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formation offered an opportunity, might attempt to rush' the entrenchments, and surround our infantry. If such may have been the Arab intention it must have been somewhat rudely shaken by the sudden apparition of the cavalry. But I must now describe the charge. After the storming of the first redoubt the cavalry were massed behind the left rear of the square-that is to say, what was then the rear-at a distance of 500 yards from the corner formed by the Black Watch and the Irish Fusiliers. Moving along the line of the Fusiliers, they formed, right shoulders up, and swept, at full gallop, past the Gordon Highlanders, who raised a tremendous cheer, and waved their helmets on their bayonet points. There go the Old Tenth!' exclaimed an officer who was posted inside the square. It was their old Colonel-Valentine Baker--who was observing them with one eye, his other eye, under which a shrapnel ball had buried itself, being hidden under an ungainly bandage covered all over with dust and blood. Wood, with his three squadrons of the Old Tenth,' led ; Barrow with two squadrons of the 19th followed; the rear line, consisting of three squadrons of the 19th, was under Webster. They went straight ahead, and in a few moments they were out of sight. Suddenly, away on Colonel Webster's right, and out of the dense lofty brushwood, appeared a body of Arabs. A hundred of themaccording to one authoritative estimate, more nearly two hundred— were mounted. They carried two-handed swords, and rode barebacked. In the rear of them were numbers of spearmen, on foot. Colonel Webster wheeled his squadrons to the right, and in a moment was engaged with the enemy. Of this sudden change in the situation, Colonels Wood and Barrow knew nothing; they were pushing on ahead. Soon, however, an orderly overtook them and informed them that Colonel Webster was being cut up.' The word was instantly given, Right about wheel.' Barrow's two squadrons thus became the front line, and the 10th Hussars became the rear. As the two lines rode back to Webster's assistance, they were pounced upon by hundreds of Arabs who darted here, there, and everywhere out of the scrub and from behind the mimosa bushes. The Arabs threw their spears. Lying flat on the ground, they would nimbly jump up, and with their sharp knives, attempt to hamstring the horses as they galloped past. They threw their boomerang-looking clubs of tough mimosa branch at the horses' legs. The clubs rattled on the hard bones like to quote Colonel Taylor's graphic comparison- like a boy's stick when he runs with it, drawing it along somebody's iron railings."

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The reader will recollect Osman's solemn ceremony of the blessing of the sticks. And now, the result was justifying Osman's claim to miraculous power. The mimosa club brought many a fast horse upon his knees; the faster he went, the surer he was, if once struck, to come to grief. Down came Barrow's horse, throwing his

rider, who for a minute or two had been carrying an Arab spear in his flesh. The colonel was saved by Quartermaster-Sergeant Marshall, who, at deadly risk to his own life, dragged him through the scattered groups of Arabs. Colonel Barrow and Corporal Murray (also of the 19th) were, as far as is known, the only two who, once unhorsed, escaped with their lives. Colonel Taylor told me, as a singular, and perhaps unexampled incident, that Murray had four horses either speared, or hamstrung, or clubbed. No sooner did he pick himself up than somehow or other he found somebody else's horse, unowned and handy. To the gallant rescues and other deeds performed by Captain Pigott, Surgeon-Major Conolly, Sergeant Phipps, Sergeant Alcock, I can only make this passing allusion. They are recorded in the General's orders and despatches to the War Office. Pigott, who knows what Indian sport is, used his twelve-foot hog-spear to excellent purpose, in the saving as well as the taking of life. If all the hussars had had twelve-foot hog-spears instead of the toasting-forks with which they vainly tried to prod their agile foes, theJohnnies,' as the Arabs were familiarly called in camp, would have suffered more seriously than they did. What sabres failed to accomplish, powder and shot effected to some extent. After the 10th and the 19th had charged again and again right through the provokingly scattered groups of Arabs, each line dismounted one of its squadrons. Volley after volley was poured into the enemy; and having, to say the least of it, given to the Arabs as good a shock and surprise as they themselves had received, the hussars rode back to El Teb. In the 19th Hussars alone, the proportion of casualties was over one in eight.

The Arabs were soundly beaten, but they took their defeat with the air of a people unsubdued. When our cavalry men went out, towards evening, to search for the dead, they saw some hundreds of the enemy lurking about in the distance. The losses which the Arabs had sustained might have cowed a less determined foe. The large space covered by the entrenchments, the rifle-pits, and redoubts, was thickly strewn with their dead. In the entrenchment, or, to use a more appropriate word, ditch, which must have measured more than half a mile round, the bodies lay in one continuous tangled skein, black-brown amid the yellow sand. All over the enclosure they lay in confused heaps. The total number killed must have amounted to two thousand four or five hundred, but very many, of whom no count could possibly have been made, must have found their way, wounded, to the hills. When Tokar was occupied, next day, without resistance, it naturally seemed to many as if, to quote an expression of the time, the heart had been knocked out' of the insurrection. And for some days after the return of the army to Suakin, it did appear as if the campaign was ended; and officers and men were anticipating an early return to Egypt, or, as in the case of

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the troops that had been stopped on their way from India, a speedy resumption of their homeward voyage. Spies were bringing in news that Osman Digna's tribesmen were dispersing; that some of the smaller clans engaged in the battle had been almost exterminated; that, for example, only seven or eight of the eight hundred men who had gone from Tamanieb to El Teb to fight against us survived. This was most probably an exaggeration; but all the spies' reports showed that many of the tribal contingents had suffered terribly. According to a list which was compiled from spies' reports, and which was given to me at Suakin on the 5th of March, it appeared that Osman Digna's following consisted of no more than sixteen or seventeen hundred men, representing nine tribes-the Sharaab, Bishariat, Moassayab, Ghimilab, and others. But it was next reported that the insurgents were mustering at Tamanieb, some twenty miles from Suakin; that Osman, who had meanwhile assumed the dress of a dervish, was again preaching a holy war, arguing that Mahomet himself had been worsted in the beginning of his career, and that against his own defeat at El Teb he had to count two great victories on the same spot, two between Suakin and Sinkat, not to mention the overwhelming successes of their holy master the Mahdi beyond the Nile. Then, as the days passed, it appeared certain that Osman had gathered at least five or six thousand about him. It became known that thousands of the tribesmen had sworn before Osman, on the Koran, to face the English again in battle, and conquer or perish. Besides, after two proclamations had gone out, inviting the sheikhs to abandon Osman and accept pardon, twenty-one of them returned a flat and contemptuously threatening answer. A prisoner who had been taken into camp some hours after the battle of El Teb had formed a just estimate of the resolution of Osman and the sheikhs. His fellow prisoner, when examined on the point, expressed his opinion that Osman would yield, or at any rate decline another encounter. 'Never!' sharply interrupted his comrade, altogether unabashed by the presence of the English officers, who, if he measured them by the Oriental standard of morals-the only standard which he knew-might order him to be decapitated on the spot for his rude temerity. In brief, it was decided that the Arabs did not consider themselves beaten, and that they must be fought once more. It was considered as almost certain that a sharp defeat inflicted upon Osman at Tamanieb-Osman's head-quarters, preaching station, and military stores depôt in one— would destroy his prestige and extinguish the insurrection in the Red Sea provinces.

Thus, on the 11th of March, after a few days' rest at Suakin, General Sir Gerald Graham's force was again on the march. The troops halted for the night at the zereba, or square breastwork of prickly bush which Baker Pasha had constructed during one of his excursions three months before. On the following afternoon, at one,

the force moved out towards Tamanieb, and reached the first and lowest range of hills at three. From the top of a bare, black-glistening rock of syenite, which lay on our right, and to which a fellowcorrespondent gave the very appropriate name of Mount Kassim, some of us obtained a complete panoramic view of the country. Far behind stretched the blue rim of the sea, and Suakin vaguely shone, misty-white, like a city in cloudland. From the blue rim the plain extended towards us, and past us, also like a sea, in which the smaller ridges and isolated hills presented the appearance of capes and islands, until it became lost in its bow-shaped background of high mountains. That was the picture which presented itself to the unaided vision; but a field-glass enabled one to detect the unpleasant reality. What are those dead-black mop-shaped little objects that pop up and disappear on the other side of the plain, towards our left? Our friends the 'woolly heads' are peeping at us from amongst the bushes. They must be in large force, for the black mops pop up and down in spots scattered over a line of nearly two miles. We can just distinguish, one behind the other, the irregular lines of the ravines and dry watercourses in the depths of which the Arab hordes are concealed. While we were still on Mount Kassim, a special messenger from Admiral Hewett at Suakin arrived with the important information (given by a spy) that in one of the gorges which led to Tamai, large numbers of the Arabs would conceal themselves with the object of springing upon us as we marched past, and destroying us in the surprise and confusion. It was too late to oblige the Arabs that day. Turning sharp off to the south-east, and marching for about twenty minutes more, the army halted at half-past five, and at once proceeded to surround itself with a zereba. Shortly after nine we all lay down on the sand, in our clothes and boots, and with our horses saddled and bridled-in case of accidents-the soldiers with their arms beside them. It was a miserable night. At ten the silence was broken by the sharp sudden rattle of musketry. There was a slight flutter in our big square, but it lasted only for a moment; then the Arab firing stopped, and we fancied we were to be left in peace. But in half an hour came another rattle, much nearer, also from the flanks and in front. We could hear the voices of the Arabs as they prowled in the bush, some four hundred yards off. We could see the red flashes, palish red in the light of a moon of splendid brilliance. At one in the morning a loud fusillade broke out, close to us.

The Arabs are rushing! we thought. In an instant, the Highlanders, who were lying down on one flank of the square, rose up silently like the crest of some huge long wave, and, after a pause, subsided, slowly and silently as before. One experienced a feeling of pride and admiration at the discipline and self-possession of those men thus startled out of their sleep. At intervals all night long until five in the morning, the Arab bullets flew over us with their peevish ping, or VOL. XV.-No. 88.

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sharp whirr, or brief hiss-and-thud as they struck the sand. A drowsy oath, or muttered chaff, when shots hit unpleasantly near, was all the recognition the Arabs received. But at half-past six, one of our nine-pounders and a Gardiner machine-gun suddenly blazed away, and hotly peppered a band of woolly-heads' at 1,400 yards. Two hours afterwards, the men and officers of the second brigade were engaged in mortal struggle, hand to hand, foot to foot, with the Arabs; and their countrymen in the first brigade, who quietly watched the scene, wondered for a moment whether a horde of undisciplined savages had wiped out' a British square.

Leaving the zereba, our two infantry squares, Davis's leading at an interval of some hundreds of yards from Butler's, resumed their line of march across the plateau, which, at a distance of a quarter to half a mile or more, sloped more or less steeply down into the intricate ramification of ravines which separated us from the Tamanieb waters and Osman's camp. In about twenty minutes' time General Davis's square halted. Re-forming itself from the somewhat loose order into which it had fallen during the advance over very rough ground, it moved straightly and slowly towards the slope of the plateau.

The left flank and left-half front of the square were formed by the Black Watch under Colonel Green; the right-half front and right flank were composed of the 65th, under Colonel Byam; the royal marines, under Colonel Tuson, made up the rear.

The Arabs, whatever their plans of concealment may have been, took care to make themselves heard. They opened upon the second brigade with a terrific fire which lasted a minute or two. But their hailstorm of bullets flew, for the most part, quite harmlessly right over our heads. Out from the din rang the order, 'Forty-second, charge!' and the left-half face of the square broke away with the wild war-cry of the Black Watch. Colonel Byam heard no order given to himself, but when he saw the Highlanders dash ahead, he, too, rushed on with his front-half battalion. There was a brief pause, followed by an outburst of musketry fire from the companies of the 65th, and the harsh grating rattle of the Gatling guns near the front end of the right flank. Then the firing ceased, and there arose a hoarse, vast murmur of voices, above which sounded, loud and quick, words of command in tones of anger, remonstrance, encouragement. It was the Arabs rushing. Our square was wrecked; and its fragments were driven hither and thither before the wild tide of triumphant savagery.

Swarming out of the ravine close to our right front and right flank, and swiftly running, like so many packs of hounds, the Arabs fell upon the right front and right flank of the square. On they dashed, in spite of the fire which mowed them down by scores. Their myriad spear-blades glittered amid the smoke and the dust. I sat on horseback near the front line, behind the half-battalion of the Highlanders. Viewed from that point the recoil of the 42nd