Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/157

Rh froze the blood in his veins. Thus had perished that hero, that knight without fear and without reproach; a man, just and kind, who was loved even in the Sudân. And the English people had not come in time to his aid, and later retired, leaving his remains without a Christian burial, to be thus dishonored! Stas at that moment lost his faith in the English people. Heretofore he naïvely believed that England, for an injury to one of her citizens, was always ready to declare war against the whole world. At the bottom of his soul there had lain a hope that in behalf of Rawlinson's daughter, after the unsuccessful pursuit, formidable English hosts would be set in motion even as far as Khartûm and farther. Now he became convinced that Khartûm and that whole region was in the hands of the Mahdi, and that the Egyptian Government and England were thinking rather of preserving Egypt from further conquests than of delivering the European prisoners from captivity.

He understood that he and Nell had fallen into an abyss from which there was no escape, and these thoughts, linked with the horrors which he witnessed on the streets of Omdurmân, disheartened him completely. His customary energy gave way to total passive submission to fate and a dread of the future. In the meantime he began aimlessly to gaze about the market-place and at the stalls at which Idris was bargaining for provisions. The hucksters, mainly Sudânese women and negresses, sold jubhas here, that is, white linen gowns, pieced together with many colored patches, acacia gum, hollow gourds, glass beads, sulphur and all kinds of mats. There were a few stalls with provisions and around all of them the throng pressed. The Mahdists bought at high prices principally dried strips of meat of domestic animals; likewise of buffaloes, antelopes and giraffes. Dates, figs,