I sat on an ammunition box and shivered. The wound upon my finger, where the Arab's spear had cut it, though slight, was disproportionately painful. Lieutenant Douglas Dawson (of the Coldstream Guards) came to me and asked me if I had any tobacco. I told him that my tobacco, together with my field-glasses, had departed into the desert with my steed County Waterford, which had run away. Dawson had six cigarettes, of which he gave me three. I would cheerfully have given a year's income for them, as {271} I told him. We agreed that it was hard to have to die without knowing who had won the Derby. At about seven o'clock next morning (18th January) the convoy returned with the rest of the camels and the commissariat. We had our first meal for some thirty-six hours. Then we went to work to build a fort in which to leave the wounded, and to prepare for the march to the river, some 25 miles distant. A burying party went back to the field of Abu Klea and interred our dead. Some prisoners captured by the convoy on its way back to the camp, reported that Omdurman had fallen; but the information was not made generally known. I did not hear it until we reached Metemmeh. Sir Herbert Stewart then determined to reach the Nile before next morning. A small detachment of the Royal Sussex was left to guard the wounded. The column marched about 3.30 p.m. It was a desperate venture, for the men had had no sleep for two nights, had fought a battle in between, had suffered agonies of thirst and the exhaustion of hunger. But Sir Herbert Stewart had learned from the prisoners that the enemy who had fought at Abu Klea were no more than the advanced guard of the main body, which would probably come out from Metemmeh to meet us, and that the fall of Omdurman had released a number of the Mahdi's army; and the general wished to reach the river before fighting again. He hoped to be upon the Nile before daylight. In any event, the enterprise of the Desert Column was a forlorn hope; and by this time we all knew it. Cameron, war correspondent of _The Standard_, came to me with a very grave face. He was not alarmed for his own safety, for he was a most gallant man; but he feared for the Column. "Lord Charles," he said, "have you any influence with General Stewart? If so, for God's sake implore him not to go on without reinforcements. I know these people and he does not." {272} The next time I saw poor Cameron was upon the following day, when he was lying with a bullet-hole in his forehead, dead.