As They Advanced, A Galling Fire Was Opened Upon The Left
Flank By Two Hundred Dervishes Admirably Placed On A Knoll.
Major Fergusson
was detached with one company to dislodge them.
The remaining four
companies continued the attack.
The Dervish musketry now became intense. The whole front
of the island position was lined with smoke, and behind it, from the high
cliff of the west bank, a long half-circle of riflemen directed a
second tier of converging bullets upon the 400 charging men. The shingle
jumped and stirred in all directions as it was struck. A hideous whistling
filled the air. The Soudanese began to drop on all sides, 'just like the
Dervishes at Omdurman,' and the ground was soon dotted with the bodies
of the killed and wounded. 'We did not,' said an officer, 'dare to
look back.' But undaunted by fire and cross-fire, the heroic
black soldiers - demons who would not be denied - pressed forward without
the slightest check or hesitation, and, increasing their pace to a
swift run in their eagerness to close with the enemy, reached the first
sandhills and found cover beneath them. A quarter of the battalion
had already fallen, and lay strewn on the shingle.
The rapidity of their advance had exhausted the Soudanese, and Lewis
ordered Nason to halt under cover of the sandhills for a few minutes,
so that the soldiers might get their breath before the final effort.
Thereupon the Dervishes, seeing that the troops were no longer advancing,
and believing that the attack was repulsed, resolved to clinch the matter.
Ahmed Fedil from the west bank sounded the charge on drum and bugle,
and with loud shouts of triumph and enthusiasm the whole force on the
island rose from among the upper sandhills, and, waving their banners,
advanced impetuously in counter-attack.
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