After being officially handed over to the Governor of Khartoum, the question arose as to my quarters. I was offered quarters in his house, but I had already experienced life amongst his Baggara bodyguard, and begged hard to be allowed to live in the same place with Nahoum Abbajee and Sirri—the former telegraph-clerk at Berber, with whom I was to work. We were given the house of Ghattas, an old slave-dealer, to live in. It was one of the best houses left standing in Khartoum, and boasted an upper floor, which was taken possession of by Nahoum Abbajee as head of what I might call the gold syndicate, while Sirri and I shared the ground floor. In the East the West is reversed; you climb to the garret with your rising fortunes, and descend with them, as they fall, to the lower floors. Instead of having Saier or Baggara guards to watch me, Awwad gave me some slaves from the Beit-el-Mal as guardians, and they had, in addition to watching me, to perform the household duties; in fact, they were my servants. After the evening prayers, Awwad called together the employés of the arsenal and my guards, and explained to them that I was no longer a Saier prisoner; that my chains were left on only to prevent the Government people taking me; that I was “beloved” of the Khaleefa, and was to be treated as his friend, and that if any one treated me differently, he would be sent to |231| take my place in the Saier. Awwad then taking me aside under the pretence of giving me instructions from the Khaleefa, said, “I am your friend; do not be afraid; if you cannot find gold and silver, tell me of anything else you can do, and I will see that the work is given to you, so that you may not be sent back to the Saier.” As Awwad was then a perfect stranger to me, I at first had suspicions in my mind as to the genuineness of his friendship; but he was a Jaalin, and I trusted him. We were told to get to work at once with the extraction of the precious metals. As the engineer, I had to design and superintend the construction of the furnaces to be made by Hassan Fahraani (the potter), who also supplied the crucibles. Our first furnace crumbled to pieces after being started, and a stronger one had to be made. Then the crucibles gave out. We did all we could to coax gold and silver out of those stones, and obtained some extraordinary results. We added earth, common salt, saltpetre, oxide of lead—anything and everything to the split stones in the crucibles. Sometimes we found the crucible and its contents fused together. The only thing we actually found which gave an idea that we were working for metals was a small shiny black ball, very much resembling a black pearl, and this Hamadan at once took possession of and carried off to Abdullahi, telling him that it only required time for us to succeed. Hamadan, being our chief, was much interested in the work, and he was doubtless looking forward to the day when part of the contents of the crucibles would find its way to him. |232|