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128 responsible for his fright in the first place, and for his servility to the other prisoners at the moment when he thought there were good grounds for it.

His opportunity came some little time later on, when the same gaoler invented another excuse for flogging me. I had bought from one of the gaolers a small mud hut, a few feet square, in the prison enclosure, and received permission from Idris es Saier to sleep in this at night instead of in the Umm Hagar. This young gaoler — and other gaolers as well — accepted baksheesh from prisoners to allow them to sleep in the open; and Idris, finding the contributions to his "starving children" falling off, suspected the reason, and lay in wait. Upon a night when a larger number than usual had been allowed to sleep outside the Umm Hagar, he suddenly made his appearance in the prison enclosure. There was nothing for our guardians to do but to pretend that the prisoners had been insubordinate, had refused to enter the Umm Hagar, and to lay about them with their whips. The young gaoler, not aware that I had paid the regulation baksheesh to Idris, made straight for my hut, dragged me out, and flogged me to the door of the common cell, a distance, maybe, of forty or fifty yards, but my thick jibbeh prevented the blows from telling with much effect as far as regards abrasion of the skin; nevertheless, their weight told on my diminished strength, and I again fell ill. The circumstance came to the ears of the Khaleefa through Idris, or the Nebbi Khiddr, and I had the huge satisfaction of seeing my tormentor dismissed from his lucrative post,