t of patches of various
colors. A great many had twigs of coral or pieces of ivory in their
pierced nostrils, lips and ears. The heads of the leaders were covered
with caps of the same texture as the wrappers, and the heads of common
warriors were bare, but not shaven like those of the Arabs in Egypt. On
the contrary, they were covered with enormous twisted locks, often
singed red with lime, with which they rubbed their tufts of hair for
protection against vermin. Their weapons were mainly spears, terrible
in their hands; but they did not lack Remington carbines which they had
captured in their victorious battles with the Egyptian army and after
the fall of Khartum. The sight of them was terrifying and their
behavior toward the caravan was hostile, for they suspected that it
consisted of Egyptian traders, whom the Mahdi, in the first moments
after the victory, prohibited from entering the Sudan.

Having surrounded the caravan, they pointed the spears with tumult and
menace at the breasts of the people, or aimed carbines at them. To this
hostile demonstration Idris answered with a shout that he and his
brother belonged to the Dongolese tribe, the same as that of the Mahdi,
and that they were conveying to the prophet two white children as
slaves; this alone restrained the savages from violence. In Stas, when
he came in contact with this dire reality, the spirit withered at the
thought of what awaited them on the ensuing days. Idris, also, who
previously had lived long years in a civilized community, had never
imagined anything like this. He was pleased when one night they were
surrounded by an armed detachment of the Emir Nur el-Tadhil and
conducted to Khartum.

Nur el-Tadhil, before he ran away to the Mahdi, was an Egyptian officer
in a negro regiment of the Khedive: so he was not so savage as the
other Mahdists and Idris could more easily make himself understood. But
here disappointment awaited him. He imagined that his arrival at the
Mahdi's camp with the white children would excite admiration, if only
on account of the extraordinary hardships and dangers of the journey.
He expected that the Mahdists would receive him with ardor, with open
arms, and lead him in triumph to the prophet, who would lavish gold and
praises upon him as a man who had not hesitated to expose his head in
order to serve his relative Fatma. In the meantime the Mahdists placed
spears at the breasts of members of the caravan, and Nur el-Tadhil
he