272 A PRISONER OF THE KH A LEE FA Wad-el- Fah el, and occupied myself with " illuminating " its pages with red- and black-ink designs ; this was an occupation I had often earned a few dollars at, but Fahel still owes me for my last exploit in " illumination." I left the work unfinished about noon to attend to two young men attached to the prison, who had come in from the fight, one with a bullet over the left temple, and the other with a bullet in the muscle of the left arm. Provided only with a penknife, I made a cross cut over the spot where I could in one case see, and the other feel the bullet imbedded, and pressed them out ; both bullets had kept their shape, and must have been encountered at extreme range, or rather beyond it.

Maybe, with a European, chloroform might have been necessary for the extraction of the bullet in the arm, but with a Soudanese — have I not already said that a dervish can continue leaping and stabbing with half a dozen severe wounds in his body ? A dervish can and will kill at the moment when the ventricles of his heart make their last contraction. Bodily pain, as we understand it, is unknown to them. Many a time have I applied, and seen applied, red-hot charcoal to sores, with the patients calmly looking on. With my present patients, after dabbing a little carbolic acid over the wounds, I asked what news they had brought. Yacoub, they said, was killed ; almost all the faithful were killed or wounded ; the Khaleefa himself was running back to town, but they had outstripped him. While still questioning them, Idris es Saier told me that the Muslimanieh who had been