s more than human nature could bear. The dense columns had shrunk
to companies, the companies to driblets, which finally fled westward
to the hills, leaving the field white with jibbeh-clad corpses like a
landscape dotted with snowdrifts.

It was about eight o'clock, and the first action was virtually over
and won. Good fortune, as the Sirdar admitted, had in many respects
attended him. With a trifling loss of a few hundred men he had
discomfited and slain 10,000 of the great dervish army. Presumably,
Abdullah had lost the flower of his brave and devoted troops. There
were yet a thousand or more of Jehadieh lying about under cover
potting at the zereba. Many of them shammed being wounded to get
closer to us. Sharp volleys and more shell-fire duly disposed of those
determined snipers. It was from that source, during the critical
stages of the battle when the infantry were stopping the Khalifa's
columns, that our chief casualties occurred. Some of these
sharpshooters crept to within 800 yards of the British lines, and up
to 400 yards from Maxwell's. It was from them that Captain Caldecott
received his death-wound and the Cameron losses came. I could not but
observe the fact, as I walked and rode about behind the firing lines
during the action. Still, the battle of Omdurman has the right to be
considered from the victor's point of view the safest action ever
fought. The Warwick loss in the first action was one officer killed
and two men wounded; the Camerons, one man killed and two officers and
eighteen men wounded--Colonel Money had two horses shot under him, as
at the Atbara; the Seaforths had eighteen men wounded; and the
Lincolns ten men wounded. In General Lyttelton's brigade the Grenadier
Guards had one officer, Captain Bagshot, and four men wounded; the
Northumberland Fusiliers had but one man wounded; the Lancashire
Fusiliers four men wounded; and the Rifles six men wounded.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN--_Continued._

THE CAVALRY FIGHTS--MACDONALD'S SAVING ACTION.

Before I deal with the second phase of the battle, there is something
more to be said of the first. So far I have but written of the
infantry and the artillery. It is no easy task to give a succinct
account of a whole catalogue of events happening at the same time over
so widespread a field. The battle of Omdurman was full of incident and
of Homeric combats. Whilst we in the zereba were awaiting, ready and
confident of the issue, th