The Space Thus Enclosed Was
Crowded With Rows Of Tents And Lines Of Animals And Horses; And In The Fort
Colonel Hunter, Commanding The District Known As 'Sarras And The South,'
Had His Headquarters.
From Sarras the army seemed to have chosen a double line of advance.
The railway reconstruction followed the old track which had been prepared
through the desert in 1885.
The convoy route wound along by the river.
Both were protected from attack. The 7th Egyptians guarded Railhead,
while the chain of small posts secured the road by the Nile to Akasha.
The advanced base grew during the months of April and May into a strong
position. Only once did the Arabs venture to approach within artillery
range. A small body of horse and camel men made a sort of haphazard
reconnaissance, and, being seen from the outpost line, were fired on at a
great distance by a field-gun. They fell back immediately, but it was
believed that the range was too great for the projectile to have harmed
them; and it was not until two days later that the discovery on the spot
of a swollen, blistering corpse, clad in bright jibba, apprised the
delighted gunners of the effect of their fire. Warned by this lucky shot
the Dervishes came no more, or came unseen.
The Sirdar, accompanied by Colonel Bundle, his Chief of Staff, had left
Cairo on the 22nd of March, and after a short stay at Assuan reached Wady
Halfa on the 29th. Here he remained during the month of April,
superintending and pressing the extension of the railroad and the
accumulation of supplies. On the 1st of May he arrived at Akasha, with a
squadron of cavalry, under Major Burn-Murdoch, as his escort. It happened
that a convoy had come in the previous day, so that there were two extra
cavalry squadrons at the advanced post. Almost at the same moment that
Sir H. Kitchener entered the camp, a party of friendly Arabs came in with
the news that they had been surprised some four miles to the eastward by
a score of Dervish camel-men, and had only succeeded in escaping with the
loss of two of their number. In the belief that the enemy in the immediate
vicinity were not in force, the Sirdar ordered the three squadrons of
Egyptian cavalry, supported by the XIth Soudanese, to go out and
reconnoitre towards Firket and endeavour to cut off any hostile patrols
that might be found.
At ten o'clock Major Burn-Murdoch started with four British officers
and 240 lances. After moving for seven or eight miles among the hills which
surround Akasha, the cavalry passed through a long, sandy defile, flanked
on either side by rocky peaks and impracticable ravines. As the head of the
column was about to debouch from this, the advanced scouts reported that
there was a body of Dervishes in the open ground in front of the defile.
The cavalry commander rode forward to look at them, and found himself
confronted, not, as he had expected, by a score of camel-men, but by a
strong force of Dervishes, numbering at least 1,500 foot and 250 horse.
The cavalry, by trotting, had left the supporting infantry some distance
behind them.
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