this
commodity. An Indian, named Kamal ed Din, came forward amongst others;
he had come from India to join the Mahdi, passed himself off as a doctor
and proudly called himself "Physician-in-chief to the Khalifa." He had a
ready tongue, and soon acquired respect and wealth; he painted his beard
red with henna.[Q] He had immense powers of persuasion, and thereby
obtained a concession from Abdullah to make powder. He demanded that a
special laboratory should be built for him in Khartum, so as to be quite
out of observation, and he asked for a quantity of money for the
purchase of the chemicals he required.

The laboratory was built in the course of a month in the old corn store
in Khartum, and the work was taken in hand. The Indian declared that it
was most necessary to obtain phosphorus, and therefore he had all the
bones and skulls of the people who had been massacred in Khartum,
collected, and these he pounded in mortars into very fine flour, much to
the annoyance of people who objected to this desecration of the dead.

Every now and then he applied for more money from the beit el mal, which
was supplied to him at once, and now he began to work quite alone and in
secret; he put the bone flour in earthenware vessels, poured water on
it, and then sealed the vessels hermetically; he now declared that to
prepare the chemical substance only, another month was necessary. He
therefore stopped work and lived at his ease. At the expiration of the
month he secretly opened the vessels; no one had a notion what he was
going to do with the bone-paste, but he affirmed that so far everything
was most successful, and invited the head of the beit el mal, as well as
several emirs, to be present at the trial of the powder.

The emirs came and sat in a circle round a furnace which slaves were
blowing up with bellows; then the Indian produced the vessel, asked the
emirs to take some of the substance and throw it into the fire. This
they did, and it exploded with a loud report, which greatly astonished
the spectators, one of whom then and there, knelt down and offered up a
prayer of thanksgiving for the success of the invention.

The emirs accompanied Kamal ed Din to Omdurman in triumph, where he also
gave proof of the excellence of his powder in the presence of the
Khalifa. Abdullah was wild with joy, and presented the inventor with 200
dollars and a concubine. The Indian now returned to Khartum with profuse
promises that he would suppl