It was then ascertained that the Mullah was still unaccounted for. He had slipped off to one side with three or four followers, and had arrived at a well. This was found to be almost dry, but sufficient water was obtained by the party to give the broken and tired old man, and his pony, a drink. He lay down on the desert to rest, whilst the few survivors of his bodyguard pushed on to find water. On their return the Mullah had gone. Where? No one knows! Better that he had remained alive, and had pushed far South to join his brother Khalifa, and so to relate at first hand the tale of his own defeat, ruin, and utter degradation. For now the few surviving men who still believe in him will say, should he have perished in the desert, that Allah at the last sent angels to lift him up and bear him away to Paradise. The men who carried back the water came into the British lines and surrendered, knowing that the game was up. Knowing, as all men who have knowledge of Somaliland know, that the Mad Mullah's career of cruelty, rapine and crime was at last at an end. Garabghari had fallen to a naval landing party from H.M.S. _Odin_. The friendlies had entered Tale. Gibb, led by the Mullah's favourite son, went round the forts and ordered the broken dervishes out. They came without firing a shot, marvelling that they, who had never shown mercy nor spared a life, should be so humanely treated. The Camel Corps, leading their tired animals, returned on foot to Hudin. On the 24th February the last air-force load was cleared from El-dur-Elan on the return journey to Berbera, and the expedition was over. Somals of the West hearing, by the wonderful native system of communication, that the Mullah was broken, vied with one another in their expressions of loyalty to the Government. A man who attempted to murder an official in 1916 near Zeila, came in from Abyssinia and surrendered for fear that the terrible bird-men should come to find him. British prestige in Somaliland had been entirely restored and the country, after twenty years of unrest, is at last at peace. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS, WATERLOO HOUSE, THORNTON STREET, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sun, Sand and Somals, by H. Rayne