"You mean the Khalifa?"

"That's right, sir. I'm not good at all over these Egyptian chaps.
I've one name for them all--the bad lot, and that's enough for me. Now,
sir--bah! Ben Eddin, I mean; breakfast will be ready in ten minutes, so
look sharp. I like to see you have a good meal in the morning, just as
I like one for myself. It's something to keep you going all day. It
makes a deal of difference if you start fair."

"I'll be there," said Frank.

"Recollect you're to put on your clean white cotton jacket. Mr
Ibbrahim says his chaps have been seeing to the camels so that they
shall look their best, and that it's very important that the Hakim
should be dressed out well, and he will."

Frank's toilet in those days was very simple, and within the time he was
at the door of the Hakim's tent, to find him dressed and waiting to
begin his morning meal, the professor coming from the tent directly
after, ready to greet both and enjoy the excellent repast that was
waiting, the Emir having kept up his attentions in that direction to the
doctor who had saved his arm from mortification, and consequently
himself from death.

There was the loud hum of voices right away through the camp, from which
the fragrant smoke of many fires arose through the grey dawn, and an
unwonted stir indicating great excitement prevailed and rapidly
increased with the coming light, for the orange and gold streamers
announcing the rising of the sun were beginning to flush in the eastern
sky, illumining the far-spreading city, and turning the sands where it
was built into sparkling gold.

As the sun rose higher the three Englishmen gazed wonderingly at the
city which lay stretching to right and left--the place into which they
were to make their triumphal entry that morning, as soon as the Emir's
little force, which seemed to have grown unaccountably during the night,
was marshalled; and the professor pretty well expressed the feelings of
his two friends as he stood and gazed at the place, their eyes dwelling
longest upon a white dome-like structure that towered up, and which they
learned was the Mahdi's tomb.

"And so this is Omdurman, is it?" he said. "Then I suppose Khartoum
will be just such a city of mosques and palaces. Why, there isn't a
redeeming feature in the whole spot! It's just a squalid collection of
mud-houses and hovels, built anyhow by people accustomed to live in a
tent or nothing at all. Why, if you took the trees away