Between the prison and the Nile no houses stood, and at this time the
prisoners were allowed, so long as daylight lasted, to stumble in their
chains down the half-mile of broken sloping earth to the Nile bank, so
that they might draw water for their use and perform their ablutions.
For the native or the negro, then, escape was not so difficult. For
along that bank the dhows were moored and they were numerous; the river
traffic, such as there was of it, had its harbour there, and the wide
foreshore made a convenient market-place. Thus the open space between
the river and the House of Stone was thronged and clamorous all day,
captives rubbed elbows with their friends, concerted plans of escape, or
then and there slipped into the thickest of the crowd and made their
way to the first blacksmith, with whom the price of iron outweighed any
risk he took. But even on their way to the blacksmith's shop, their
fetters called for no notice in Omdurman. Slaves wore them as a daily
habit, and hardly a street in all that long brown treeless squalid city
was ever free from the clink of a man who walked in chains.
But for the European escape was another matter. There were not so many
white prisoners but that each was a marked man.
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