and almost
all his Arabs were killed. El Merhdi's head was sent to Omdurman, where
it was exposed for a long time on the gallows, and was at last thrown
into the pit in which lay the heads of Bishir and those who had been
slain with him.

Thus one by one did the Khalifa's enemies become subdued. The vengeance
wreaked on the unfortunate Gehena tribe by the Dervishes is almost
beyond description. The property of the survivors was seized, men,
women, and children were dragged off to Omdurman, and there, naked and
helpless, they were left to starve on the river bank. One would see
wretched mothers of three or four children, who looked just like
skeletons, miserably abandoned in a place utterly unknown, and subject
to the insults and indignities of the proud and cruel Dervishes. Numbers
of them, especially children, died of starvation, whilst those who still
had sufficient strength would wander about begging their bread; if any
one had money enough he would buy a waterskin, and would go half a mile
to the river, fill it, carry it back and sell it in the market for a
quarter of a piastre; thus they eked out a miserable existence. Men who
but lately had ridden on good horses and had owned hundreds of camels
were reduced to this mode of gaining their livelihood, whilst poor women
could be seen, with babies at their breasts, toiling under the heavy
weight of a filled waterskin towards the market-place; then they had no
rest, for in the evening they had to grind the dhurra and make a sort of
pap which the poor little mouths of their infants could hardly
masticate; they had but one meal in the twenty-four hours.

It was impossible not to be struck by the mother's love of these poor
people for their offspring, and at the same time to feel bitterly
incensed against the Khalifa and his cruel followers who could thus
intentionally inflict on people of their own race such untold cruelties.
Thousands of Gehena camels were brought to Omdurman and sold at low
prices; thus was the wealth of their country utterly destroyed, and now
the terrible famine, which was so soon to fall upon the land, was close
at hand.

In the meantime Abdullah was considering with his advisers the
desirability of permitting war to break out with Abyssinia. The great
power of which he now felt himself possessed inclined him to war, and of
course the majority of his emirs, whose sole desire was to pander to his
will, agreed with him. Then news reached Yunis that