whatever may have been your motive, you were enabled to
save the life of my wife, and henceforth you are my friend."

Then he turned to the horsemen, who were still grouped on the bank
above.

"You have heard what has been said? The white man is under the
protection of my harem; the Jaalin is henceforth my friend."

Mahmud was a fine specimen of the tribesmen of the Soudan--tall, well
built, and with pure Arab features. He was the Khalifa's favourite son;
and was generous, with kindly impulses, but impatient of control. Of
late, he had given way to outbursts of passion, feeling acutely the
position in which he was placed. He had advanced from Omdurman
confident that he should be able to drive the infidels before him, and
carry his arms far into Egypt. His aspirations had been thwarted by the
Khalifa. His requests for stores and camels that would have enabled him
to advance had been refused, and he had been ordered to fall back. His
troops had been rendered almost mutinous, from the want of supplies.

He had seen the invaders growing stronger and stronger, and
accomplishing what had seemed an impossibility--the bringing up of
stores sufficient for their sustenance--by pushing the railroad forward
towards Berber. Now that their forces had been very greatly increased,
and the issue of the struggle had become doubtful, he had received the
order for which he had been craving for months; and had been directed
to march down and attack the Egyptian army, drive them across the Nile,
and destroy the railway.

By means of spies he had heard that, ere long, a large force of British
soldiers would come up to reinforce the Egyptians; so that what might
have been easy work, two months before, had now become a difficult and
dangerous enterprise. The manner in which the Dervishes had been
defeated in their attacks upon Wolseley's desert column, and in the
engagements that had since taken place, showed how formidable was the
fighting power, not only of the British troops, but of the native army
they had organized; and his confidence in the power of the tribesmen to
sweep all before them had been shaken.

The Dervishes scowled, when they heard that they were not to have the
satisfaction of massacring this Englishman, whose countrymen were still
keeping up a terrible fire on their redoubt. It was not one of their
wives who had been rescued, and Gregory's act of jumping overboard
seemed to them to savour of madness; and if that plea