Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/101

Rh accompany Sir Charles Wilson on his voyage to Khartoum. Her sons, the whole of her family (or tribe), had been killed by the Khaleefa's order, and, as far as she knew, she was the only one left. Taking no notice of my guards, who had come in, attracted by the wailing and talking, she cursed the Mahdi, and every thing and every one connected with him. The wailings of the poor creature, her pinched, sunken cheeks, her glistening eyes, her skinny, hooked fingers, her vehement curses on the Mahdi and Khaleefa, and the faint glow from the charcoal embers which only served to outline the form of the old woman as some horrid spectre as she stood up and prophesied my death, completely unnerved me. If there was one night in my life upon which I required a few hours' rest it was on this — the last, as I] knew, before my entering Omdurman. But no sleep came to my eyes that night. Soon after the woman left, a sound of dull thuds, a shriek, a moan, and then silence told its own tale. She had been battered to death with curses on the Mahdi on her lips:

The night was one long, horrible, wakening nightmare, but all was real and not a fantasy of the brain: How I longed for the dawn! and how impatiently I waited for it! For the first time I had fears for my reason. "The sensation I felt was as if a cord had been slipped round my brain, and was gradually but surely tightening. But enough of this; it is not necessary to interlard my experiences with painful mental sensations, real as they were.

It was with some little difficulty that I shuffled my