At dawn the following morning, a dervish came to me, and crossing my right hand over the left at the wrists, palms downward, proceeded to bind them together with a rope made of palm fibre. When the ropes had, with a bit of wood used as a tourniquet, been drawn well into the flesh, water was poured over them. The agony as the ropes swelled was excruciating; they “bit” into the flesh, and even now I cannot look at the scars on my hands without a shudder, and almost experiencing again the same sensations as those of twelve years ago. With the perspiration rolling off me with the pain I was enduring, and no longer able to conceal that I was suffering, I was led forth to be the sport of the rabble. Made to stand up in the open space, bareheaded, with thousands around me, I believed the moment for my decapitation had come, and muttering a short prayer, I knelt down and bent my head, but was at once pulled to my feet again; the populace wanted their sport out of me first. Dervishes rushed at me prodding with spears and swords, and while this was going on, two men, one on each side of me, with the mouths of their ombeyehs placed against my ears, blew their loudest blasts. One powerful man in particular, with a large spear, gave me the idea that it was he who had been told to give the final |74| thrust, and when he had made a number of feints, I tried in successive ones to meet the thrust. One of the men guarding me, taking the chain attached to the ring round my neck, pulled me back each time, much to the delight of the assembled people. The ropes with which I was bound had now done their work; the swollen skin gave way, and the horrible tension was removed as the ropes sank into the flesh. If I had exhibited any feeling of pain before, I was now as indifferent to it as I was to the multitude around me. A messenger of the Khaleefa, Ali Gulla, asked me, “Have you heard the ombeyehs?”—a bit of the Khaleefa’s supposed pleasantry, when it was by his orders that the mouths of the instruments had been placed against my ears. On nodding my reply, Gulla continued, “The Khaleefa has sent me to tell you that he has decided to behead you,” to which I replied, “Go back to your Khaleefa, and tell him that neither he nor fifty Khaleefas may so much as remove a hair from my head without God’s permission. If God’s will it is, then my head shall be cut off, but it will not be because the Khaleefa wills it.” He went to the Khaleefa with this message, and returned saying, “The Khaleefa has changed his mind; your head is not to be cut off; you are to be crucified as was your prophet Aisse en Nebbi” (Jesus the Prophet); after saying which, he told my guards to take me back to the rukooba while preparations were made.