After half an hour's halt the onward march was resumed, and we saw the troops in front about two hundred yards away actually marching through a mirage of water, rocks, and bushes! Cross tried to photograph the curious scene, but the result did not prove a success. Why does one never get a decent photograph of a mirage in the desert? Men still fell out of the ranks from sheer exhaustion. One would see a soldier totter on for some yards, trying to pull himself together, and then suddenly step to one side and sink down on the sand, saying, "It's no good; I can't go on." On two occasions when this happened, the exhausted man had drained the entire contents of his bottle, which had been full an hour ago, and not a drop of water was to be got from any of the soldiers near! I mention this to show the utter lack of self-control in the matter of drink which prevailed amongst the "Tommies." My own bottle was the only one within reach that contained any water at all, and of course I did what everyone else would have done, and divided what remained between the two men, who seemed to be actually dying of thirst. They then got up and managed to struggle on to Omdurman, their rifles being carried for them by some of their comrades. A private of the Warwicks suddenly dropped down dead from heat apoplexy, and was buried on the spot. The comparatively mild sufferings of our own men turned one's thoughts to the crowded heaps of wounded wretches left behind us in the desert to the added tortures of that thirst which invariably accompanies gunshot wounds. How many thousands, too, of women and children would soon be weeping with all the wild lamentation of the East over the brave men who lay in the sleep of death far away upon the plain! Sorrow is the same all the world over--that dread factor in human life--and the terrific carnage of the day's fighting had taken away the bread-winner and protector from thousands of poor homes in the Sudan, and doomed many a household to starvation.