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Updated: May 6, 2025
They were a smaller band than the first one not more than thirty but dressed in the same red headgear and patched jibbehs. One of them carried a small white banner with a scarlet text scrawled across it. But there was something there which drew the eyes and the thoughts of the tourists away from everything else.
The townsfolk and others who wished to be let alone, turned their jibbehs inside out, at once a renunciation of the Khalifa and his works as well as a sanitary gain. Some there were who, averse to over-cleanliness, simply tore the dervish patches off their dress, thus also resuming their fealty to the Khedive.
The crowd was led by four of the fiercest of the Mahdi's followers tall and swarthy Dervishes, splendid in their many-coloured jibbehs, their great swords drawn from their scabbards of brass and velvet, their spears flourishing above their heads. Gordon met them at the top of the staircase. For a moment, there was a deathly pause, while he stood in silence, surveying his antagonists.
The women and children, mostly slaves, filled the thoroughfares, and in their peculiar guinea-fowl cackling fashion cheered the troops. Notables in jibbehs, which they had not yet had time to turn inside out, as nearly every native did afterwards, came and salaamed, smote their breasts, and kissed the hands and even the garments' hem of the Sirdar and his staff.
The red head-gear, patched jibbehs, and yellow boots had already shown to the Colonel that these men were no wandering party of robbers, but a troop from the regular army of the Khalifa. Now, as they struck across the desert, they showed that they possessed the rude discipline which their work demanded.
The Dervishes or what was left of them were riding slowly some little distance out in a confused crowd, their patchwork jibbehs and red turbans swaying with the motion of their camels.
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