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.
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