The only acute differences they had were upon two points--the cleaning of
the medicine bottles and surgical instruments, and the looting. But it
was wonderful to see how Mahommed Seti took the kourbash at the hands of
Fielding, when he shied from the medicine bottles. He could have broken,
or bent double with one twist, the weedy, thin-chested Fielding. But
though he saw a deadly magic and the evil eye in every stopper, and
though to him the surgical instruments were torturing steels which the
devil had forged for his purposes, he conquered his own prejudices so far
as to assist in certain bad cases which came in Fielding's way on the
journey down the Nile.

The looting was a different matter. Had not Mahommed Seti looted all his
life--looted from his native village to the borders of Kordofan? Did he
not take to foray as a wild ass to bersim? Moreover, as little Dicky
Donovan said humorously yet shamelessly when he joined them at Korosko:
"What should a native do but loot who came from Manfaloot?"

Dicky had a prejudice against the Murderer, because he was a murderer;
and Mahommed Seti viewed with scorn any white man who was not Fielding;
much more so one who was only five feet and a trifle over. So for a time
there was no sympathy between the two. But each conquered the other in
the end. Seti was conquered first.

One day Dicky, with a sudden burst of generosity--for he had a button to
his pocket--gave Mahommed Seti a handful of cigarettes. The next day
Seti said to Fielding: "Behold, God has given thee strong men for
friends. Thou hast Mahommed Seti"--his chest blew out like a bellows--
"and thou hast Donovan Pasha."

Fielding grunted. He was not a fluent man, save in forbidden language,