Our dead men were left where they fell; but frequent were the halts for picking up the wounded. Yet steady as if on parade in a home barrack square, our little band advanced, over stony crests, through dry water-courses, like some hugh machine, compact and slow, firm and regular, amid the storm of bullets poured into it from the front, from the flanks, and eventually from the rear. At first the enemy swarmed in dark masses all along our front, and for two or three miles on either flank groups of their horsemen, with floating garments and glittering spears, could be seen watching the advance of the hollow square from black peaks of splintered rock. 'There was no avenue of retreat now for us,' wrote one, 'and no one thought of such a thing. "Let us do or die!" (in the words of Bruce's war song) was the emotion of all; and Colonel Barrow, C.B., with his "handful" of Hussars, became engaged about the same time as the square.' He maintained a carbine fire, while General Stewart, with his personal staff, including Major Wardrop, the Earl of Airlie, and Captains Skene and Rhodes, galloped from point to point, keeping all in readiness to repulse a sudden charge; but, with all their bravery, it was a trial for our Heavy Dragoons to march on foot and fight with infantry rifles and bayonets--weapons to which they were totally unaccustomed. The keen, yet dreamy sense of imminent peril--the chances of sudden death, with the spasmodic tightness of the chest that emotion sometimes causes, had passed from Malcolm Skene now completely; he 'felt cool as a cucumber,' yet instinct with the fierce desire to close with, to grapple, and to spur among the enemy _sabre à la main_; and he forgot even the smarting of his wounded bridle hand as the troops moved onward. A few minutes after ten o'clock, when the leading face of the square had won the crest of a gentle slope on the other side of a hollow, a column of the enemy, about 5,000 strong, was seen echeloned in two long lines on the left, or opposite that face which was formed by the mounted infantry and heavy cavalry, and looking as if they meant to come on now. They were still marshalled, as stated, by sheikhs and dervishes on horseback, and, with all their banners rustling in the wind, the battle-drums thundering, and their shrill cries of 'Allah! Allah!' loading the air, they advanced quickly, brandishing their flashing spears and two-handed swords. Abu Saleh, Ameer of Metemneh, led the right; Moussa Abu Hagil led the centre; and Mahommed Khuz, Ameer of Berber, who had soon to retire wounded, led the left, and our skirmishers came racing towards the square.