A HAKIM 287 not have explained in any satisfactory way how I knew one drug from another, or was acquainted with their qualities.

Still, although I refused fees I had many little presents of fowls, fruit, pumpkins, and other things. These prevented my feeling that I was a burden upon Saleh, for of course I put them into the general stock.

“ So far, I cannot but look back with deep gratitude for the strange manner in which I have been enabled to avert all suspicion, and even to make myself quite a popular character among the people of El Obeid. One bottle I found in the medicine-chest was a great prize to me. It contained iodine, and with a weak solution of this I was able to maintain my colour. I did not care so much for my face and hands, for I was so darkened by the sun that my complexion was little fairer than that of many of the Arabs. But I feared that an accidental display of a portion of my body usually covered by my garments would at once prove that I was a white man. I had used up the stuff that I had brought with me when I escaped from the square, and having no means of procuring fresh stain, was getting uneasy, but this discovery of the iodine put it within my power to renew my colouring whenever it was necessary.

About a month later.

I have been living here quietly since I last wrote in this journal. The day after I had done so the Emir sent for me and said he had heard that I had taken bullets out of wounds, and had shown the two doctors of the town how to do so by means of instruments found in a chest that was among the loot brought in from the battle-field. I repeated my story to him, as to how I had acquired the knowledge from being in the service of a white hakim from Cairo who was travelling in the desert, and that I had no other medical knowledge except that I had seen in the chest a bottle which contained stuff like that the white doctors used in order to put a patient to sleep, so that they could take off a limb without his feeling pain.