was to be more war, the Government had but to give the word,
and the Grand Army of the Nile would do by these newcomers as they had
done by the Dervishes.
On the 8th the Sirdar started up the White Nile for Fashoda with
five steamers, the XIth and XIIIth Battalions of Soudanese, two companies
of the Cameron Highlanders, Peake's battery of artillery, and four Maxim
guns. Three days later he arrived at Reng, and there found, as the crew
of the Tewfikia had declared, some 500 Dervishes encamped on the bank,
and the Safia steamer moored to it. These stupid fellows had the temerity
to open fire on the vessels. Whereat the Sultan, steaming towards their dem,
replied with a fierce shell fire which soon put them to flight. The Safia,
being under steam, made some attempt to escape - whither, it is impossible
to say - and Commander Keppel by a well-directed shell in her boilers
blew her up, much to the disgust of the Sirdar, who wanted to add her
to his flotilla.
After this incident the expedition continued its progress up the White Nile.
The sudd which was met with two days' journey south of Khartoum did not in
this part of the Nile offer any obstacle to navigation, as the strong
current of the river clears the waterway; but on either side of the channel
a belt of the tangled weed, varying from twelve to twelve hundred yards in
breadth, very often prevented the steamers from approaching the bank to
tie up.
