Khartum was at an end, the Mahdi himself gave
orders that the survivors should be spared, but the wild fury of these
fanatical Arabs had been satiated at the cost of 10,000 lives; the
streets were filled with headless corpses, which were left unburied
until the plunder had been distributed.

The whole of Khartum was now divided up amongst hundreds of emirs and
their mukuddums. Every emir planted his flag in the midst of the quarter
captured by his men, and then the work of collecting the survivors was
begun. Ahmed Wad Suleiman ordered all free women and slaves to be
brought to the beit el mal; here the young and good-looking fair women
were locked up in a separate enclosure, the good-looking, unmarried
Sudanese girls in another zariba, and in a third were placed black slave
girls, suitable as concubines.

It is deplorable to think that at such a time were found certain of the
well-known townsmen of Khartum who assisted the Dervishes to lay hands
on all the prettiest girls in Khartum; through their intermediary, many
of the women who had cut off their hair, and in other ways concealed
their beauty and sex by disguising themselves as men, fell into the
hands of the Ansar.

May God's curse fall on those wicked traitors who delivered up these
unfortunates in order to gain favour with the Mahdi! What sufferings
these miserable creatures underwent when they lay huddled together like
cattle in a pen, awaiting their cruel fate! Many of them were still in
their silken robes, all bespattered with the blood of their husbands and
children, and there they lay, awaiting their turn to become the wives of
those who had murdered their husbands and their offspring!

The first selection was, of course, made for the Mahdi, who took for
himself all girls of five years of age and upwards, who, in a few years'
time, he would take to his harem; then came the turn of the three
Khalifas, whose selections were made especially under the direction of
Wad Suleiman; then followed the emirs, each in the order of his rank,
and one by one they made their choice of these wretched women. Those
that were left were distributed amongst the Ansar. Then were openly
enacted sights which would have melted hearts of stone. The weeping and
lamentation of the white women, as they prayed and besought the pity of
their masters, the rough jeering and foul replies of these monsters, it
is all too horrible to relate.

The old unmarried women were given a few rags