54 THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES Woe betide any stragglers who chanced to fall into the hands of the Dervishes at present!

The best thing to do would be to empty five chambers of one’s revolver and keep the sixth for one’s self! | One of the suspicious-looking Arabs walked back with us and showed us a dear little hut made of wattled branches, which would shelter us for the night. Our guide turned out to be a native who had suffered at the hands of the cruel Mahmoud just before that scoundrel was defeated and captured at the battle of the Atbara in the spring. He bared his arm and showed us a: hideous wound, now healed over, where a Dervish spear had cut through his flesh from shoulder to elbow. The poor man had lost his wife and child—slain, both of — them, by the savage Baggaras. This incident, one among thousands of the same kind, may give one some idea of the cruel sufferings to which whole tribes were abandoned by our cowardly evacuation of the Sudan. We had put our hand to the plough, and then drew back, | We had a good square meal, washed down by a bottle of claret, the solitary survivor of