But the Financial Secretary spoke of further difficulties in the gathering of taxes—the land tax, the animal tax, and the tax on the date-trees not having yet come in—and then the Inspector-General repeated an opinion he had previously expressed, that everything gave evidence of a projected pilgrimage, presumably in a northerly direction and almost certainly to Cairo.
The Governor of the city corroborated this, and added that his Zabit, his police officer, had said that Ishmael Ameer, on passing to the mosque that day, had been saluted in the streets by a screaming multitude as the "Messenger" and the "Anointed One."
"It's just as I say," said the Inspector-General. "These holy men develop by degrees. This one will hoist his flag as soon as he finds himself strong enough—unless we stop him before he goes further—and the Soudan is lost to civilisation."
"Well, we'll see what Nuneham says," said the Sirdar, and at that moment his Secretary came to say that the launch was ready at the boat-landing to take him across the river to the train.
The Sirdar said good-bye to his guests, to his officers, and to his wife, and as he left the garden of the palace the Soudanese band, sons of the Mahdi's men, played the number which goes to the words—
"They never proceed to follow that light,
But always follow me."
Half-an-hour afterwards, while the Sirdar's black body-guard were ranged up on the platform of the railway station, and his black servant was packing his luggage into his compartment, the Governor-General was standing by the door of the carriage, with his Aide-de-camp, giving his last instructions to his General Secretary.
"Telegraph to the Consul-General and say ... but please make a note of it."
"Yes, sir," said the Secretary, taking out his pocketbook and preparing to write.
"Think it best to go down myself to deal personally with matter of suspected mutiny in native army. Must admit increasing gravity of situation. Man here is undoubtedly acquiring name and influence of Mahdi, so time has come to consider carefully what we ought to do. Signs of intended pilgrimage, probably in northerly direction, enormous numbers of camels, horses, and donkeys having been gathered up from various parts of country and immense quantities of food-stuffs being bought for desert journey. Am leaving to-night, and hope to arrive in four days."