“Hardly fear, Excellency, but I have my doubts, and I am troubled about our position in any case.”
“Why?” said the professor.
“I have been out all night gathering news from such of the people as I have made my friends. The city is being filled with wild and lawless tribes who have come to fight for the new Mahdi, and whose pay is the plunder that they can gather from anywhere. They are their own friends only, and think of nothing else but what your English officers call loot. Even so soon as this past night there has been murder and outrage with plundering in the lower parts of the city, and the better people here would take flight at once, for their lives are not safe, and their wives and daughters seem marked out at once for the slaves of these savage men. I tremble for our own fate, and would gladly call my men together and risk an escape this very night, before the country round is swarming with the new Mahdi’s people and we could not stir.”
“But you will not do this, Ibrahim? You will not forsake us when we are so near success?”
“Alas! Excellency, we have not won success as yet, though we have found the young Excellency’s brother.”
“Does that mean that you mean to escape and leave us?”
“His Excellency the great Hakim knows that I have sworn to be faithful even unto death,” said the old man proudly. “No, I will not leave you. I only speak out and tell you of our peril. If the prisoner we are trying to save were here I would say, Go this night. But he is not here, and our position is very bad.”
“What, with the doctor’s reputation spread as it is, and such friends about us as the Emirs?”
“The Emirs are but men, Excellency,” said the Sheikh, looking the professor full in the eyes. “They can do much with their own followers, but nothing with the wild beasts of murdering dervishes who would slay anyone for the handsome robe he wears, or to carry off his wife and children for slaves. The great Emir and his people are our friends, but alas! our Emir here, his son, and his son’s friend left Omdurman with all their forces last night for the north, to stay the British advance. We are here with only the twenty men of the Emir’s guard, while we shall soon be surrounded by thousands who have never heard of the Hakim’s name.”
“This is bad news indeed, O Sheikh,” said the professor, frowning.