For supper our men had stringy bully beef and biscuit or bread. The dervishes had hunks of freshly roasted mutton, goat and cattle, done on the embers, and bannocks of dhura meal. Extra precautions were again observed to secure the Sirdar's army from any night attack. CHAPTER X. THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN--FIRST PHASE OF THE FIGHT. In this and the succeeding chapter, the account given of the victory of Omdurman is substantially the same as that which appeared in the columns of various issues of the _Daily Telegraph_. The narrative, although hastily prepared, gives an accurate description of the fight, and copies of it not being now procurable, I venture to make use of it, adding only here and there lines of new matter. I have reserved to a later chapter the personal narratives of officers who were in the action, and who have kindly supplied me with particulars of the part borne by the gunboats, the cavalry, and Major Stuart-Wortley's friendlies. With these I have coupled various details drawn from my own observation. I found that through errors in transmission of the messages, or mistakes in dealing with them, part of my copy had got credited to other sources. OMDURMAN, _2nd September 1898_. The supreme and greatest victory ever achieved by British arms in the Soudan has been won by the Sirdar's ever-victorious forces, after one of the most picturesque battles of the century. At last! After fifteen vexatious years spent in trying to get here, an Anglo-Egyptian army has recovered Khartoum and occupied Omdurman. Gordon has been avenged and justified. The dervishes have been overwhelmingly routed, Mahdism has been "smashed," whilst the Khalifa's capital of Omdurman has been stripped of its barbaric halo of sanctity and invulnerability. Striking and dramatic as has been the manner in which the ending of the curse of the Soudan has come about, the tale need lose none of its force by being simply told. The grandeur of the plain story requires no straining after catchwords. Of those who with Sir Herbert Stewart's desert column toiled and fought to reach Metemmeh in January 1885, less than a dozen are with the Sirdar's army, and of these but three, including the writer, were correspondents. But to the narrative of the battle which, at a stroke, has broken down the potent savage barriers of blood and cruelty, and re-opened the heart of the great African continent to the sweetening influences of civilised government.