cipal emirs were uneducated and ignorant
savages. It was God's will that this Idris should fall later on in the
battle of Argin in 1889, fighting against Wodehouse Pasha.

A few days after this conversation, my original master, Abdullah Wad en
Nur, arrived from Jebel Dair to obtain the Mahdi's instructions as to
the future conduct of the war. The Mahdi presented him with a very good
horse. Khalifa Abdullah asked him what he intended to do with me, and
advised him that when he again went to the Nuba country he should take
me with him and put me in the front so that the Nubas might kill me.
Sheikh Idris told me this, and Khalil Hassanein, Roversi's old clerk,
who had obtained a good place in the beit el mal, brought me three
dollars for the journey. I was delighted with the idea of a change, for
I could not have been worse off than I was at Rahad.

At first I was handed over to a fiki, who bothered me with his useless
and nonsensical talk; his name was Mahmud, and he came from Tuti Island,
near Khartum; he joined the Mahdi after Hicks's defeat, and brought a
donkey and a few dollars with him. The first thing he did was to sell
his donkey and purchase a concubine, but in two days the latter purchase
ran away, so he lost both his donkey and his money. He then joined the
Khalifa Abdullah, who recommended him to Idris as a good man to instruct
me in the right way; but instead of convincing me of the Mahdi's
divinity, I very soon convinced him of the reverse, and it was by no
means difficult to do so; the fiki used frequently to go to the beit el
mal to try and get a concubine, but no one took the smallest notice of
him. On the other hand he used constantly to see the numerous concubines
of Idris, who was rich, while he was but a poor man. From this I made
him understand that the chiefs of Mahdieh sought only how they could
best gain riches and honour at the expense of their poorer brethren.
Soon afterwards he fell sick at Rahad, and there was no one to look
after him or care for him; I knew that in his heart he had had quite
enough of the Mahdi, but he was ashamed to acknowledge it before me. One
night, not hearing his voice in the miserable hut which had been given
to him, I looked in and found him lying stretched out dead on the
ground. I felt sorry for the poor creature who had died away from his
own home.

Another reason which made me glad to go away to Dair, was that I was
ill and suffering much from my old complaint,