The Nile is the very life and soul of the Egyptian fellah, and the captives of the Kings of Assyria, who sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept, could not have longed more passionately for their Jewish homes than did these poor outcasts to see once more their native villages and taste "the sweet waters of the Nile." "If I can but escape and reach those distant hills," they told themselves, "then I can easily walk over them. There may still be a few miles of desert sand to cross, but it will surely at length bring me once again to the great beloved river, our Father Nile." This remark has been made to the writer times without number when visiting the convict gangs at work in the course of his official duties. But one and all of the hapless wretches reckoned without the far-stretching, arid sands or the prowling nomads, ever on the watch for fugitives. One hot, still, starlight night, towards the end of the seventh year of his penal servitude, whilst the sentry was snugly rolled up in his blanket, Mahkmoud slipped overboard from the hulk and swam shorewards. He had seen the sharks cruising slowly round the hulk for many a long day, but, as he said in after years when telling the story of his escape, "Better become food for sharks than endure a living death." As luck would have it, he reached the beach safely, and after wandering towards the distant hills all that day and night he was overcome with hunger and thirst and, resigning himself to his fate, lay down under the sparse shadow of a thorn-bush to die. But Providence decreed otherwise. He was found by a party of raiding Baggara horsemen, who carried him off to Adharama, the head-quarters of the celebrated Dervish Emir, Osman Digna. For the next two years Mahkmoud was a household slave in Osman Digna's house. While he was there the Khalifa sent for his Governor of the Eastern Sudan, and Mahkmoud accompanied his master. So once more, after nine long years, he again set eyes on the River Nile. Even now it was almost impossible to escape, for the wild Arab tribes who at this time held sway over the country from Sarras to Fashoda loathed and despised the Egyptian fellah, and no one would help him. After three more years of bondage, however, spent between the Eastern Sudan and Omdurman, Mahkmoud escaped, joined a caravan which was bringing gum and ostrich feathers to the Egyptian frontier, and at last found himself on the Egyptian Nile at Assouan. * * * * * By this time "the murder," as it was generally referred to, had almost been forgotten by the villagers. If it was mentioned at all it was as an historical event, generally to fix the date of some other event which had occurred before or since.