We were not at that time altogether without news; papers published in Egypt were constantly arriving, brought by the Khaleefa’s spies, who passed regularly backwards and forwards between Omdurman and Cairo, keeping up communications between the Khaleefa and some of the more fanatical Mohammedans resident at the capital. Since my return I have inquired as to an incident which happened on the frontier in connection with the army some years ago. I shall only relate what we heard, and as given out by the Khaleefa and his Emirs. All the English officers, according to the report received, had been dismissed, and had left with the Sirdar. The English soldiers had also been removed from Egypt; so the Khaleefa was jubilant, and looked forward to the near future when the Egyptian troops would attempt to attack him, and when not a man of them was to be left alive. I was to have been a witness of the great battles when the angels of Allah were to fight with the believers, and assist the Ansar to utterly exterminate the Turks. While this was still the topic of conversation, another messenger arrived to say that the trouble had been arranged; the English officers and troops were not leaving, and as the Khaleefa’s hopes fell, ours rose. |98| Of all the people whom the Mahdi himself appointed to posts, two, and, I believe, two only, retained their positions up to the time of the taking of Omdurman. One was Khaleel Hassanein, the director of the arsenal, and the other Idris es Saier, the gaoler. Idris—for he is still living—is a man of the Gawaamah tribe, a tribe that the first missionary will have some little trouble with, unless he is prepared to revise one of the Ten Commandments out of the Pentateuch altogether, as the following story connected with my gaoler’s first appearance in the world may indicate. Idris’s mother had a sister who, tired of single blessedness, proposed to, and was accepted by, a swain of the tribe who was a constant visitor to their hut. Idris’s mother had also the intention of proposing to the same man, and having told her sister this, the sister popped the question first, was accepted, and then Idris’s mother upbraided her after the manner of her tribe, which evidently consisted more of actions than of words. When the happy swain put in his next appearance, Idris’s mother, with Idris in her arms, asked him how he dare go against the custom of her section of the tribe, and accept in marriage a girl who had had no children, while she had already had two! “Saier” in the Gawaamah language means “custom” and “customary,” and Idris was named Idris es Saier when, in after years, a satisfactory explanation could not be found for his not boasting a father. Idris’s mother afterwards married and ruled, with her legitimate son, Saier’s family. When appointed as gaoler by the Mahdi, his prison was |99| called “El-Beit-es-Saier” (the house of Saier), which later was contracted to “Saier,” and the name eventually