— 47 — that defeat would be his portion, Billali fled in the direction of Dar Mufio, while we released from their sheibas the prisoners whom he had brought. The next day my cousin Hamid Muzammi came to join me with eight hundred men, and was bitterly disappointed to find that he was too late to participate in the fight. There came too Rabeh, who overtook Billali at Deim Gugu, near the country of Mufio, and killed him.

On that day I was shot in the right foot and was carried back to my capital.

For a length of time I lay stretched upon my couch while the moon waxed, and waned, and waxed again. There availed not to heal me either the lotions of the medicine-men or the prayers of the priest.

And while I remained in these sad circumstances I bethought me of a sage of the sages from Dongola whose name was Ahmed El Karsani : he was of the Shaigia tribe and God-Whose perfection be extolled-had endowed him with a knowledge of herbs and the art of surgery. He straightway removed no less than fifty five splinters of bone, and proceeded to cut away most of the flesh from my leg, which was already mortifying: the small remnant of sound skin, that was left behind, he rubbed with a preparation of salt, but so acute was the pain that the world became dark before my eyes, and I swooned away, nor did I recover my senses until day had