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None of them could give him the information he sought, but one suggested that he was more likely to hear from the Greeks and Turks, who worked in the Khalifa's arsenal and foundries; as they had been spared, for the services they would be able to render to the Mahdi. Returning to Omdurman, he went to the machine shop.
The Egyptians sent out armies with weapons of precision and improved artillery, and they fortified towns, where they massed vast stores of ammunition, suited to both rifles and guns. The soldiers of the Mahdi rushed upon their feeble foes with sword and spear, totally annihilated army after army, and collected the rifles. Then they took the towns and possessed themselves of the cartridges.
At various times fanatic leaders have arisen claiming to be El Mahdi, "The Master of the Hour," and have won the frenzied devotion of the Moslem masses; just as certain "Messiahs" have similarly excited the Jews. It was thus natural that, in their growing apprehension and impotent rage at Western aggression, the Moslem masses should turn to the messianic hope of Mahdism.
As a result the co-ordinate influence of France ended, and Great Britain was left as the practical ruler of Egypt, which position she still maintains. In 1880 began an important series of events. A Mohammedan prophet arose in the Soudan, claiming to be the Mahdi, a Messiah of the Mussulmans.
But the iron hand of unconsciousness fell upon him again, and through many hours thereafter Naomi and the Mahdi sat together in silence with the multitudinous company of invisible things. During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of Tetuan. The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of his Ministers had escaped.
There was a sudden, appalling yell; the Mahdi, with 40,000 of his finest men, sprang from their ambush. The Egyptians were surrounded, and immediately overpowered. It was not a defeat, but an annihilation. Hicks and his European staff were slaughtered; the whole army was slaughtered; 300 wounded wretches crept away into the forest.
On January 16th, 1885, at noon, the column on the march was roused from the lethargy induced by monotonous riding hour after hour under a warm sun by distant firing. "By Jabers!" cried Grady. "There's an inimy somewheres after all. I began to think Mr Mahdi had packed up his things it's a mighty small portmanteau most of them require and gone out of the country entirely, with all his people."
From Khartoum to Fashoda he acquired a great reputation for sanctity. Religious devotees gathered around him and followed him to his retreat upon the island of Abba. There he, in May 1881, first announced his claims as the true Mahdi. His barefaced assertions of special divine command and guidance found credulous believers.
The prophecies concerning his appearance are sometimes of an equally supernatural kind as those of the Shiites, so that the period of his coming has passed more and more from the political sphere to which it originally belonged, into that of eschatology. Yet, naturally, it is easier for a popular leader to make himself regarded as the orthodox Mahdi than to play the part of the returned imam.
Your religion is different from mine, but as you showed that you were willing to aid followers of the Prophet and the Mahdi, although they were your enemies, surely I, for whom you have done so much, may well forget that difference. "'I thank you, Emir. From what I had seen of you, I felt sure that my secret would be safe with you.
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