In this fashion, while his regiment thinned out by disease, famine,
fighting, and the midnight knife, Seti came on to Dongola, to Berber, to
Khartoum; and he grinned with satisfaction when he heard that they would
make even for Kordofan. He had outlived all the officers who left
Manfaloot with the regiment save the bimbashi, and the bimbashi was
superstitious and believed that while Seti lived he would live.
Therefore, no clansman ever watched his standard flying in the van as the
bimbashi--from behind--watched the long arm of Seti slaying, and heard
his voice like a brass horn above all others shouting his war-cry.

But at Khartoum came Seti's fall. Many sorts of original sin had been
his, with profit and prodigious pleasure, but when, by the supposed
orders of the bimbashi, he went through Khartoum levying a tax upon every
dancing-girl in the place and making her pay upon the spot at the point
of a merciless tongue, he went one step too far. For his genius had
preceded that of Selamlik Pasha, the friend of the Mouffetish at Cairo,
by one day only. Selamlik himself had collected taxes on dancing-girls
all the way from Cairo to Khartoum; and to be hoist by an Arab in a foot
regiment having no authority and only a limitless insolence, was more
than the Excellency could bear.

To Selamlik Pasha the bimbashi hastily disowned all knowledge of Seti's
perfidy, but both were brought out to have their hands and feet and heads
cut off in the Beit-el-Mal, in the presence of the dancing-girls and the
populace. In the appointed place, when Seti saw how the bimbashi wept--
for he had been to Paris and had no Arab blood in him; how he wrung his
hands--for had not absinthe weakened his nerves in the cafes of St.
Michel?--when Seti saw that he was no Arab and was afraid to die, then he
told the truth to Selamlik Pasha. He even boldly offered to tell the