The dull,
dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the
only colours, save at one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that
a land-slip of snow-white stones had shot itself across a low foot-hill.
But as the traveller approached he saw, with a thrill, that these were
no stones, but the bleaching bones of a slaughtered army. With its dull
tints, its gnarled, viprous bushes, its arid, barren soil, and this
death streak trailed across it, it was indeed a nightmare country.
Some eight or ten miles inland the rolling plain curved upwards with a
steeper slope until it ran into a line of red basaltic rock which
zigzagged from north to south, heaping itself up at one point into a
fantastic knoll. On the summit of this there stood upon that March
morning three Arab chieftains--the Sheik Kadra of the Hadendowas, Moussa
Wad Aburhegel, who led the Berber dervishes, and Hamid Wad Hussein, who
had come northward with his fighting men from the land of the Baggaras.
They had all three just risen from their praying-carpets, and were
peering out, with fierce, high-nosed faces thrust forwards, at the
stretch of country revealed by the spreading dawn.
The red rim of the sun was pushing itself now above the distant sea, and
the whole coast-line stood out brilliantly yellow against the rich deep
blue beyond.
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