Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/142

 134 people, or aimed carbines at them. To this hostile demonstration Idris answered with a shout that he and his brother belonged to the Dongolese tribe, the same as that of the Mahdi, and that they were conveying to the prophet two white children as slaves; this alone restrained the savages from violence. In Stas, when he came in contact with this dire reality, the spirit withered at the thought of what awaited them on the ensuing days. Idris, also, who previously had lived long years in a civilized community, had never imagined anything like this. He was pleased when one night they were surrounded by an armed detachment of the Emir Nur el-Tadhil and conducted to Khartûm.

Nur el-Tadhil, before he ran away to the Mahdi, was an Egyptian officer in a negro regiment of the Khedive: so he was not so savage as the other Mahdists and Idris could more easily make himself understood. But here disappointment awaited him. He imagined that his arrival at the Mahdi's camp with the white children would excite admiration, if only on account of the extraordinary hardships and dangers of the journey. He expected that the Mahdists would receive him with ardor, with open arms, and lead him in triumph to the prophet, who would lavish gold and praises upon him as a man who had not hesitated to expose his head in order to serve his relative, Fatma. In the meantime the Mahdists placed spears at the breasts of members of the caravan, and Nur el-Tadhil heard quite indifferently his narrative of the journey, and finally to the question, whether he knew Smain, the husband of Fatma, answered:

"No. In Omdurmân and Khartûm there are over one hundred thousand warriors, so it is easy not to meet one another, and not all the officers are acquainted with each other. The domain of the prophet is immense; therefore