AT OMDURMAN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume C, Issue 11751, 1 December 1898, Page 6

AT OMDURMAN.

Mr G. W. Steevens writes in the “Daily Mail”:— ’ And the dervishes? The honour of the fight must still go with the men who died. Our men were perfect, but th<* dervishes were superb—beyond perfection. It was their largest, best, and bravest army tnat ever fought against us for Vahdism, and it died- worthily ‘of the huge empire that Mahdism won and kept so long. Their riflemen, mangled by every kind of death and torment that man can devise, dung round the black flag and the green, emptying their poor, rotten, home-made cartridges dauntlessly. Their spearmen cnarged death at every minute hopelessly. .1 heir horsemen led each attack, riling into the bullets till nothing was. left but three horses trotting up to'our line, heads -down,- saying, ‘‘For goodness sake, let us in out of this.” Not one rush, or two, or ten —but rush on rush, comjpany on company, never stopping, though all their view that was not unshaken enemy was the bodies, of the men who bad rushed before them. A dusky line got up and stormed forward ; it bent, broke up, fell apart, .and disappeared. Before the smoke had.cleared another line was bending and storming; forward: in the same track.' ■ .

It was over. -The avenging squadrons of the Egyptian cavalfy swept..over the field. The Khalifa and the Sheikh-ed-Din nad galloped back to Omdurman. Ali Mad Helu was homo away on an angareb with a bullet through his thigh-bone. Yakub lay dead under his brother's banner. From the green army there now came only deathenamoured desperadoes,‘strolling one. by one towards .the. rides, pausing to shake a spear, turning aside to recognise, a .corpse,- -then caught by a sudden jet of fury, bounding forward, checking, -sinking limply to the ground. Now under the black flag in a- ring of bodies stood.only three,men facing the three thousand of tlic Third Brigade. They folded their arms about the staff and gazed viily forward. Two fell. The last.dervish stood up and filled his chest; he shouted the name of his god and hurled his spear. Then he stood quite still,-waiting. It took him full; he quivered, gave at the knees, and toppled with his head on his arms and his face towards the legions'.'of his conquerors. .