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In a short time, under the Baggara chief's supervision, a tent was set up over the wounded man, and by then two large groups of patients were waiting patiently for the Hakim's ministrations those whom he had tended on the previous day, and about a dozen wounded men who had come in during the night.

However, I do feel it as a relief to know that he is not, as I feared was remotely possible, a slave among the Baggara. But I think it is hard that, after having gone through two years of trials and sufferings, he should have been murdered on his way home." "No doubt that is so. Have you read your father's diary, yet?"

Meantime, Colonel Broadwood's troopers rode away to the north, trying to shake off outflanking parties of dervishes. The Sheikh Ed Din and Khalil continued to pursue the cavalry with great eagerness and venom. Several times bodies of 200 and 300 Baggara horsemen threatened to charge, but Majors Mahan and Le Gallias turning upon these riders sent them flying back helter-skelter.

The combined forces of the ousted Khalifas were the more numerous. But the fierce Baggara waved their swords, and the Soudanese riflemen were famous for their valour. For some hours a bloody struggle appeared imminent. Then the confederacy broke up. The Khalifa Ali-Wad-Helu, a prudent man, talked of compromise and amity.

Tell him at once that I am not a prophet, only a simple surgeon; that I have done all that is possible, and that the rest is with God." The Sheikh reverently translated the Hakim's words to the Baggara chief, and those who heard him fully expected to hear some angry outburst; but the chief bent humbly before the Hakim and touched his hand.

This had formerly been the Dinka country, but it had been quite depopulated by razzias made for slaves by the former and present governors of Fashoda. These raids had been made on a large scale, with several thousand troops, in addition to the sharp slave-hunters, the Baggara Arabs, as allies. The result was almost the extermination of the Dinka tribe.

The wounded were all carried into temporary hospitals and the dead were decently interred in Moslem burial-places out upon the desert. Then the thoroughfares were scrupulously scavengered by gangs of yesterday's furious foemen, blacks and Baggara. The dead things were put under ground, and the stagnant pools were drained or filled in.

Among these the Baggara strode haughtily. Splendid men, for the most part, tall, lithe, and muscular; men with the supreme belief in themselves, and in their cause, carrying themselves as the Norman barons might have done among a crowd of Saxons; the conquerors of the land, the most trusted followers of the successor of the Mahdi, men who felt themselves invincible.

His companions in misfortune, looking back, saw him stagger to his feet with a dazed face. At the same instant a Baggara slipped down from his camel with a sword in his hand. "Don't look! don't look!" cried Belmont to the ladies, and they all rode on with their faces to the south. They heard no sound, but the Baggara passed them a few minutes afterwards.

Then a strange, hissing noise arose, and heavy, startled breathing was heard, while the faces of all present were illumined by the dazzling flashes of light which began to play in a cylinder of glass. Nothing could have been more startling to one strange to the wonders of science, for the scene was horrible and weird, suggestive to the Baggara chiefs and Mullahs of magic in its most awful guise.