Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/277

Rh conducted Slatin from Omdurman to Berber. Zecki had been arrested with them on suspicion of complicity in the escape, and confessed that he had been engaged by Egail and others to bring away from Omdurman a man with "cat's eyes," but that he did not know who the man was.

Close to the common cell was an offshoot of it — a smaller one named "Bint Umm Hagar" (the daughter of Umm Hagar), which took the place of the condemned cell in Europe. On my return to prison, I learned that my old enemy, Kadi Ahmed, had been confined there fora year. The ostensible reason for his imprisonment was that he had been in league with the false coiners, and had made large amounts of money; but the real reason was that the Khaleefa was angry with him on account of the death of Zecki Tummal, who had conducted the Abyssinian campaign when King John was killed. Kadi Ahmed had been induced by Yacoub to sentence Zecki to imprisonment and starvation; so when Ahmed's turn came, the Khaleefa said, "Let him receive the same punishment as Zecki." He was placed in the Bint Umm Hagar, and after about ten months the doorway was built up; there Ahmed was left, with his ablution bottle of water only, for forty-three days according to one tale, and fifty days according to another. When, for days, no sounds had been heard from his living tomb, he was presumed to be dead; but on the doorway being opened up, to the astonishment, not to say superstitious fear, of all, he was still alive, but unconscious, though the once big fat Kadi had wasted to a skeleton.