At midnight, the doors of the cell were thrown open again, and about twenty men, each wearing a shayba, were thrust into the place; practically there was no room for them, but they had to be driven in by some means. To make space for them, the gaolers resorted to their favourite device of throwing into the cell handfuls of |220| blazing straw and grass, and at the same time laying about the bare heads and shoulders of the prisoners with their whips. The scene must be imagined. Fauzi, seeing the fire falling on the heads of the prisoners, believed that he had really been sent to hell—but communed with himself in a dazed sort of way as to whether he was in hell or not. He appeared to call to memory all that he had ever read of the place of torment, and tried to compare the picture his brain had formed of it from the descriptions, with what he was experiencing, coming to the conclusion that he could not be in hell, as hell could not be so bad. At this stage I was able to get him to take notice of me, and we discussed hell and its torments until sunrise; but nothing could even now shake Fauzi’s opinion that hell could not be as bad as such a night in the Umm Hagar, and the worst he can wish any one is to pass such a night. To Youssef Mansour he wishes an eternity of them.[10] [10] This Mansour was formerly an officer in the Egyptian Army, who had surrendered with the garrison at El Obeid. After this surrender, the governor of the town—Mohammad Said Pasha—arranged with his old officers and black regiments to seize their arms, on a given signal, and to turn against the Mahdists. Mansour, who, as one of Said’s former subordinates, was in the plot, is thought to have betrayed it to the Mahdi. Said and his principal adherents were sent out of camp by Mohammad Ahmed, and quietly done away with; but Mansour became the favourite of the Mahdi, and commanded his artillery at the battle of Omdurman. It is also said that the Christian captives were circumcised on his representations, and that he suggested the imprisonment of Fauzi, lest, when the Government troops advanced, Fauzi should seize an opportunity of joining them. Yet Mansour is reputed to be coming to Cairo to claim his back pay and pension from the Egyptian Government. Among others who spent that memorable night in the Saier, were Ahmed and Bakheit Egail, Sadik Osman, Abou-el-Besher and others from Berber, arrested for assisting in the escape of Slatin; they were later transported to the convict station at Gebel Ragaf on the evidence of the guide Zecki, who |221| conducted Slatin from Omdurman to Berber. Zecki had been arrested with them on suspicion of complicity in the escape, and confessed that he had been engaged by Egail and others to bring away from Omdurman a man with “cat’s eyes,” but that he did not know who the man was.