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196 the receipt to me concealed in a piece of bread, to be countersigned. Ajjab was to return to Assouan, let my friends know how matters stood, and tell them that I would try and communicate with them, if I ever got released from prison, as escape from the prison was an impossibility. Ajjab returned to Assouan, and handed over the receipt; but the tale he had to tell put an end, for the time being, to any attempts to assist me further.

When Father Ohrwalder escaped, bringing with him the two sisters and negress, Mankarious set about immediately to find some reliable messenger willing to undertake the journey to Omdurman with a view of ascertaining if my escape was at all possible. He argued that if Father Ohrwalder could escape with three women as an encumbrance to his flight, there was nothing, provided I was at liberty, to prevent my escaping; but those who knew the Soudan — and it was only such he might employ — argued that if the remainder of the captives were not already killed, they would be found chained in the prison awaiting their execution. Months slipped away before he could find any one to undertake the journey, and then an old but wiry desert Arab, El] Haj Ahmad Abou Hawanein, came to terms with him. Hawanein was given two camels, some money, and a quantity of goods to sell and barter on his way up.

Some time in June or July, 1894, Abou Kees, a man employed in the Mission gardens, came to me while I was working at the mounds of Khartoum, and whispered that a man who had news for me was