Wad-el-Fahel, and occupied myself with "illuminating" its pages with red-and black-ink designs; this was an occupation I had often earned a few dollars at, but Fahel still owes me for my last exploit in "illumination." I left the work unfinished about noon to attend to two young men attached to the prison, who had come in from the fight, one with a bullet over the left temple, and the other with a bullet in the muscle of the left arm. Provided only with a penknife, I made a cross cut over the spot where I could in one case see, and the other feel the bullet imbedded, and pressed them out; both bullets had kept their shape, and must have been encountered at extreme range, or rather beyond it.
Maybe, with a European, chloroform might have been necessary for the extraction of the bullet in the arm, but with a Soudanese — have I not already said that a dervish can continue leaping and stabbing with half a dozen severe wounds in his body? A dervish can and will kill at the moment when the ventricles of his heart make their last contraction. Bodily pain, as we understand it, is unknown to them. Manya time have I applied, and seen applied, red-hot charcoal to sores, with the patients calmly looking on. With my present patients, after dabbing a little carbolic acid over the wounds, I asked what news they had brought. Yacoub, they said, was killed; almost all the faithful were killed or wounded; the Khaleefa himself was running back to town, but they had outstripped him. While still questioning them, Idris es Saier told me that the Muslimanieh who had been
