G.A. Henty - With Kitchener in the Soudan - a story of Atbara and Omdurman

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 Dervishes who might at any moment swoop down across the plain.

Had the Sirdar had the resources of England at his back the work would have been easier, for he could have ordered from home new engines and plant of every description; but it was an Egyptian work, and had to be done in the cheapest possible way. Old engines had to be patched up, and makeshifts of all kinds employed. Fortunately, he had in the chief engineer of the line a man whose energy, determination, and resource were equal to his own. Major Girouard was a young officer of the Royal Engineers, and, like all white officers in the Egyptian service, held the rank of major. He was a Canadian by birth, and proved in every respect equal to the onerous and responsible work to which he was appointed. However, labour was cheap, and railway battalions were raised among the Egyptian peasants, their pay being the same as that of the soldiers. Strong, hearty, and accustomed to labour and a scanty diet, no men could have been more fitted for the work. They preferred it to soldiering, for although, as they had already shown, and were still further to prove, the Egyptian can fight, and fight bravely, he is by nature peaceable and prefers work however hard. In addition to these battalions, natives of the country and of the Soudan, fugitives from ruined villages and desolated plains, were largely employed. The line had now been carried three-quarters of the distance to Abu Hamed, which was still in the hands of the Dervishes. It had been

constructed with extraordinary rapidity, for the ground was so level that only occasional cuttings were needed.

The organization of labour was perfect; the men were divided into gangs, each under a head man, and each having its own special work to do. There were the men who unloaded the trucks, the labourers who did the earth-work, and the more skilled hands who levelled it. As fast as the trucks were emptied gangs of men carried the sleepers forward and laid them down roughly in position; others followed and corrected the distance between each. The rails were then brought along and laid down with the fish-plates in the proper places; men put these on, and boys screwed up the nuts. Then plate-layers followed and lined the rails accurately, and when this was done sand was thrown in and packed down between the sleepers.

By this division of labour the line was pushed on from one to two miles a day, the camp moving forward with the line. Six tank trucks brought up the water for the use of the labourers daily, and everything worked with as much regularity as in a great factory at home. Troops of friendly tribesmen in our pay scoured the country and watched the wells along the road farther to the east, so as to prevent any bands of Dervishes from dashing suddenly down upon the workers.

At Wady Haifa, Captain Ewart and two or three other officers left the steamer to proceed up the line. Gregory was very sorry to lose him.

"I cannot tell you, Captain Ewart," he said, "how deeply grateful I feel to you for the immense kindness you have shown me. I don't know what I should have done had I been left without your advice and assistance in getting my outfit and making my arrangements to come up here."

"My dear lad," the latter said, "don't say anything more. In any case, I should naturally be glad to do what I could for the son of a man who died fighting in the same cause as we are now engaged in. But in your case it has been a pleasure, for I am sure you will do credit to yourself and to the mother who has taken such pains in preparing you for the work you are going to do, and in fitting you for the position that you now occupy."

As the officers who had come up with them in the train from Cairo were all going on, and had been told by Ewart something of Gregory's story, they had aided that officer in making Gregory feel at home in his new circumstances, and in the two days they had been on board the boat he had made the acquaintance of several others.

The river railway had now been carried from Wady Haifa to Kerma, above the third cataract. The heavy stores were towed up by steamers and native craft. Most of the engine? and trucks had been transferred to the desert line; but a few were still retained to carry up troops if necessary, and aid the craft in accumulating stores. One of these trains started a few hours after the arrival of the steamer at Wady Haifa. Gregory with the officers going up occupied two horse-boxes.

Several of them had been engaged in the last campaign, and pointed out the places of interest. At Sarras, some thirty miles up the road, there had been a fight on the 29th of April, 1887, when the Dervish host, advancing strong in the belief that they could carry all before them down to the sea, were defeated by the Egyptian force under the Sirdar and General Chermside.

The next stop of the train was at Akasheh. This had been a very important station before the last advance, as all the stores had been accumulated here when the army advanced. Here had been a strongly-entrenched camp, for the Dervishes were in force fifteen miles away, at Ferket.

" It was a busy time we had here," said one of the officers who had taken a part in the expedition. " A fortnight before we had no idea that an early move was contemplated, and indeed it was only on the 14th of March that the excitement began. That day Kitchener received a telegram ordering an immediate advance on Dongola. We had expected it would take place soon; but there is no doubt that the sudden order was the result of an arrangement on the part of our government with Italy that we should relieve her from the pressure of the Dervishes round Kassala by effecting a diversion and obliging the enemy to send a large force down to Dongola to resist our advance. It was a busy time. The Sirdar came up to Wady Haifa, and the Egyptian troops were divided between that place, Sarras, and Akasheh. The 9th Soudanese were marched up from Suakim, and they did the distance to the Nile (one hundred and twenty miles) in four days. That was something like marching. Well, you saw Wady Haifa. For a month this place was quite as busy. Now its glories are gone. Two or three huts for the railway men, and the shelters for a company of Egyptians, represent the whole camp."

As they neared Ferket the officer said: "There was a sharp fight out there on the desert. A large body of Dervishes advanced from Ferket. They were seen to leave by a cavalry patrol. As soon as the patrol reached camp all the available horse, two hundred and forty in number, started under Major Murdoch. Four miles out they came in sight of three hundred mounted Dervishes, with a thousand spearmen on foot. The ground was rough and unfavourable for a cavalry charge; so the cavalry retired to a valley between two hills, in order to get better ground. While they were doing so, however, the Dervishes charged down upon them. Murdoch rode at them at once, and there was a hand-to-hand fight that lasted for twenty minutes. Then the enemy turned and galloped off to the shelter of the spearmen. The troopers dismounted and opened fire, and on a regiment of Soudanese coming up the enemy drew off. Eighteen of the Dervishes were killed and eighty wounded.