When we arrived at the railway station in the evening _en route_ for the South, we found our servants already there. But how transformed! Ali and the _säis_ had exchanged their native cotton garments for brand new suits of yellow kharki, purchased at my expense. From some association of ideas in connection with the forthcoming campaign, they were "got up" in a pseudo-military fashion, with brass buttons and shoulder straps. As Ali the cook stood before us in his ill-fitting garments, with an enormous crusading sword in one hand and a kitchen colander and soup ladle in the other,--a kind of walking allegory of Peace and War,--we laughed so much that we could scarcely ask for our tickets. At the last moment a native rushed into the station closely pursued by his wife. The man was evidently bent on securing a seat in the train, but his better half disapproved of this, and as he was getting into the carriage she suddenly struck a violent blow at his hand luggage. It was a most effective stroke. The bundle he carried exploded like a shell, and its contents lay scattered in hopeless confusion over the platform. Long before the baffled husband could collect the _disjecta membra_ of his travelling kit, the train steamed off into the darkness, and he was left to settle matters with his triumphant wife. We rapidly left Cairo behind us, and with it the joys and comforts of civilisation. It was a positive relief to feel that we had now commenced in real earnest to travel the twelve hundred miles which separated us from our final goal far away in the Sudan. Still, at the time of our departure from Cairo, no certainty was felt that there would be any fighting at all. Rumours were persistently current that the Khalifa and his forces had retreated from Omdurman. It would, as somebody said, be simply a case of _cherchez la femme_. If the women and children became panic-stricken and retired, it was certain that the Dervishes would lose heart and make a poor show of resistance. Take, for instance, the case of Berber. Here a vigorous defence might reasonably have been expected, but it was afterwards found that an exodus of the women brought about the total evacuation of the town, which our advancing forces thus occupied without any fighting whatever. Still it was too early to speculate on the amount of opposition our troops were likely to encounter. Whether there would be one or more sharp struggles before we found ourselves face to face with the ramparts of Omdurman; whether even then those ramparts would be held by Dervishes driven to bay and fighting with their old desperate courage, or we should bivouac in a deserted city--all these things, we felt, lay verily on the knees of the gods!