Then, with four squadrons
looking very tiny on the broad expanse of ground, we moved steadily
forward, and at the same time the Egyptian cavalry and the Camel Corps
entered the plain several miles further to the west, and they too
began to trot across it.
It was about three miles to the last ridge which lay between us
and the city. If there was a Dervish army, if there was to be a battle,
if the Khalifa would maintain his boast and accept the arbitrament of war,
much must be visible from that ridge. We looked over. At first nothing was
apparent except the walls and houses of Omdurman and the sandy plain
sloping up from the river to distant hills. Then four miles away on our
right front emerged a long black line with white spots. It was the enemy.
It seemed to us, as we looked, that there might be 3,000 men behind a
high dense zeriba of thorn-bushes. That, said the officers, was better
than nothing. It is scarcely necessary to describe our tortuous movements
towards the Dervish position. Looking at it now from one point of view,
now from another, but always edging nearer, the cavalry slowly approached,
and halted in the plain about three miles away--three great serpents
of men--the light-coloured one, the 21st Lancers; a much longer and a
blacker one, the Egyptian squadrons; a mottled one, the Camel Corps and
Horse Artillery. From this distance a clearer view was possible,
and we distinguished many horsemen riding about the flanks and front of
the broad dark line which crowned the crest of the slope.
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