rrible fatigue. By far our worst enemy was sleep; it is quite
impossible for me to describe the fearful attacks this tyrannical foe
made upon us. We tried every means in our power to keep awake; we
shouted and talked loudly to each other; we tried to startle ourselves
by giving a sudden jerk; we pinched ourselves till the blood ran down,
but our eyelids weighed down like balls of lead, and it required a
fearful effort to keep them open. "Ma tenamu" ("Don't sleep"), Ahmed
kept repeating, "or you will fall off and break your leg."

But it was all no good; the conversation would flag, and silence follow.
The camels seemed to know their riders were asleep, and instinctively
fell into slower pace; the head kept nodding, until it sunk upon the
chest; with a sudden start, the equilibrium which had been almost lost
would be recovered, and then sleep vanished.

At times we would shout out to one another words of encouragement, then
we would whip up our camels and on again, up and down, through sandy
plains and rocky gorges, where the echoes seemed to repeat themselves a
hundred times. Our destination was Murat, where we remembered Gordon had
given orders for a well to be dug, but it had never been done.

Ahmed said that we should be at Murat on the morning of the 7th of
December. He told us how the Dervishes had sometimes pursued fugitives
as far as this, and not long ago had killed one near here. Our poor
camels were now dragging their weary limbs very slowly; the whip was now
quite useless, as it had not the smallest effect in increasing their
pace. Besides, it was pain to me to beat the good creatures that had
helped us to escape. We were so utterly fatigued that it was with the
greatest difficulty we succeeded in keeping on our camels at all;
hunger, sleeplessness, and absolute lassitude had completely conquered
us, and our wounds pained and irritated us; but the feeling that we were
almost safe was as balm to both mind and body.

Just before sunset we turned down the khor which leads to Murat; the
fort covering the wells was visible on the hills, surmounted by the red
flag with the white crescent and star in the centre. "Ahmed," I cried,
"greet the flag of freedom!" and our courageous deliverer seized his gun
and fired shot after shot into the air, to announce our arrival to the
Egyptian garrison. The echo of these shots resounded again and again in
the deep valleys, as if joining with us in our joy at deliverance from
t