Maybe, with a European, chloroform might have been necessary for the extraction of the bullet in the arm, but with a Soudanese—have I not already said that a dervish can continue leaping and stabbing with half a dozen severe wounds in his body? A dervish can and will kill at the moment when the ventricles of his heart make their last contraction. Bodily pain, as we understand it, is unknown to them. Many a time have I applied, and seen applied, red-hot charcoal to sores, with the patients calmly looking on. With my present patients, after dabbing a little carbolic acid over the wounds, I asked what news they had brought. Yacoub, they said, was killed; almost all the faithful were killed or wounded; the Khaleefa himself was running back to town, but they had outstripped him. While still questioning them, Idris es Saier told me that the Muslimanieh who had been |273| taken out to fight had made their way back to town, and were rummaging for European clothes in which to array themselves to receive the troops when they arrived. [Illustration: THE FLAG OF KHALEEFA SHEREEF. Line 1. “In the Name of God, the most Compassionate and Merciful.” Line 2. “Thou Living, Thou Existing and most Glorious Source of generosity.” Line 3. “There is no God but God. Mohammad is the messenger of God.” Line 4. “Mohammad El Mahdi is the Khaleefa of the messenger of God.”] I should here take up the tales of those who were fighting in the dervish lines in order to present a complete narrative. At sunrise on September 2, Sheikh ed Din determined on attacking with his army of riflemen and cavalry, leaving Yacoub, with whom was his father, the Khaleefa, as a reserve. The shells which fell amongst his men did not knock them over or mow them down in lanes, they “blew a hundred men and horses high into the air”; then, when the rifle fire struck them, it “rolled them about like little stones.” The carnage was so frightful that Sheikh ed Din himself led the way to the shelter in a khor to the west of Surgham hill.