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.
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