Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/360

 

BACK TO CIVILIZATION

leave it to my readers to try and imagine what my sensations were as I sailed away from Omdurman on the first stage of my journey to civilization and liberty. Remembering the reason which I gave my wife, manager, and friends, when I was begged to abandon my projected journey into Kordofan, knowing that others knew how I had comported myself before my captors and Abdullahi, I was conscious that I had nothing to be ashamed of in the production of a worse than useless saltpetre, which I could easily have refined — but the real refinement of which I prevented. Nor was I ashamed of having designed impossible machines for the manufacture of powder and cartridges, in order to keep out of that terrible Saier; nor of the wilful destruction of so much good material for their construction, especially as there were living witnesses to bear me out. Thinking, therefore, that the small, very small, risk I ran in the collecting of information to send to the advancing armies might have been appreciated, I built up on my journey what proved to be a house of cards to be blown down by