In spite of the emphatic prohibition
by law of all loud lamentations, the sound of 'weeping and wailing arose
From almost every house.' The whole people, deprived at once of their
acknowledged sovereign and spiritual guide, were shocked and affrighted.
Only the Mahdi's wives, if we may credit Slatin, 'rejoiced secretly in
their hearts at the death of their husband and master,' and, since they
were henceforth to be doomed to an enforced and inviolable chastity,
the cause of their satisfaction is as obscure as its manifestation was
unnatural. The body of the Mahdi, wrapped in linen, was reverently
interred in a deep grave dug in the floor of the room in which he had died,
nor was it disturbed until after the capture of Omdurman by the British
forces in 1898, when by the orders of Sir H. Kitchener the sepulchre was
opened and the corpse exhumed.
The Khalifa Abdullah had been declared by the Mahdi's latest breath
his successor. He determined to have the choice ratified once for all
by the popular vote. Hurrying to the pulpit in the courtyard of the mosque,
he addressed the assembled multitude in a voice which trembled with
intense excitement and emotion. His oratory, his reputation as a warrior,
and the Mahdi's expressed desire aroused the enthusiasm of his hearers,
and the oath of allegiance was at once sworn by thousands. The ceremony
continued long after it was dark. With an amazing endurance he harangued
till past midnight, and when the exhausted Slatin, who hard attended him
throughout the crisis, lay down upon the ground to sleep, he knew that his
master's succession was assured; for, says he, 'I heard the passers-by
loud in their praises of the late Mahdi, and assuring each other of their
firm resolve to support his successor.'
The sovereignty that Abdullah had obtained must be held, as it had
been won, by the sword.
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