Before leaving Medishe the Grenadiers razed the forts to the ground with gun cotton. The fort at Jidali, however, was less easy to dispose of, and successfully resisted several attempts to blow it up. The stone walls were nine feet thick, solidly built, and it would have required heavy artillery to have made much impression upon it. The roof, the weakest part of the structure, successfully withstood the Stokes bombs aimed at it by the Camel Corps. Jidali Fort is similar to all other forts built by the Mullah. Inside it is a perfect rabbit warren among which it would have been highly dangerous to the throwers themselves had hand-grenades been used. In one of the forts at Medishe Cross found a particularly gruesome sight, and typical of the methods of the Mad Mullah. At the end of a rope, suspended from the roof over a slow fire, hung by the waist, were the remains of a dervish who had thus been done to death for some petty crime or neglect of duty. Shortly after Cross's return Ibrahim's wife arrived. On learning of her husband's defection the dervishes had stripped and beaten her, but sighting the planes, had abandoned her to die. She was followed by a stream of dervish women and children who stated that the men refused to give them food, and had ordered them to shift for themselves. Amongst them were many slave women dragging at their ankles heavy chains with weights attached. They were soon set free, and though our commissariat arrangements were strained to breaking point we did the best we could for them, and all the women were cared for. Meanwhile on the 2nd of February the King's African Rifles arrived at Jidali from Baran. This latter fort had put up a stiff fight. Finding that the loopholes of the fort restricted the line of fire to the front, and did not allow for angle fire, the officer commanding had advanced on each side at an angle, suffering no serious casualties. For two days the beleaguered garrison held out under a heavy fire from Stokes guns, which dropped their bombs on the roof, though making no impression whatever. All loopholes, and the parapets, were commanded by the K.A.R. machine guns. Finding that the firing from the fort had weakened a party was pushed up to the door, against which a case of gun cotton was exploded, without effect. At last, apparently only one of the defenders was left alive, and the besiegers, who had drawn in, demanded his surrender, assuring him his life was safe. "I shall surrender," he answered. "Then throw your rifle and belt over the walls," he was ordered. The dervish complied, but as an askari ran up to collect it, seized another rifle and shot the soldier through the back. And that was the end of Baran. Clean fighters, enraged by this act of treachery, and as one man, the K.A.R. sprang to their feet, and no door built by the hand of man could deny them their revenge.