It Was At First Universally Believed That The Khalifa's Intention
Was To Retire To An Almost Inaccessible Distance - To El
Obeid or Southern
Darfur - and the officers of the Egyptian army passed an unhappy fortnight
reading the Ladysmith telegrams and
Accusing their evil fortune which kept
them so far from the scene of action. But soon strange rumours began to
run about the bazaars of Omdurman of buried weapons and whispers of revolt.
For a few days a vague feeling of unrest pervaded the native city,
and then suddenly on the 12th of November came precise and surprising news.
The Khalifa was not retreating to the south or to the west, but advancing
northward with Omdurman, not El Obeid, as his object. Emboldened by the
spectacle of two successive expeditions retreating abortive, and by,
who shall say what wild exaggerated tales of disasters to the Turks far
beyond the limits of the Soudan, Abdullah had resolved to stake all that
yet remained to him in one last desperate attempt to recapture his former
capital; and so, upon the 12th of November, his advanced guard, under the
Emir Ahmed Fedil, struck the Nile opposite Abba Island, and audaciously
fired volleys of musketry at the gunboat Sultan which was patrolling
the river.
The name of Abba Island may perhaps carry the reader back to the very
beginning of this story. Here, eighteen years before, the Mahdi had lived
and prayed after his quarrel with the haughty Sheikh; here Abdullah had
joined him; here the flag of the revolt had been set up, and the first
defeat had been inflicted upon the Egyptian troops; and here, too,
still dwelt - dwells, indeed, to this day - one of those same brothers who
had pursued through all the vicissitudes and convulsions which had shaken
the Soudan his humble industry of building wooden boats.
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