curses on the Mahdi and Khaleefa, and the faint glow from the charcoal embers which only served to outline the form of the old woman as some horrid spectre as she stood up and prophesied my death, completely unnerved me. If there was one night in my life upon which I required a few hours’ rest it was on this—the last, as I knew, before my entering Omdurman. But no sleep came to my eyes that night. Soon after the woman left, a sound of dull thuds, a shriek, a moan, and then silence told its own tale. She had been battered to death with curses on the Mahdi on her lips. The night was one long, horrible, wakening nightmare, but all was real and not a fantasy of the brain. How I longed for the dawn! and how impatiently I waited for it! For the first time I had fears for my reason. The sensation I felt was as if a cord had been slipped round my brain, and was gradually but surely tightening. But enough of this; it is not necessary to interlard my experiences with painful mental sensations, real as they were. It was with some little difficulty that I shuffled my |70| way to the camels next morning, to mount and get away on our last stage of the journey to Omdurman. We reached the town at noon, on Thursday, May 5, and passed in almost unnoticed until we reached the market-place, when the news having spread like wildfire, we were soon surrounded by thousands of people, and it was with the greatest difficulty we fought our way to the open praying-ground adjoining the burial-place of the Mahdi. (The tomb had not then been built.) Here I was placed in the shade of the rukooba. (The rukooba is a light structure of poles supporting a roof of matting and palm branches, in the shade of which the people rest during the heat of the day.) Two of my guards went off to deliver Wad Nejoumi’s despatches to the Khaleefa, and also to announce my arrival. Shortly afterwards, Nur Angara, Slatin, Mohammad Taher, and the chief Kadi, with others, came to question me. Slatin addressed a few words to me in English, but not understanding him, I asked him to speak in German, upon which he said in an undertone, “Be polite; tell them you have come to join the Mahdieh in order to embrace the Mahdi’s religion; do not address me.” Nur Angara, who put the majority of the questions, asked, “Why have you come to Omdurman?” I hesitated a little before replying, but did not hesitate long enough to allow my European blood to cool sufficiently to reply “politely” to the imperious black confronting me. I told him, “Because I could not help myself; when I left Wadi Halfa it was to go and trade and not fight, |71| but your people have taken me prisoner, and sent me here; why do you ask me that question?” Slatin at this moved behind the other Emirs, and I believe made some attempt to make me understand that I should speak differently to them. My helplessness was galling to me; there was not a man there whom, pulled down as I was, I could not with sheer strength have crushed the life out of.