I was able, through these people, to collect the information I was sending off daily by spies. Abdallah-el-Mahassi, who had received some message from Major Fitton, asking about me, and also asking for all information procurable concerning the arms and ammunition possessed by the dervishes, sent to me the spy Worrak, who had been released from prison, for any information I could give. Worrak, doubtless looking forward to a reward, decided upon delivering my messages himself. He was to be accompanied by two others; so, besides giving him notes with the numbers of rifles, etc., issued to the troops, and a last warning about the mines near Halfeyeh, I gave the information verbally to the three, so that, in the event of it being found necessary to destroy the papers, the verbal messages would get through. Worrak and his companions left, but were intercepted by Abd-el-Baagi’s scouts. Inflating their water-skins, they took to the river under a shower of bullets. Worrak must have been killed or drowned, |262| as he was not seen again; but the two others reached the British lines, delivered the messages, and said that they would be confirmed by Worrak, who they then thought must have been carried by the current to the east bank of the Nile. These were the last messengers I actually sent off. One of the Saier gaolers had worked himself into a state of frenzied excitement in describing, for the edification of the prisoners—and mine in particular, the coming destruction of the infidels. He gloated over the time when the principal officers—their eyes gouged out to prevent their looking upon the benign face of his master, would be brought into the Saier, and there baited for the amusement of the populace. How little the Sirdar thought, on that September evening, that one of the gaolers grovelling at his feet had, but a few days previously, looked forward to the time when he, blinded and shackled, would be lashed round the place, and, with the rest of my “brothers,” spend the nights in the “Umm Hagar.” This gaoler, in his mad enthusiasm, rushed at me, and nearly succeeded in gouging out my left eye. There was a struggle, and getting up almost breathless, and certainly driven to desperation, I turned stupidly round, and prophesied, for his edification this time, that the destruction he had predicted for my “brothers” was the destruction which was to fall upon Mahdieh. [Illustration: SHEREEF, THE “FALSE FOURTH KHALEEFA.”]