Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/99

Rh circumstances dictated, it would be safe to say that no one in the Soudan for a single moment trusted any one else.

Whatever Nejoumi's convictions may have been in the earlier days of the Mahdist movement, it is certain that they underwent a great change. Indeed, his advance against the Egyptian Army at Toski, when he was killed, was, as I was told by some of his people imprisoned with me after their return, only undertaken when he was goaded to it by the reproaches of the Khaleefa, accusing him of cowardice and treachery, accompanied with threats of recalling him to Omdurman — and Nejoumi knew well what this implied.

In the last chapter I remarked that I would later offer some surmises as to the reason why my guide Amin was the first to be executed at Dongola, and it would be well to insert them here, while speaking of my fellow-prisoners from Nejoumi's army. Though they could not be positive on the point, they were certain that Amin's two or three passages-at-arms with the guide Hassan had been related to the assembled Emirs at Dongola immediately after our arrival, and Amin was in consequence ordered to be at once executed. I expressed my suspicions as to the actual death of Hassan at El Kab, and in face of what I was told, I cannot help but believe that his falling from the camel was an arranged affair, and that he came with the caravan to Dongola, and gave evidence against Amin. Following up this suspicion or supposition, it is very probable that he originated the "cockand-bull" story related to the military authorities,