Chapter 14
Torture and Intrigue
At Galabat the Emir Yunis held command in the name of the Khalif. He was a very vain man, inordinately proud of his own person, and terribly envious of others in the bargain. He had begun hostilities against the Abyssinians and had got himself ignominiously beaten. The superior success of Abu-Anga wounded him like a deliberate insult. Pretending not to know that Abdullahi had long since given him his freedom, he always spoke of him as "the slave," and never missed an opportunity of making him feel his own higher rank. Abu-Anga who scorned all such pettiness, only redoubled his politeness, and set himself resolutely to the task of carrying out his instructions.
His enquiry had hardly begun before he was convinced the spies had not been misleading the Khalif. A conspiracy was undoubtedly maturing in Galabat. An Arab, one Takruri, was giving himself out as the "Sayidna laa," that is, The Lord Jesus. He declared an avatar had taken place, and that in his body was incarnated the soul of Jesus. He was the Messiah, he said, the Saviour announced by the Malidi, and he was come to snatch the dominion from the hands of the Khalif and to punish all unbelievers. He had the gift of the gab highly developed, and made folk listen to him. Some of the Emirs even, who are discontented with Yunis and angered at his insolence and rapacity, became apostles of the impostor, hoping by this means to bring together a band of partisans. Of all this Yunis knew nothing and suspected nothing.
Abu-Anga waited patiently, watching for the most favorable moment to take action. He began by conciliating popularity, winning all hearts by his openhandedness. Above all his spirit of justice delighted everybody; and as it so happened, he found an occasion on this visit to Galabat to give a proof of it. He had forbidden his soldiers to pillage the inhabitants. One day he was at table when his slave came to inform him that a woman of the people sought earnestly to speak to him. The woman was introduced trembling all over, and told her tale. All the fortune she possessed, she declared, was a measure of milk; but a soldier of Abu-Anga's escort had broken into her hut, had laid hold of her milk pail, and after drinking some, had in pure mischief thrown the rest on the floor.
"Should you be able to recognize the thief?" asked Abu-Anga.
"Of a surety!" answered the old woman, "among a thousand! Never shall I forget his dog's face."
Instantly Abu-Anga orders his war drum to be beaten to call the troops together. Then, the old woman by his side, he goes along the front, till she stopped short.
"Are you sure it is the man?"
"I would swear to him on the Koran."
"What have you to say to that?" asked Abu-Anga of the soldier.
"I never saw the woman before! As for her milk, I have not drunk milk for more than a week."
"You hear what he says? My good woman, you have made a mistake."
"He is a bold and accomplished liar ... that is all!"
"Hum! very well! . ... So you persist in saying he is tne man who drank your milk? When was it?"
"Less than an hour ago."
"As you are so positive, I will order his belly to oe opened. If we then find milk in his stomach, you shall be indemnified; if not, I will deliver you up to his comrades, you content to have it so?"
"I know what I say; if I have lied, there is no torment I do not deserve."
The soldier having been duly bound, a butcher was sent for, who cut open the man's belly. Then he plunged his hand into the wound, groped among the inwards and tore out the stomach. He slit it open, and the milk ran out. The woman had looked on without displaying any emotion, but directly she saw the stomach disgorge her stolen property, she cried out;
"Ah! my poor milk; I never thought I should see you again. But what good is it now?"
"The man has robbed you of all you had; all he leaves behind him belongs to you. Go, you are is heiress."
The soldier had made the Abyssinian campaign, and his share of plunder, both in money and slaves, was almost intact, so that the old woman inherited quite a little fortune.
Everybody praised Abu-Anga's wisdom. The Emirs respected him for his gallantry and lordly manners, while they loved him for his generosity. The result actually was that one of the conspirators was filled with repentance and came to warn him to be on his guard, as it had been determined to assassinate him that very evening, along with Yunis. It was a Friday, the holy day, and as they left the Mosque after prayers, sixteen Emirs were arrested. Yunis was for interfering; but when Abu-Anga had shown him the plenary powers he held from the Khalif, he had nothing to do but submit.
"Tell me, at any rate, why you have my Emirs arrested?"
"To hinder them from killing you."
And unsealing his eyes, he made him acquainted with the whole plot.
For Yunis, it was only another reason the more for hating Abu-Anga, his paltry character holding no place in it for gratitude. Nor was it long before he found a pretext to account for his resentment. Directly the Emirs were arrested, Abu-Anga had dispatched an estafet to Omdurman, to ask the Khalif's orders. Abdullahi assembled his council, and the vote of the majority was for death. Three days had already elapsed since the departure of the courier charged to deliver this sentence when the Khalif changed his mind and dispatched a second messenger bearing orders to keep the rebellious Emirs in chains and only execute the impostor Takruri, the man who had posed as Jesus. This second courier was unable to overtake the first; when he rode into Galabat on his exhausted camel, seventeen corpses hung suspended from the gibbet. Thus Yunis could reproach Abu-Anga for undue precipitation. The latter's patience however had its limits, and fearing he might give way to some sudden burst of anger, he informed the Khalif of his difficulties with Yunis, and the Governor was summoned to Omdurman in disgrace. He started with a heart full of rage and disappointment, though he was leaving behind him at Galabat a number of friends who swore to espouse his cause.
Arrived at Omdurman, where he had everything to fear, he found the Khalif disposed to clemency. He had just received a letter from King John of Abyssinia,-an imposing document written on parchment in the Amharic language and bearing enormous seals. The King sent greetings to the Khalif and proposed a treaty of peace with him. He argued that the Sudanese and Abyssinians had one and the same origin, both being descended from Ham. Besides which, it seemed the more reasonable course to unite the forces of the two peoples against the common enemy-the European.
The Khalif bursting with pride, could hardly contain his joy. He made answer to King John that if he and all his subjects would abjure Christianity and become good Mussulmans, he, the Khalif would consider him as friend and ally. But that if he intended to continue obstinately in his errors, continuing to be the enemy of God and His holy prophet, Abyssinia should be put to fire and sword.
As if on purpose to tickle his vanity yet further, the
Khalif was gratified by yet another flattering incident in the course of the same day. An Egyptian camel-driver, who had been brought before his throne, was questioned as to affairs in Egypt, and the wily Arab answered:
"All good Mussulmans hate and loathe the Turk that oppresses them. They rejoice at your triumphs, and are waiting impatiently for the moment it shall please you to send your troops into Egypt, when they will instantly join your soldiers. The very Christians are forced to recognize your merit; at Wadi-Halfa I talked with one of their monks, who asked me: 'Is it to Omdurman you are rebound? Doubtless you will see the Khalif Abdullahi there?'-I told him, 'yes!'-'Is he not a tall, strong man, his beard all white though he is but forty-nine, limping a little and seamed with smallpox?'-'You have drawn his portrait to a line!"-Go, tell him, I have it in a book that soon he shall conquer Egypt, and then Arabia, after which he shall set up the seat of his Empire at Damascus. A greater glory still is reserved for his descendants?"
This story met with high appreciation, and the artful camel-man received a present, an Abyssinian slave-woman and a bag of dollars being handed over to him by the Beit-el-Maal. As a matter-of-fact he had been sent to Omdurman by Slatin's friends to help him to escape. His camels were not beasts of burden at all, but fine-limbed racers.
Meantime Grace was in despair. Neither could she communicate with Slatin nor see Neufeld again, while to add to her difficulties, she found she was being watched. Go where she would, she found Aisha, the tall negress, in her path. Whenever she went near the prison or loiteied round the barracks of the Muzalemin, suddenly Aisha would appear, but always without seeming to see her.
Nevertheless she had discovered an intermediary to open communication with Neufeld. This was Father Ohr-walder, the Austrian missionary, who had been a prisoner since the capture of El-Obayd, and was living at Omdurman on his scanty earnings as a weaver. She would slip into his hand a few pieces of money, which by Abu-Anga's orders the Eunuch never let her be without, and the good Father would convey these to Neufeld to enable him to supply himself with food. When at length Grace succeeded in exchanging a few words with Slatin, she learned how a camel-driver had arrived from Egypt to help him to escape, how at first he had managed to win the Khalif's confidence, but afterwards on a mere suspicion, had been thrown into prison, loaded with fetters, and the gaoler strictly enjoined to allow him no communication whatever with anyone, the result being that, left without money or any possible assistance, the poor man had died of hunger. For Slatin it was another bitter disappointment, another instance of hope deferred,-deferred for many a long day,-making the heart sick. Grace also felt it keenly. Her longing to return to England and marry Neufeld had become a fixed idea with her. A passionate, but in this case pure and chaste love had sprung into existence and now filled all her heart. Now she lived in continual terror, unable to say from what quarter precisely the danger was to be expected.
More than ever a system of spying and counter-spying was in vogue at Omdurman. The city had been embellished and adorned with many fine buildings, but it was even richer in gibbets. These were everywhere, in the marketplaces, in front of the prison, along the Nile, in the trading quarters. No matter how many were erected, they were never enough. The same gallows often carried as many as a score of corpses. There they were left exposed, the limbs still twisted and contracted as the death struggle had left them, the wind knocking them one against another. Simultaneously beheading was in full swing, being an even more popular and convenient mode of execution, inasmuch as it took up less room. The victim was made to kneel down; then the executioner, grasping his sword in both hands and whirling it round his head, brought it down on the extended neck, very seldom missing his stroke, the head generally falling at the first blow. The trunk sank together in a huddled mass, and was pushed into the Nile, where the crocodiles had it before it could touch the bottom. As for the head, this went to swell the pile of skulls that lay whitening in the Bei-el-Maal,-the skulls of all the rebels, all the enemies of Malidism.
The populace delighted in these numerous executions, and came in crowds to look on. To vary the pleasure, there was also the operation of cutting off hands and feet to be viewed very frequently. Right hand and left foot was the regular thing. It was always done in the market-place, and a butcher acted as executioner. He knew exactly where to hit the joint, and with the big knife he used for cutting the animals' throats in accordance with the Moslem rite, he went about the work without the smallest hesitation. At the same time some pity was shown, and the presence of friends and relations was allowed close to the sufferer. These could make their preparations without any interference,-bands of linen for bandages and a brazier over which a kettle of oil was simmering. The patient was held by soldiers, while the butcher rapidly sliced off the hand extended to him, and then the foot, passing on at once to another victim. Then the man's friends would bandage the stumps, after plunging them in boiling oil to stop the bleeding and prevent gangrene. Perfect silence almost always prevailed; executioner, soldiers, friends and kinsmen all were dumb, including the condemned man himself. Not a cry, nothing more than a convulsion of the features, when he felt the cold steel, and a change of the color of the skin from soot to a cindery gray. Sitting on the ground with head thrust out, he would watch the blood flowing with a dull, stupid stare, rolling his great eyes and gazing now at one stump, now at the other. Only when the boiling oil made the flesh shrivel up, did drops of agony start out on his forehead. If he screamed, the crowd would burst out laughing, jeering at him for being so poor-spirited.
As to flogging, it was so liberally administered that enough men could not be found to carry out the sentences. Every man of the Ansar now had his regular turn at it, and there were days when whole battalions were at work together. A hundred lashes was a minimum punishment which argued well of the Judge's clemency. Sometimes the total named was a thousand. This meant death, for no man could bear so many and survive. When five hundred had been applied, there was no skin left; the body seemed to be completely flayed, and blood was flowing in streams. Before long the belly would be laid open, letting the entrails tumble out in a mass.
There came a time when, in spite of the enormous number of gibbets, hangings had to be temporarily suspended for want of accommodation. Such was the case with the Batahin,-a tribe of robber Arabs established in the open country near Omdurman on the banks of the Blue Nile. They had refused to pay the "ushr," the tax of one tenth. When the collectors had presented themselves in the Khalif's name, the Batahin had laughed at them and driven them off with showers of stones. But soon the tax-collectors returned with a body of soldiers, and the tribesmen were carried in chains to Omdurman. For two days they were kept waiting to receive their doom, while new gibbets were being erected, all duly provided with new ropes of camel's hair. Sixty-nine were hanged in one batch, the remainder dying under the lash or perishing of hunger within Saier's prison walls. In the gray of dawn the war drums sounded and the ombeya was blown; then the sixty-nine Arabs who were to be executed marched out to the gallows. Eighteen angarebs below the beam were ranged in a row, on which they made the condemned men stand. Bringi, the executioner, a huge Dinka negro, arranged the slip knot, the patient making no sort of protest, at most muttering between his teeth, "El mektub,"-It teas written! Then Bringi shoved away the angareb with his foot, and went on to the next. In less than five minutes the eighteen bodies were dancing at the end of the ropes, the pressure of which on the cerebellum reacted on the nerves of the virile member. Still warm, the dead bodies were cut down to make way for the other Batahin, who stood by awaiting their turn in silence.
All this delighted the mob; but there came a time when they were less well pleased. This was on the occasion of the execution of Ouad-Adlan by the Khalifs orders. He had been the superintendent of the Beit-el-Maal, an honest man of marked intelligence and ability. He had considerably increased the Khalifs revenues by establishing a monopoly of the traffic in ivory and gum arabic, the Beit-el-Maal buying up the latter at five dollars the hundredweight and re-selling at twenty. So great was his credit that if ever the Beitel-Maal ran short of cash, he had only to apply to the traders of the city, and they would at once club together and lend whatever sum he required. This popularity was displeasing to the Khalif, and even more so to his brother Yokub, who gave clear tokens of hostility. First came a series of humiliations and reprimands, till finally things came to a head in connection with the famine that was raging at Dongola. The Khalif blamed Ouad-Adlan for procrastination in sending dourrha to the starving population. The Superintendent took the rebuke with a very bad grace, and was eventually arrested and taken to the gaol, where Saier had him duly fettered, and so placed that no one could enter into communication with him. On the third day of his imprisonment a messenger arrived to say the Khalif offered him the choice of two alternatives,-to be hanged, or else to lose his right hand and left foot. Ouad-Adlan chose death: and amid the rolling of drums and the deep note of the ombeya he was led to the place of execution. A squadron of Bagara cavalry formed a square enclosing the scaffold, which the condemned man mounted with a firm step. In a loud voice, so clearly articulated he could be heard at the furthest corner of the Great Square, he recited the "Shaha-da," the Moslem creed, and leapt with one bound on to the angareb, which Bringi instantly pushed from under him. The body swung to and fron in space, while the Bagaras drew their swords and waved them above their heads, threatening the like doom to all other malefactors. But the people maintained a silent and sullen attitude. The body had been exposed only half an hour when it was removed by Yokub, the Khalif's brother. He had it shrouded and borne to the cemetery, following the funeral procession himself with looks of contrition. The same night came robbers, who dug up the corpse for the sake of the clothes; and after them the hyenas, who tore the body into fragments.
A reign of terror prevailed at Omdurman. There was no mistaking the Khalif's game,-which was to rule as an irresponsible despot, counting on his faithful Bagaras to bring all the Sudan under a yoke of iron. More than ever were men afraid of spies; and each learned to bridle his tongue, and let none but trivial and indifferent words escape him.