I now received permission to sit outside during the day, and also to converse with the other prisoners. On my first entering the prison I had been warned, under threats of the lash, not to speak to any one, and the other prisoners, under the same threat, had been warned not to speak to me. They, as may be guessed, were most anxious to talk to me, and get some news from the outer world, but they were most guarded in their inquiries. There were many prisoners in the place, who, to curry favour with the gaoler or the Khaleefa, would have reported anything |83| in the way of a complaint against their treatment—a wish on the part of any one to escape, or an expressed hope that the Government would soon send troops to release us. Knowing that the Government had, for the time being, abandoned all thoughts of re-conquering the Soudan, I told my fellow-captives, when they spoke to me about a probable advance of the combined armies, that they must have patience until the hot weather passed. Had I told them what I knew, their despair could not have been concealed, and the truth would soon have reached the Khaleefa’s ears. A number of the prisoners were old soldiers of the Egyptian army, who had been taken at the fall of Khartoum and elsewhere, and they waited day after day, week after week, and year after year, still hoping that the Government for whom they had fought would send troops to release them; but, with the greater number, their release came only with death—at the gallows, at the Khaleefa’s shambles, or by disease and starvation. Imprisoned at one time with me was Mahmoud Wad Said, the Sheikh of the Dabaanieh tribe, who for years had kept the Abyssinians in check on the Egyptian frontier in the Eastern Soudan. At one time he was powerful, rich in cattle, slaves, and lands, but had been taken prisoner early in the Mahdist movement. When he had been imprisoned about three years and four months, he became paralyzed, and his release was ordered by the Khaleefa, who had so far relented as to allow of his dying with his family, then at Omdurman, patiently waiting for |84| his promised release. By their careful nursing and attention, the old man recovered, only, when the Khaleefa heard of it, to be thrown into prison again, where he passed another thirteen months, at the end of which time he was once more released, on condition that he would collect the remnants of his tribe, and attack his old enemies the Abyssinians, whom the Khaleefa was then fighting with. A few months later I heard that Mahmoud was dead, one report saying that he had died of a broken heart, and the other that he had been “removed” by order of the Khaleefa, for failing to bring together again a tribe, which the Khaleefa himself had almost exterminated.