Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/185

Rh "Makkieh" (shackles), a name which appealed to the humorous side of the Khaleefa, who, being tickled at the idea of the name, in a fit of good-humour, sent word to me to ask if I would undertake the manufacture of gunpowder if he released me. I unfortunately replied that I did not understand the manufacturing of it, and this aroused his suspicions, which did not abate one jot when, shortly afterwards, a Bohemian baker, who had strayed from Haifa, was taken prisoner, and sent on to Omdurman as a captured spy. This man, whom I knew only by the name of Joseppi—though he had a string of other names, which I have forgotten—was a Bohemian by birth and a baker by trade. He was not of strong intellect, and what intellect he had, had maybe been impaired by a "music madness." From the rambling statements he made to me during his year's imprisonment, I gather that he had tramped Europe as a wandering musician, landing finally in Egypt, where he tramped from the Mediterranean to the frontier. It is quite evident that instead of coppers he received drinks in exchange for his strains, and this further added to his mental troubles, though the drunkenness he has been charged with was, in my opinion, more the result of circumstances and misfortune than a natural craving for ardent liquors.

On leaving Wadi Haifa, he had expected to find, as he had found in Europe and the part of Egypt he had tramped through, villages or towns within the day's tramp. He had not the slightest idea of what the desert was until he found himself in it. After some days of wandering, during which he eat pieces of his