Eight miles from Omdurman a score of swift
camels awaited him, and on these he soon reached the main body of his
routed army. Here he found many disheartened friends; but the fact that,
in this evil plight, he found any friends at all must be recorded in his
favour and in that of his subjects. When he arrived he had no escort--
was, indeed, unarmed. The fugitives had good reason to be savage.
Their leaders had led them only to their ruin. To cut the throat of this
one man who was the cause of all their sufferings was as easy as they would
have thought it innocent. Yet none assailed him. The tyrant, the oppressor,
the scourge of the Soudan, the hypocrite, the abominated Khalifa;
the embodiment, as he has been depicted to European eyes, of all the vices;
the object, as he was believed in England, of his people's bitter hatred,
found safety and welcome among his flying soldiers. The surviving Emirs
hurried to his side. Many had gone down on the fatal plain. Osman Azrak,
the valiant Bishara, Yakub, and scores whose strange names have not
obscured these pages, but who were, nevertheless, great men of war,
lay staring up at the stars. Yet those who remained never wavered in their
allegiance. Ali-Wad-Helu, whose leg had been shattered by a shell splinter,
was senseless with pain; but the Sheikh-ed-Din, the astute Osman Digna,
lbrahim Khalil, who withstood the charge of the 21st Lancers, and others
of less note rallied to the side of the appointed successor of Mohammed
Ahmed, and did not, even in this extremity, abandon his cause.
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