Mahmud Was Himself Captured.
Having Duly Inspected His Defences And Made His Dispositions, He Had
Sheltered In A Specially Constructed Casemate.
Thence he was now
ignominiously dragged, and, on his being recognised, the intervention of
a British officer alone saved him from the fury of the excited Soudanese.
Still the advance continued, and it seemed to those who took part in it
more like a horrible nightmare than a waking reality. Captains and
subalterns collected whatever men they could, heedless of corps or
nationality, and strove to control and direct their fire. Jibba-clad
figures sprang out of the ground, fired or charged, and were destroyed at
every step. And onwards over their bodies - over pits choked with dead and
dying, among heaps of mangled camels and donkeys, among decapitated or
eviscerated trunks, the ghastly results of the shell fire; women and little
children killed by the bombardment or praying in wild terror for mercy;
blacks chained in their trenches, slaughtered in their chains - always
onwards marched the conquerors, with bayonets running blood; clothes,
hands, and faces all besmeared; the foul stench of a month's accumulated
filth in their nostrils, and the savage whistle of random bullets
in their ears.
But at about twenty minutes past eight the whole force, with the Seaforth
Highlanders well forward on the left, arrived at the bank of the Atbara,
having marched completely through the position, and shot or bayoneted all
in their path. Hundreds of Dervishes were still visible retiring across the
dry bed of the river, and making for the scrub on the opposite bank.
The leading companies of the Seaforth Highlanders and Lincolns, with such
odd parties of Camerons as had been carried on with the attack, opened a
murderous fire on these fugitives.
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