891,
he left that place for Omdurman with the goods.

At Omdurman the winter had come and gone, the Nile had risen to its full
height and had subsided, but there was no sign of Ahmed. I was not
surprised, for I had long been accustomed to disappointments of this
sort. I merely remarked to myself that the number of persons who had
deceived us had been increased by one, and that if a deliverer did not
soon come from Egypt, there was another deliverer--death--whose approach
was certain. The heavy work was sapping our waning strength, I began to
spit blood, felt severe pains in my chest, and was little else than skin
and bone.

The poor sisters were still nearer the grave. Our moral and physical
sufferings during these ten long years of captivity had told on us
terribly; death was what we most longed for and for which we patiently
waited. The sad prospect of never regaining our liberty, of living a
life of slavery, debarred from all the advantages and progress of the
world, never again to worship in our grand churches and enjoy the
comforts of our holy religion; but to live and die amongst the fiery
rocks and sand of Omdurman, where the burning sun turned dead bodies
into mummies--to die and be buried in slavery--the prospect of living
was indeed unattractive, and what wonder we should long for death to
free us from such misery!

After all these sufferings it was indeed hard to see our
will-o'-the-wisp-like hope, which we had pursued so often, dissolve into
nothing, and to find ourselves once more the victims of a fraud and
deception. How fortunate we thought those who had been killed in battle,
or had died of starvation or disease! We even envied the lot of those
who had been massacred in Khartum. After all, the anguish of death had
been but momentary, and now all suffering and pain was over, while we
seemed to have passed through a hundred deaths, we had been in his
clutches over and over again; hunger, thirst, and disease had all, at
one time or another, almost claimed us as their victims. We had
witnessed the destruction of cities, the annihilation of armies, the
slaughter of thousands, and the ruthless massacre and bloodshed of
innocent people; man's dignity trodden under foot, and human life valued
far below that of a sheep or a goat. And after all this we must live
and die forgotten and unknown, our lasting resting-place a strange land,
and our bodies in all likelihood food for hyenas. Thus we longed for
death to