Week after week
the convoys had straggled unmolested through the difficult country between
Sarras and the advanced base. No attack had been made upon the brigade at
Akasha. No enterprise was directed against its communications. This fatal
inactivity did not pass unnoticed by Wad Bishara, the Governor of Dongola;
but although he was nominally in supreme command of all the Dervish forces
in the province he had hardly any means of enforcing his authority.
His rebukes and exhortations, however, gradually roused Hammuda, and during
May two or three minor raids were planned and executed, and the Egyptian
position at Akasha was several times reconnoitred.
Bishara remained unsatisfied, and at length, despairing of infusing energy
into Hammuda, he ordered his subordinate Osman Azrak to supersede him.
Osman was a Dervish of very different type. He was a fanatical and devoted
believer in the Mahdi and a loyal follower of the Khalifa. For many years
he had served on the northern frontier of the Dervish Empire, and his name
was well known to the Egyptian Government as the contriver of the most
daring and the most brutal raids. His cruelty to the wretched inhabitants
of the border villages had excluded him from all hope of mercy should he
ever fall into the hands of the enemy. His crafty skill, however,
protected him, and among the Emirs gathered at Firket there was none whose
death would have given greater satisfaction to the military authorities
than the man who was now to replace Hammuda.
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