This is, in a few words, the story of a campaign which has been unequalled within the last twenty years in picturesqueness, heroism, and dramatic surprises. It had been said that the old days of personal bravery, of hand-to-hand slaughter, and of the attack and defence of man against man, were at an end; that owing to the new weapons of war, by which an enemy can be attacked when several miles distant from the attacking party, when the pressing of an electric button destroys an army corps, and when turning a handle will send three hundred bullets a minute into a mass of infantry, the necessity for personal courage was over. But seldom in history has there been as fierce personal encounters as in the Soudan, or as unusual methods of warfare. On the one hand were the naked supporters of the Mahdi, armed with their spears and knives, and protected only by bull-hide shields, but actuated by a religious fanaticism that drove them exulting at their enemies, and with no fear of death, but with the belief that through it they would gain joyous and proud immortality. Against them were the British troops, outnumbered ten to one, with hundreds of miles of sandy desert before, behind, and on every side of them, cut off from communication with the outside world, in a country barren and unfamiliar, and attacked by tens of thousands, who came when they pleased and where they pleased, rising as swiftly as a sand-storm rises, and disappearing again as suddenly into the desert. When I was in Cairo I was told of one of the Mahdi's men who continually rushed at a British square during an engagement holding his shield clear of his body as he advanced to throw a spear, and then retreated again. This looked like the worst form of foolhardiness to the English, until they saw that he was protecting with his shield his little boy, who was hiding behind it, and that when the chance offered, this child, who could not have been more than seven, and who was as naked of protection as his father, would throw a spear of his own. The father was wounded four times, but each time the bullet struck him he only shook himself, as a dog shakes off water, and once more rushed forward. When he fell for the last time the boy tumbled across him, unconscious from a wound in his thigh. The surgeons dressed this wound and bandaged it; but when the child came to and saw what they had done, he leaped up and tore the clothes from around him, and then, as the blood from the reopened wound ran out, fell over backwards dead. The English officer who told this story asked if fighting such men could be considered agreeable work from any point of view. [Illustration: H. H. ABBAS II. Khedive of Egypt]