which it had groaned, to
avenge Gordon and Hicks and the gallant men who had died with them!

Occasionally, Captain Ewart came up and talked to him, but he was well
content to sit on one of the bales, and listen to the conversation
without joining in it. In another couple of years he, too, would have
had his experiences, and would be able to take his part. At present, he
preferred to be a listener.

The distance to Wady Halfa was some three hundred miles; but the
current was strong, and the steamer could not tow the boats more than
five miles an hour, against it. It was sixty hours, from the start,
before they arrived.

Gregory was astonished at the stir and life in the place. Great numbers
of native labourers were at work, unloading barges and native craft;
and a line of railway ran down to the wharves, where the work of
loading the trucks went on briskly. Smoke pouring out from many
chimneys, and the clang of hammers, told that the railway engineering
work was in full swing. Vast piles of boxes, cases, and bales were
accumulated on the wharf, and showed that there would be no loss of
time in pushing forward supplies to Abu Hamed, as soon as the railway
was completed to that point.

Wady Halfa had been the starting point of a railway, commenced years
before. A few miles have been constructed, and several buildings
erected for the functionaries, military and civil; but Gordon, when
Governor of the Soudan, had refused to allow the province to be saddled
with the expenses of the construction, or to undertake the
responsibility of carrying it out.

In 1884 there was some renewal of work and, had Gordon been rescued,
and Khartoum permanently occupied, the line would no doubt have been
carried on; but with the retirement of the British troops, work ceased,
and the great stores of material that had been gathered there remained,
for years, half covered with the sand. In any other climate this would
have been destructive, but in the dry air of Upper Egypt they remained
almost uninjured, and proved very useful, when the work was again taken
up.

It was a wonderful undertaking, for along the two hundred and
thirty-four miles of desert, food, water, and every necessary had to be
carried, together with all materials for its construction. Not only had
an army of workmen to be fed, but a body of troops to guard them; for
Abu Hamed, at the other end of the line, for which they were making,
was occupied by a large body of Dervi