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.
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