Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/134

96 Occasionally, when the uproar was greater than usual, the guards would open the door, and, standing in the doorway, lash at the heads of the prisoners with their hide whips. Always when this occurred death claimed its five or six victims, crushed and trampled to death. I wish I might say that I had drawn upon my imagination for what is given above; I can but assure you that it gives but the very faintest idea of what really occurred.

Until we had been set to make bricks and build a wall round our prison, our life, in comparison with what it was later, was I might say endurable. By baksheeshing the guards, we were allowed to go down to the river during the day almost as often as we pleased; and these excursions, taken presumably for the purpose of ablution and drinking, gave us many opportunities of conversing with the townspeople. This life 1 enjoyed but for a few months. A large number of prisoners succeeded in escaping. Consequently the digging of a well for infiltration water to supply the prisoners, and the building of a wall round the prison were ordered by the Khaleefa to be completed as rapidly as possible.

The prisoners who escaped were mainly slaves, and as most slaves were chained to prevent their running away from their owners — hundreds going about the town fettered — they had little difficulty in effecting their escape from prison, and also from Omdurman. On being allowed to go to the river to wash, they would wade down the bank until they came opposite some large crowd of people, and