The spectacle of the moving army—­the grand army of the Nile—­as it advanced towards its goal was especially wonderful in the clear air of the early morning; a long row of great brown masses of infantry and artillery, with a fringe of cavalry dotting the plain for miles in front, with the Camel Corps—­chocolate-coloured men on cream-coloured camels—­stretching into the desert on the right, and the white gunboats stealing silently up the river on the left, scrutinising the banks with their guns; while far in rear the transport trailed away into the mirage, and far in front the field-glass disclosed the enemy’s patrols.  Day after day and hour after hour the advance was maintained.  Arrived at the camping-ground, the zeriba had to be built; and this involved a long afternoon of fatigue.  In the evening, when the dusty, tired-out squadrons returned, the troopers attended to their horses, and so went to sleep in peace.  It was then that the dusty, tired-out infantry provided sentries and pickets, who in a ceaseless succession paced the zeriba and guarded its occupants.

The position of the next camp was a strong one, on a high swell of open ground which afforded a clear field of fire in every direction.  Everyone that night lay down to sleep with a feeling of keen expectancy.  One way or the other all doubts would be settled the next day.  The cavalry would ride over the Kerreri Hills, if they were not occupied by the enemy, and right up to the walls of Omdurman.  If the Dervishes had any army—­ if there was to be any battle—­we should know within a few hours.  The telegrams which were despatched that evening were the last to reach England before the event.  During the night heavy rain fell, and all the country was drenched.  The telegraph-wire had been laid along the ground, as there had been no time to pole it.  The sand when dry is a sufficient insulator, but when wet its non-conductivity is destroyed.  Hence all communications ceased, and those at home who had husbands, sons, brothers, or friends in the Expeditionary Force were left in an uncertainty as great as that in which we slept—­and far more painful.

The long day had tired everyone.  Indeed, the whole fortnight since the cavalry convoy had started from the Atbara had been a period of great exertion, and the Lancers, officers and men, were glad to eat a hasty meal, and forget the fatigues of the day, the hardness of the ground, and the anticipations of the morrow in deep sleep.  The camp was watched by the infantry, whose labours did not end with the daylight.  At two o’clock in the morning the clouds broke in rain and storm.  Great blue flashes of lightning lit up the wide expanse of sleeping figures, of crowded animals, and of shelters fluttering in the wind; and from the centre of the camp it was even possible to see for an instant the continuous line of sentries who watched throughout the night with ceaseless vigilance.  Nor was this all.  Far away, near the Kerreri Hills, the yellow light of a burning village shot up, unquenched by the rain, and only invisible in the brightest flashes of the lightning.  There was war to the southward.