Here all the carriers and stores would be placed.

Then the fighting force would take the stockades, return for the transport, and enter Coomassie.

By this means there would be no risk of losing the precious stores and ammunition.
So determined was Colonel Willcocks to reach the forts, at all costs, that he gave orders that, if necessary, all soldiers killed should be left where they fell.
At four o'clock next morning the bugle sounded and, at the first streak of dawn, the column moved off.

The march was maintained under a heavy skirmishing fire but, to the general surprise, the fetish town of which Colonel Willcocks had spoken was found deserted.

Night was approaching, so that the plan proposed overnight could not be carried out.