Blunted Lance Read Free Page B

once by more explosions and a roar as the gun-boats anchored in the river behind joined in the barrage. The smell of cordite filled the air and great clouds of smoke appeared along the front of the British and Sudanese brigades as battery after battery opened on the Dervishes between the Jebel Surgham and the Kerreris, the sound of the cannonade echoing and re-echoing among the clefts and spires of the hills.
    Though the aim of the British guns was excellent, the exploding shells seemed to send no more than a ripple through the vast horde in front. Then the whole Dervish army seemed to discharge their weapons in a vast feu-de-joie, and a huge section began to peel off from the main line of advance and head for the zariba. The British soldiers waited, front rank kneeling, rear rank standing – just as the Highlanders had received the Russian cavalry at Balaclava, General Goff remembered.
    The Dervishes were still moving in good order, the whole division crossing the crest into the plain. The shells were striking them at a rate of twenty to the minute now, bursting in their faces so that the white banners began to topple in all directions and the mass began to crumble into groups under individual leaders. The tumult increased, the Maxims stuttering away, a field battery in action on a small rise, the gunners busy about their pieces, the officers standing on boxes of army biscuits to stare through their glasses at the effect their shells were having. The ragged line of men was still pushing forward, struggling ahead in the face of the pitiless fire, the banners swaying and tossing like waves in a stormy sea, the white-robed figures collapsing in dozens among the spurts of smoke from their own rifles and the larger puffs from the bursting shrapnel.
    The infantry were firing steadily and stolidly, mercilessly, without hurry, taking pains to be accurate, empty cartridge cases forming heaps alongside each man. As the Dervishes drew nearer, they became fewer, but the rifles were growing hot now and were being exchanged hurriedly for those of the reserve companies, while the Highlanders were beginning to empty their water bottles into the jackets of the Maxims.
    Crumbled by the shells, the Dervish horde hesitated, then came on again in a final despairing struggle. The angry sound of their voices was now a roar, blood-curdling in its volume and intensity. Though their fire was wild and mostly going high over the zariba, a few men were hit and reeled out of the line, and an officer’s charger crumpled to its knees, blood pouring from its nose across the sprawling man’s tunic and breeches. Then, at around five hundred yards, the forward march changed to a run. For a moment the Dervishes were obscured as the wind dropped and the smoke from the Egyptians’ Martini-Henrys drifted across the front, so that it seemed they might just break into the line. Peering forward into the smoke, waiting for it to lift, General Goff saw it disperse at last to reveal only a few men still struggling forward in a group round a banner, until finally they, too, were sent sprawling to the sand.
    It seemed to be over and Kitchener, worried as always about the cost, was calling for a cease fire and complaining about the waste of ammunition. A few bullets still whistled into the zariba from a group of riflemen who had gone to ground behind a small ridge in front, but there was no real danger now. The guns had smashed the attack before it had even got going, and an army of almost twenty thousand had shattered itself against the disciplined fire. At least six thousand men lay in front, dead or wounded, sprawling and still, or trying painfully to crawl away. The cloud of white flags had all disappeared.
    ‘There’s more to come. We’ve only been approached so far by the wings of their army.’
    The General turned as his chief of staff spoke. Lord Ellesmere, he remembered with a sudden strange switch in time, had been a mere boy with a shocking case of acne