mbering the prophecy that their liberator
should not perish till he had conquered the earth. Mohammed, however,
grew worse. Presently those who attended him could doubt no longer that
he was attacked by typhus fever. The Khalifa Abdullah watched by his
couch continually. On the sixth day the inhabitants and the soldiers
were informed of the serious nature of their ruler's illness, and public
prayers were offered by all classes for his recovery. On the seventh
day it was evident that he was dying. All those who had shared his
fortunes--the Khalifas he had appointed, the chief priests of the
religion he had reformed, the leaders of the armies who had followed him
to victory, and his own family whom he had hallowed--crowded the small
room. For some hours he lay unconscious or in delirium, but as the end
approached he rallied a little, and, collecting his faculties by a great
effort, declared his faithful follower and friend the Khalifa Abdullah
his successor, and adjured the rest to show him honour. 'He is of me,
and I am of him; as you have obeyed me, so you should deal with him. May
God have mercy upon me!' [Slatin, FIRE AND SWORD.] Then he immediately
expired.

Grief and dismay filled the city. In spite of the emphatic prohibition
by law of all loud lamentations, the sound of 'weeping and wailing arose
from almost every house.' The whole people, deprived at once of their
acknowledged sovereign and spiritual guide, were shocked and affrighted.
Only the Mahdi's wives, if we may credit Slatin, 'rejoiced secretly in
their hearts at the death of their husband and master,' and, since they
were henceforth to be doomed to an enforced and inviolable chastity,
the cause of their satisfaction is as obscure as its manifestation
was unnatural. The body of the Mahdi, wrapped in linen, was reverently
interred in a deep grave dug in the floor of the room in which he had
died, nor was it disturbed until after the capture of Omdurman by the
British forces in 1898, when by the orders of Sir H. Kitchener the
sepulchre was opened and the corpse exhumed.

The Khalifa Abdullah had been declared by the Mahdi's latest breath his
successor. He determined to have the choice ratified once for all by the
popular vote. Hurrying to the pulpit in the courtyard of the mosque, he
addressed the assembled multitude in a voice which trembled with intense
excitement and emotion. His oratory, his reputation as a warrior, and
the Mahdi's expressed desire aro