At Mahuta the Egyptians had made an attempt to bar this advance, but their opposition was swept away like chaff, and soon thereafter General Graham reached Kassassin Lock with his vanguard, entrenching himself in that position with strict orders to hold it against all comers. Well aware of the importance of this position for the British, the Egyptians made several attempts to drive them out of it and back to Ismailia before reinforcements could reach them; but each time they recoiled from the enterprise with the bitter conviction that British bullets and sabres were things on which no one could reasonably hope to whet his teeth and thrive. Two main actions were fought at Kassassin--though these formed the mere prelude, so to speak, to the grand spectacular drama that was presently to be enacted at Tel-el-Kebir. The chief of these preliminary actions, fought on the 28th August, will always be memorable for the grand cavalry charge which closed it. Early in the morning General Graham had become aware that the Egyptians were making preparations to attack him from a circle of sand-hills which formed a kind of amphitheatre around Kassassin. Graham’s force was by no means a large one, but it was impossible for the Egyptians to make out how strong it really was, and it is always half the battle to be able to conceal your plans and numbers from the enemy. A few days previously Arabi had sent out his second-in-command, Mahmoud Fehmi Pasha, a great engineer and reader of military signs, to discover the strength and dispositions of Graham, but by a curious accident he fell into the hands of the English and never returned to his own side. To this capture Arabi himself afterwards attributed the sole blame of his not having been able to oust the audacious English from their advanced post at Kassassin--and the incident will show how very important it must always be in warfare to seize and detain spies. [Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE BATTLES OF TEL-EL-KEBIR & KASSASSIN] Graham’s force at Kassassin was not a large one (under 2,000), consisting mainly of a company of Royal Marine Artillery, the Duke of Cornwall’s regiment, the York and Lancasters, with some mounted infantry and a few guns, one of which, under Captain Tucker, was mounted on a railway truck. But the Egyptians, taking a leaf out of our own book of war, had by this time imitated us in this respect--though they were very bad range-finders, and did us little harm.