I02 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN, of the main hold, and just behind it a saloon or deck-house, a slight wooden structure divided into two rooms and having a narrow passage running round it. On the top of the saloon a place had been prepared for infantry—by making walls of boilerplate iron, except at the entrance. The wheel was on the top of the deck-house, and particular care had been taken to protect the helmsman as much as possible. Behind the deck-house was a little open space in the stern with a hatchway leading to a small hold."

As we have before noted, sheets of boiler-plate iron fixed to wooden stanchions and with a beam on the top of the stanchion so placed as to leave a space between it and the top of the plates sufficiently wide to fire through, had been placed round the sides of the ship and at the bulwarks and deck-house, but some of these stanchions had been broken and the sheets of iron torn away. When the steamers were overhauled, the fore-hold contained some ammunition, an enormous quantity of dhurra, " loot" of various kinds, and wood for the steamer, while in the main-hold were rifle ammunition, firewood, sacks of dhurra, bedding, loot, women, a baby or two, and a herd of goats for milk. In the after-hold were the loot and jaroperty of the commandant. Every corner of the space below the deck was full of dhurra, Indian corn, and " loot," but as provisions had to be taken for the relief of the garrison at Khartum, the decks themselves were piled with sacks of dhurra. These made it difficult for such a number of men to move about much, and when it is added that the Soudanese crews, during the five months that they had been living on the Nile and played the part of river pirates, had suffered all kinds of filth to accumulate, it may be judged that the condition of all on board was disagreeable enough, especially as the steamers were infested with swarms of rats. A swarm of rats and a heterogeneous crowd of human beings within the limits of such a small vessel taxes the imagination, as it taxed the endurance of the English escort. There was no help for it, and there had been no time to clear out the steamers, even if any other arrangement could have been adopted in face of the fact that the native crews, the native soldiers, and the native