Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/196

 under our protection, and made their way back again before our troops could cut them off.

The son of the Sheikh having duly deponed, there are, of course, any number of his fellow-villagers ready to take up the dismal tale. We are surrounded, like the Apostle, by a great cloud of witnesses, some of them prepared with exhibits as well as with oral evidence. Will we see Hassan Abdullah? Hassan Abdullah was shot in the neck, but he managed to flee and hide himself, and so by the blessing of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, he escaped. Come forward, Hassan Abdullah, and there stands before us a spare and grizzled old peasant, between the wiry muscles of whose lean brown neck a rifle bullet might certainly stow itself comfortably away without making any external difference in his cervical conformation. Another villager adds a pathetic detail to the story. At a little distance from us can be heard the droning of a sakkiyeh,