The party which went to Jaila, the village north of Halfeyeh which the Arabs had attacked, have come back with the rescued families, and twenty-five cows captured from the so-called rebels. (Query, Who are the rebels, we or the Arabs?) (To-day is the 206th day we have been more or less shut up. Delightful life! I wonder what Azotus [Ashdod] felt with its twenty-nine years blockade?)
October 5.—Two men and a boy came in from the Arabs, and report that the Mahdi has made a small advance towards Omdurman. Little else of import. They say Hussein Pasha Khalifa, Saleh Pasha, Slatin, and all the Europeans are with the Mahdi; that Kordofan is in turmoil; that the Arabs say they will wait till they can collect a lot of men, and then will attack the lines.
If you do not arrange with the Turks you will not get out of the country for a year, and it will cost you twelve millions, and probably then you will have to fall back on the Turks.[106] Whereas if you arrange with the Turks you can get out in January, and it will cost you seven millions, including the two millions you give the Turks. Truly this black sister “Soudan” has avenged her white sister “Egypt.”
A scorpion in bath sponge this morning. It stung me upon the finger. I murdered it, and so am quits. I wonder whether any analysis has been made of the scorpion’s and the cobra’s poison. This is the sixth time I have been stung.
A sheikh of the neighbourhood came in, and says a short time ago a Frenchman came up with two Arabs from Dongola to the Mahdi. The Mahdi could not make it out, and asked why he came. The man said he had come up to salute the Mahdi. The Mahdi being suspicious imprisoned him for seven days, and then let him out. He was in a Dervish dress. It is said he spoke to Saleh Pasha and to Slatin in secret, upon which the Mahdi separated these two, and put them in open arrest (is this Rochefort?) My informant says he denied to the Mahdi that the English were in Dongola, but told Slatin and Saleh Pasha that they were there. This man is with the Mahdi now, and is free. It might be Renan,[107] the author of the ‘Life of Jesus,’ who in his last publication takes leave of the world, and is said to have gone into Africa, not to reappear again. He was a Roman Catholic priest originally, is a great Arabic scholar, and evidently a very unhappy and restless man.
I met him once in the rooms of the Royal Geographical Society one afternoon, and I remember the Secretary proposing to him to go up to the top of that high house! to see the observatory. Renan declined. He looked bored and weary in being made a hero of, and when Sir R. Alcock introduced me to him, I suppose he saw my look of commiseration for his trials, and was civil to me. I have often thought we might meet again. What a fearful infliction hero-worship is to its victim. I think it a great impertinence to praise a man to his face. It implies you are his superior, for the greater praises the smaller; and though that may be the case, it is not necessary to announce it to the smaller. Supposing one is wrinkled and grey-haired, it is satire to say you are smooth-skinned, &c., &c., and beautiful, and so it must be with every man who knows himself and who is praised—endurance, self-denial, and twaddle—one would have bolted like a lamplighter if one could, and one could have stood the after criticism.
... on going to the trenches before Sevastopol fell out, and said he would not go down. The colonel put him under arrest. He was in a way more plucky to do this than to go to the trenches. Self-sacrifice is that of a nurse—ignored (and “paid,” of course, what can she want more!). No one goes into ecstasies over her self-denial.
If it is Renan he will not approve of the pepper system. The man says the Mahdi was perfectly astounded at this Frenchman’s appearance, and did nothing but question him. “Why do you come here?” &c., &c. If he comes to the lines, and it is Renan, I shall go and see him, for, whatever one may think of his unbelief in our Lord, he certainly dared to say what he thought, and he has not changed his creed to save his life.
A black mother and her two sons have come in, and say the Mahdi is at Jura Hadra, twenty-five miles south of Duem. The woman was delighted to see herself in the mirrors, and grinned and smirked at her reflections.
Spies say Nuehr Bey Angara has been sent back by the Mahdi to Obeyed, to put down the rising of the tribes; if he would only rise himself, for he is an old friend of mine, the Mahdi would be cut off from Obeyed and be in a bad way.