The squares shifted into fighting formations; at one impulse, in one superb sweep, nearly twelve thousand men moved forward towards the enemy. All England and all Egypt, and the flower of the black lands beyond, Birmingham and the West Highlands, the half-regenerated children of the earth's earliest civilisation, and grinning savages from the uttermost swamps of Equatoria, muscle and machinery, lord and larrikin, {151} Balliol and the Board School, the Sirdar's brain and the camel's back--all welded into one, the awful war machine went forward into action.' [Sidenote: Attack on the Zareba] The Camerons no sooner got the word to advance than, with a wild rush, the pipers meanwhile playing 'The March of the Cameron Men,' they made for the zareba some three hundred yards ahead. Forward and forward, midst a rain of bullets, they reached the hedge of camel-thorn. In a few moments it was torn to pieces and scattered like brushwood, Gatacre being among the first to lay hands on the obstruction, and the Highlanders were inside the stockade and in the trenches, where now sprang out of the earth dusty, black, half-naked shapes, running and turning to shoot, but running away. 'It was a wild confusion of Highlanders, purple tartan, and black green too, for now the Seaforths had brought their perfect columns through the teeth of the fire, and were charging in at the gap.' The enemy scarcely waited to fight, so impetuous was the rush upon them, and they fled in the utmost confusion for the river, where they were cut down by the pursuing cavalry, and General Lewis's half brigade of Egyptians. In the attack on the right, the Egyptian troops, led by British officers under Generals Hunter, Maxwell, and Macdonald, behaved with great gallantry, carrying all before them. The ground was easier on their side than that covered by Gatacre's men, and they entered the zareba a few minutes before the Highlanders, not a man flinching from the encounter. The battle of the Atbara--thanks to British discipline and drill--definitely placed the blacks and the once contemned Egyptians in the ranks of the very best troops in the world. In forty minutes the Dervish host had been driven out of their lair, thousands of them had been killed, and four thousand, including their leader {152} Mahmoud, were prisoners in the Sirdar's hands. The way was now so far open to Khartoum, but the opportunity was not yet. Reserves and supplies were needed, and a strong base had still to be secured before the final advance on the Khalifa's capital could be attempted. The whole force, British and Egyptian, accordingly retraced their steps down the Atbara river to El Hudi, where they struck across the desert to the various camps they had formerly occupied at Kenur, Darmali, Assilem, Berber, and Fort Atbara, at the junction of the rivers.