Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/337

270 under cover of darkness, and that these were the fugitives coming into town; at another moment it was believed that the Khaleefa had altered his plans, and had decided to stand a siege in Omdurman. Next it was thought that the dervishes had rushed the camp of the troops; but this idea was soon discarded, for the people running back to town would have still had breath to yell out the news of victory. I have already given the reasons for these people returning, but I only learned them later; to us prisoners, the night passed in anxiety, and amidst alternate hopes and fears.

Daylight was only creeping through the skies when we heard a low boom, followed by an ever-increasing volume of yells and screechings as of Pandemonium let loose, and then a ternfic explosion which positively shook Omdurman. The town could not stand this sort of thing for ten minutes; we gave ourselves up for lost, but the bombardment ceased as suddenly as it began. I asked one of the gaoler's boys to climb to the roof of the Umm Hagar to see what the gunboats were doing, as it was believed that the shells had been fired by them. He called back that they were "standing still" near Halfeyeh, and not firing at all. As we could hear the distant booming still going on, we knew then that the English were holding their own if nothing more, and hope returned.

It did not need the boy to call out when the gunboats moved down stream that they, too, were opening fire on the dervish camps; we could almost follow the tide of battle in that furious artillery duel from the