"I wouldn't give much for your trust, then," returned Simkin bitterly, as well as contemptuously, for he had given way to despair. "You Blue Lights and Christians think yourselves so much better than everybody else, because you make so much talk about prayin' an' singin', an' doin' your duty, an' servin' God, an' submitting. It's all hypocrisy." "Don't you believe that Sergeant Hardy is a good soldier?" asked Stevenson. "Of course I do," replied Simkin, in some surprise at the question. "An' _he_ doesn't think much of himself, does he?" continued the marine. "Certainly not. He's one o' the kindest an' humblest men in the regiment, as I have good reason to know." "Yet he frequently talks to us of attendin' to our duty, an' doin' credit to the British Flag, an' faithfully serving the Queen. If this is praiseworthy in the sergeant, why should the talk of duty an' service an' honour to God be hypocrisy in the Christian? Does it not seem strange that we Blue Lights--who have discovered ourselves to be much worse than we thought ourselves, an' gladly accept Jesus as our Saviour from sin--should be charged with thinkin' ourselves `_better_ than other people'!" "Come now," cried Jack Molloy, seating himself on the floor, and leaning his back against the wall; "it do seem to me, as you putt it, Stevenson, that the charge ought to be all the other way; for we, who make no purfession of religion at all, thinks ourselves so far righteous that we've got no need of a Saviour. Suppose, now, as we've got to as low a state o' the dumps as men can well come to, we all sits down in a row an' have a palaver about this matter--Parson Stevenson bein' the chief spokesman." They all readily agreed to this proposal. Indeed, in the circumstances, any proposal that offered the faintest hope of diverting their minds from present trouble would have been welcome to them at that moment. The marine was nothing loath to fall in with the fancy of his irrepressible comrade, but we do not propose to follow them in the talk that ensued. We will rather turn at once to those events which affected more immediately the fortunes of the captives. On the morning after their arrival in the city there was assembled in the principal square a considerable concourse of Soudan warriors. They stood chatting together in various groups in front of a public building, as if awaiting some chief or great man, whose richly caparisoned steed stood in front of the main entrance, with its out-runner standing before it.