(MULAZIM WALL, LEFT. OSMAN DIGNA'S HOUSE, RIGHT.)] [Illustration: EFFECT OF SHELL FIRE UPON WALL (MULAZIM ENCLOSURE).] We passed the big rectangular stone wall enclosing the Khalifa's special quarters. Within its area were his Mulazimin or body-guards' quarters, his granaries, treasuries, arsenal, the Mahdi's tomb, and the great praying square, misnamed the Mosque. Except the tomb, the Khalifa's and his sons' houses, the town was void of buildings of any style or finish. I admit the great stone wall was of good masonry, and so was the well-finished praying-square wall. The Sirdar and party were frequently shot at, particularly on nearing the Khalifa's quarters. Abdullah slipped out with his treasures as the Sirdar arrived at his gate. It was long after sunset and dark when, with difficulty, the prison was reached, and Charles Neufeld brought out of his loathsome den, where he had spent eleven years in chains. He looked well, notwithstanding his long and irksome captivity, feeling, as he said, like a man drunk with new wine, on account of his release. That night I helped to relieve him from his fetters, freeing the limbs from the heavy bar and chains. Tired, worn out, without water or food, the Sirdar and his staff, as well as many more of us, were glad to escape out of Omdurman back to where the British camp was pitched in the northern outskirts. There I and others lay down and fell asleep on the bare desert, hoping to wake and find that our servants and baggage had turned up. Two of my colleagues had fared worse than I that day. Colonel F. Rhodes, of the _Times_, had been shot in the shoulder within the zereba early in the fight, and the Hon. Hubert Howard, of the _New York Herald_, was killed almost under my eyes, in the paved courtyard of the Khalifa, opposite the Mahdi's tomb. Such is the hasty record of as exciting and interesting a battle and a day's campaigning as it ever fell to mortal man to witness. Neither in my experience nor in my reading can I recall so strange and picturesque a series of incidents happening within the brief period of twelve hours. CHAPTER XII. STORIES OF THE BATTLE--OMDURMAN.