Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/253

Rh hammered and "bullydamned" him into Egypt and safety. This is Abdallah's own tale. He assures me, and I believe him, that it was his intention, as soon as he had handed over Rossignoli safe, to have asked for the revolvers and started back to try and effect my escape, risky as he knew it to be; but as Rossignoli had betrayed his name in Berber, he knew well that the Khaleefa would have men waiting for him from Omdurman to the frontier, and he showed no better sense in flogging Rossignoli, than he showed in settling down with his well-earned hundred pounds rather than attempting to make it into four hundred by passing the frontier.

Rossignoli's absence was not noticed for a little time, and fortunately, for a donkey leaves better tracks to follow than a camel. The Khaleefa was not particularly angry about the affair, although he imprisoned for a day Mr. Cocorombo, the husband of Sister Grigolini, the former superioress of Father Ohrwalder's Mission, and Rossignoli's lay companion, Beppo; but the latter, after Slatin's escape, became my fellowprisoner in the Saier.

One would be inclined to believe that either myself Or some dramatist had purposely invented the series of accidents, which cropped up to frustrate every one of my plans for escape. On February 28, 1895, without a word of warning, I was so heavily loaded with chains that I was unable to move, and I was placed under a double guard in the house of Shereef Hamadan, the Mahdist Governor of Khartoum. At first I surmised that either Abdallah or Hawanein