Our men stood unmoved within the zeriba. Suddenly a cloud of white smoke massed itself along the enemy's front, and one realised that the Dervishes had opened fire on us. The Khalifa's forces possessed eighteen thousand Martinis and a still larger number of Remingtons, captured from the ill-fated army of Hicks Pasha and the various garrisons of the Sudan. But as none of the Dervishes understood the sighting of their rifles, and many of them had actually knocked off the back-sights as a useless encumbrance, their opening volleys at over two thousand yards, being fired point blank, were useless. They simply wasted ammunition; for most of the bullets of course struck the sand hundreds of yards in front of us, and comparatively few got as far as the zeriba. No response came from our silent ranks for another five minutes. Then at 6.20 a roar came from the batteries on the left, and a shell shrieked through the air and burst about twenty yards in front of the formidable line advancing against the southern face of the zeriba. Almost simultaneously the other batteries opened fire on the dense masses of the enemy advancing round the western slopes of Surgham, and still farther away towards the ridge of Kerreri. The battle had now commenced in dire earnest. As the enemy rapidly advanced, bullets of all sizes and shapes soon began to whistle over the zeriba from the Martinis, Remingtons, and nondescript weapons of the enemy. A battery, too, which they had placed on the western slope of Surgham, fired at the portion of our line held by the Camerons and Seaforths. More than forty rounds were fired from these Dervish field guns, but the shells did little, if any, damage, as, although the fuses were beautifully timed and the projectiles burst at an excellent height above the ground, the range was too long, and they all fell short. Moreover, after the fight some fragments of these shells were picked up and found to be made of very thin brass casing; so that the damage they could have inflicted, even had they reached our lines, must have been inconsiderable. As it was, they burst like maroons at the Crystal Palace, with a loud report and little else.