Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/300

238 discs, and did my best to smash the best lathe with it, to give me still more time; but the lathe stood the strain, and four or five discs were actually cut in the axle.

It would have taken them another year to cut the remainder at the rate the work was progressing, and probably four years to make the machine; then when it was finished there would have been an accident, and some people would have been killed or maimed, for that paddle axle would have come tearing through the machine with the first revolution. I was taking a fiendish delight in destroying every good piece of metal I could lay my hands on under pretence of its being required for the machine; the copper and brass which I appropriated interfered considerably with the production of the cartridges, and the skilled workmen whom I kept employed delayed for months the finishing touches to the new powder-factory on Tuti Island: But there could be no going back now. Abdallah was my sworn enemy; but I knew that the more I destroyed under his own eyes, the less risk there was of his going to the Khaleefa again to induce him to believe that the whole of my work was, as he called it, "shoogal khabbass" — all lies, for Abdallah himself would get into trouble for not having discovered it before all the damage had been done.

While still engaged on collecting material for the machine (for no sooner was one lot cut up when it was discovered that some mistake had been made in either length or thickness, so that another raid had to be made on the stores), the steamer Safa