I left him firmly impressed with the idea, and this impression was only intensified months later when a number of his chief men were ordered back to Omdurman and thrown into prison with me, that had Nejoumi had any one in whom he could repose his confidence and absolute trust in such a delicate matter, he would have sent in his submission to the Government, and laying hands upon the Emirs sent by the Khaleefa to spy upon him—for he was then under suspicion—would have led his army as “friendlies” to Wadi Halfa, and have asked assistance to enable him to turn the tables on the Khaleefa. What further leads me to make such a bold assertion or statement is that the Emirs, or chief men, referred to already as having |66| been thrown into prison with me at Omdurman, gave me, as their fellow-captive, first their sympathy, and then their complete confidence. I learned from them the fate of those of Saleh’s caravan whom I had left alive at Dongola. They had, they told me, been executed in batches of varying numbers at intervals of some days, Elias my clerk being the last to be executed, and he not being executed until about two months after my departure from Dongola. Nejoumi, for reasons which will be at once seen, kept him alive to the last, and then doubtless only gave the order for his execution when, despairing of my being sent back to him, he gave way to the importunities of the other Emirs anxious to see the last of Saleh’s people executed. From what they confided to me, there could not be the slightest doubt that a conviction of the imposture of the Mahdi’s successor was growing and spreading amongst the Mahdists; but the system of espionage instituted by the Khaleefa nipped in the bud any outward show of it. There can be also no doubt that these confidants of Nejoumi had, in some way, compromised themselves when speaking in the presence of some of the Khaleefa’s agents, and that Nejoumi himself had only not been ordered back with them because of his popularity and the Khaleefa’s fear and jealousy of him. There was no one whom Nejoumi, or, for the matter of that, any one—not even excepting the Khaleefa himself, might implicitly trust in the Soudan. The man to whom you gave your innermost confidences might be friend or foe, and as all changed face as rapidly and constantly as |67| circumstances dictated, it would be safe to say that no one in the Soudan for a single moment trusted any one else. Whatever Nejoumi’s convictions may have been in the earlier days of the Mahdist movement, it is certain that they underwent a great change. Indeed, his advance against the Egyptian Army at Toski, when he was killed, was, as I was told by some of his people imprisoned with me after their return, only undertaken when he was goaded to it by the reproaches of the Khaleefa, accusing him of cowardice and treachery, accompanied with threats of recalling him to Omdurman—and Nejoumi knew well what this implied.