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CHAPTER LVI.
THE BATTLE OF KIRBEKAN.
On the night before this brilliant encounter the greatest enthusiasm prevailed in the ranks of General Earle's column at the prospect of a brush with the enemy at last, after an advance of eighteen most weary miles, which had occupied them no less than twenty days, such was the terrible nature of the country to be traversed by stream and desert. As a fine Scottish ballad has it:
'With painful march across the sand
How few, though strong, they come,
Some thinking of the clover fields
And the happy English home;
And some whose graver features speak
Them children of the North,
Of the golden whin on the Lion Hill
That crouches by the Forth.
''Tis night, and through the desert air
The pibroch's note screams shrill,
Then dies away—the bugle sounds—
Then all is deathly still,
Save now and then a soldier starts
As through the midnight air
A sudden whistle tells him that
The scouts of death are there!'
At half-past five in the morning, after a meagre and hurried breakfast—the last meal that many were to partake of on earth—the column got under arms and took its march straight inland over a very rocky district for more than a mile, while blood-red and fiery the vast disc of the sun began to appear above the far and hazy horizon.
Of the scene of these operations very little is known. Lepsius, in his learned work published in 1844, writes of the ruins of Ben Naga, now called Mesaurat el Kerbegan, lying in a valley of that name, in a wild and sequestered place, where no living thing is seen but the hippopotami swimming amid the waters of the Nile.
Taking ground to the left for about half a mile the column struck upon the caravan track that led to Berber, and then the enemy came in sight, led by the Sheikhs Moussa Abu Hagil, Ali Wad, Aussein, and others, holding a rocky position, where their dark heads were only visible, popping up from time to time as seen by the field-glasses.
It was intended that the Monassir tribe, the murderers of Donald Stewart and his party, should, if possible, be surrounded and cut off; but they were found to be entrenched and prepared for a desperate resistance on lofty ground near the Shukuk Pass on a ridge of razor-backed hills, commanding a gorge which lies between the latter and the Nile, and the entrance to which they had closed by a fort and walls loopholed for musketry.
'The Black Watch and Staffordshire will advance in skirmishing order!' was the command of General Earle.
Six companies of the Highlanders and four of the latter corps now extended on both flanks at a run. The Hussars galloped to the right, while two companies of the Staffordshire, with two guns, were left to protect the boats in the river, the hospital corps, the stores, and spare ammunition.
This order was maintained till the companies of skirmishers gradually, and firing with admirable coolness and precision, worked their way towards the high rocks in their front. While closing in with the enemy, whose furious fusillade enveloped the dark ridge in white smoke, streaked by incessant flashes of red fire, men were falling down on every hand with cries to God for help or mercy, and some, it might be, with a fierce and bitter malediction.
There was no time to think, for the next bullet might floor the thinker: it was the supreme moment which tries the heart of the bravest; but every officer and man felt that he must do his duty at all hazards. Bullets sang past, thudded in silvery stars on the rocks, cut the clothing, or raised clouds of dust; comrades and dear friends were going down fast, as rifles were tossed up and hands were lifted heavenward—as, more often, men fell in death, in blood and agony; but good fortune seemed to protect the untouched, and then came the clamorous and tiger-like longing to close in, to grapple with, to get within grasp of the foe!
In this spirit Roland went on, but keeping his skirmishers well in hand, till they reached the high rocks in front, when they rushed between or over them; and there Colonel Eyre, a noble, veteran officer, and remarkably handsome man, who, though a gentleman by birth, had risen from the ranks in the Crimea—then as now conspicuous for his bravery—fell at the head of his beloved South Staffordshire while attacking the second ridge, 'where, behind some giant boulders, the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil was with his Robatat tribe—the most determined of the Arab race.'
The good Colonel was pausing for a moment beside two of his wounded men. 'Colonel Eyre took one of them by the hand,' wrote an officer whom we are tempted to quote, 'to comfort him a little. A minute after he turned to me and said: "I am a dead man!" I saw a mark below his shoulder, and said: "No, you are not." He looked at me for a second, and said: "Lord, have mercy upon me—God help my poor wife!" ... He was dead in a minute after he was hit, and did not appear to suffer, the shock being so great. The bullet entered the right breast, and came out under the left shoulder.'
Like a roaring wave the infuriated Staffordshire went on, and then the Robatat tribe were assailed by two companies of the Highlanders, led by their Colonel and General Earle in person. 'The Black Watch advanced over rocks and broken ground upon the Koppies,' says Lord Wolseley's very brief despatch, 'and, after having by their fire in the coolest manner driven off a rush of the enemy, stormed the position under a heavy fire.'
But desperate was the struggle prior to this. The Arabs, from the cover of every rock and boulder, poured in a fire with the most murderous precision, while our soldiers flung themselves headlong at any passage or opening they found, no matter how narrow or steep.
Like wild tigers in their lair, the Arabs fought at bay, having everywhere the advantage of the ground, and inspired by a fury born of fanaticism and religious rancour, resolute to conquer or die; but in spite of odds and everything, our soldiers stormed rock after rock, and fastness after fastness, working their way on by bayonet and bullet, the Black Watch on the left, the old 38th on the right, upward and onward, over rocks slippery with dripping blood, over the groaning, the shrieking, the dying, and the dead.
Here fell Wilton and merry Dick Mostyn, both mortally wounded, rolling down the rocks to die in agony; and to Roland it was evident that Jack Elliot was bitterly intent on throwing his life away if he could, for he rushed, sword in hand, at any loophole in the rocks from whence a puff of smoke or flash of fire spirted out.
But brilliant as was the rush of the Staffordshire, climbing with their hands and feet, it was almost surpassed by the advance of the Highlanders, for in the élan with which they went on every man seemed as if inspired by the advice of General Brackenbury when he said: 'Take your heart and throw it among the enemy, as Douglas did that of King Robert Bruce, and follow it with set teeth determined to win!'
When General Earle ordered the left half-battalion of the Highlanders to advance by successive rushes, they went forward with a ringing cheer and with pipers playing 'The Campbells are coming,' and in another moment the scarlet coats and green kilts, led by Wauchop of Niddry, had crowned the ridge, rolling the soldiers of the Mahdi down the rocks before their bayonets in literal piles that never rose again, and then it was that Colonel Coveny, one of their most popular officers, fell.
Roland felt proud of his regiment, the old South Staffordshire, but when he saw the tartans fluttering on the crest, and heard the pipes set up their pæan of victory, all his heart went forth to the Highlanders, who, ere these successive rushes were carried out, had been attacked by a most resolute band of the enemy, armed with long spears and trenchant swords, led by a standard-bearer clad in a long Darfour shirt of mail.
The latter, the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, was shot, and as his body went rolling down, the holy standard was seized in succession by three men of resolute valour, who all perished successively in the same manner. Some of this band now rushed away towards the Nile to escape the storm of Highland bullets, but were there met by a company of the Staffordshire and shot down to a man.
Within the koppie stormed by the Highlanders was a stone hut full of Arabs, who, though surrounded by victorious troops, defiantly refused to surrender. General Earle, a veteran Crimean officer of the old 49th, or Hertfordshire, now rashly approached it, though warned by a sergeant of the Black Watch to beware, and was immediately shot dead.
An entrance was found to be impossible, so securely was the door barricaded. Then the edifice was set on fire by the infuriated Highlanders, breached by powder, and all the Arabs within it were shot down or burned alive.
The enemy now fled on all hands, while the chivalrous Buller, with a squadron of the 19th Hussars, captured the camp three miles in rear of their position, and Brackenbury, as senior officer, assumed the command.
Our casualties were eighty-seven of all ranks killed and wounded; those of the enemy it was impossible to estimate, as only seventeen were taken alive, but their dead covered all the position, and an unknown number perished in the Nile.
Untouched, after that terrible conflict of five consecutive hours, Roland Lindsay and Jack Elliot grasped each other's hands in warmth and gratitude when they sheathed their swords and felt that their ghastly work was done.
The subsequent day was devoted to quiet and rest, and on the field, under a solitary palm tree, the remains of General Earle, Colonels Eyre, Coveny, and all who had fallen with them, were reverently interred, without any special mark to attract the attention of the dwellers in the desert.
After all this, Brigadier Brackenbury was about to march in the direction of Abu Hammed, when unexpected instructions from the vacillating British Government reached Lord Wolseley from London, and the river column was ordered to fall back on the camp at Korti, a task of no small difficulty; and though a handful of men under Sir Charles Wilson did reach Khartoum, as we all know, the movement was achieved too late, and, cruelly betrayed, Gordon had perished in the midst of his fame.