The total strength of the advanced force at Korti, after the departure of Roland's regiment, was under two thousand five hundred men, with six screw guns, two thousand two hundred camels and horses, two pinnaces, and sixty-four whale boats, while the 19th Hussars, when the advance began, had orders to ride by the western bank of the Nile and act as scouts to the Khartoum relief column. By this time there was not a single sound garment in the latter--the result of fifty days' river work from Sarras. The mud-stained helmets were battered out of all shape; the tunics and trousers were patched with cloth of every kind and hue; officers and men had beards of many days' growth, and the skin of their faces was peeled off in strange and uncouth patches, the result of incessant exposure to the fierce sun by day and the chill dews by night. Christmas morning, 1884, was ushered in by a church parade, and by prayer, when the whole force--slender though it was--was present, under the feathery palms, by the banks of the Nile, that river of mystery, which has its rise in a land unknown; and at night the soldiers gathered round two great camp-fires and made merry, singing songs, and doubtless thinking of those who were far away at home. It was on this occasion that the South Staffordshire, under the gallant Eyre, raised three hearty cheers, when, from the rear, a telegram was brought, sent all the way from their second battalion in England, wishing 'all ranks a happy Christmas and a brilliant campaign.' And happy and jolly all certainly were, though they were now in the region of bully-beef, for they fared on hard biscuits and coffee in the morning, with bully-beef for tiffin, and bully-beef for dinner. As the evening of Christmas Day closed in, Roland, with a cigarette in his mouth, reclined on the grass under a mimosa bush, watching the picturesque groups of tanned and tattered soldiers that hovered round the two great watch-fires, which cast weird patches of light on the feathery palms, the glittering piles of arms, the few white tents occupied by Lord Wolseley's staff and officers of rank; on the long rows of picketed camels; on the distant figures of the advanced sentinels seen darkly against the sky of pale green and orange that showed where the sun had set beyond Gebel Magaya in the Bayuda Desert; on the quaint boats and barges moored in the Nile; and on the broad flow of that majestic river, reddened as it was by the flames, to which the active hands and sharp bill-hooks of the soldiers added fuel every moment; while the high spirits of the troops--seldom wont to flag--were irrepressible then in the great hope of getting on--getting on and reaching Khartoum--to shake hands with Gordon ere it might be--too late!