THE CHARGE OF THE LANCERS AT OMDURMAN.

The Battle of Omdurman took place on September 2, 1898, and resulted in a victory for the Egyptian and British troops under Sir Herbert Kitchener over the dervish followers of the Khalifa. During the battle there took place the now famous charge of the 2lst Lancers which is here described.

On the left the British cavalry were in the stress of an engagement, less perfectly conducted than that on the right, but even more hardly fought out. They left the zariba the moment the attack burned out, and pricked eagerly off to Omdurman. Verging somewhat westward, to the rear of Gebel Surgham, they came on three hundred dervishes. Their scouts had been over the ground a thousand yards ahead of them, and it was clear for a charge ;only to cut them off it was thought better to get a little south of them, then right wheel, and thus gallop down on them and drive them away from their line of retreat. The trumpets sang out the order, the troops glided into squadrons, and, four squadrons in line, the 21st. Lancers swung into their first charge.

Knee to knee they swept on till they were but two hundred yards from the enemy. Then suddenly - then in a flash - they saw the trap. Between them and the three hundred there yawned suddenly a deep ravine; out of the ravine there sprang instantly a cloud of dark heads, and a brandished lightning of. swords, and a thunder of savage voices. Mahmud smiled when he heard the tale in prison at Halfa, and said it was their favourite stratagem. It had succeeded. Three thousand, if there was one, to a short four hundred; but it was too late to check now - must go through with it now. The blunders of British cavalry are the fertile seed of British glory knee to knee the Lancers whirled on. One hundred yards-fifty-knee to knee.

Slap! "It was just like that," said a captain, bringing his fist hard into his open palm. Through the swordsmen they shore without checking, and then came the khor. The colonel at their head, riding straight through everything without sword or revolver drawn, found his horse on its head, and the swords swooping about his own. He got the charger up again, and rode on straight, unarmed, through everything. The squadrons followed him down the fall. Horses plunged, blundered, recovered, fell; dervishes on the ground lay for the ham-stringing cut officers pistolled them in passing over, as one drops a stone into a bucket troopers thrust till lances broke, then cut ; everybody went on straight through everything.

And through everything clean out the other side they came, those that kept up or got up in time. The others were on the ground, in pieces by now; for the cruel swords shore through shoulder and thigh, and carved the dead into fillets. Twenty-four of these, and of those that came out over fifty, had felt sword or bullet or spear. Few horses stayed behind among the swords, but nearly one hundred and thirty were wounded. Lieutenant Robert Grenfell's troop came on a place with a jump out as well as a jump in; it lost officer, centre guide, and both flank guides, ten killed, and eleven wounded. Yet, when they burst straggling out, their only thought was to rally and go in again. "Rally, No. 2 !" yelled a sergeant, so mangled across the face that his body was a cascade of blood. "Fall out, sergeant, you're wounded," said the subaltern of his troop. " No, no, sir; fall in !" came the hoarse answer; and the man reeled in his saddle. "Fall in, No. 2, fall in !" And No. 2 fell in - four whole men out of twenty.

They chafed and stamped to go through them again, though the colonel wisely forbade them to face the pit anew. There were gnashings of teeth and howls of speechless rage - things half theatrical, half brutal, to tell of when blood has cooled, Also there are many and many deeds of self-abandoning heroism of which tale the half will never be told. Take only one.

Lieutenant de Montmorency missed his troop-sergeant, and rode back towards the slashers to look for him. He found the hacked body of Lieutenant Grenfell. He dismounted, and put it upon his horse, not seeing, in his heat, that life had drained out long since by a dozen channels. The horse bolted under the slackened muscles, and De Montmorency was left alone with his revolver before three thousand screaming dervishes. Captain Kenna and Corporal Swarbrick rode out, caught his horse, and brought it back. The three answered the fire of the three thousand, and got quietly back to their own line untouched.

From "With Kitchener to Khartum," by (G.W. Steevens.)