Note 12 — Chapter II

Gabriel Charmes, the well-known French journalist, was the propounder of most of the fictions current about my action before and during the war. He was angry with the Nationalists for having knocked off the subsidies formerly allotted to the foreign press at Cairo. The rifles were Winchester rifles intended in reality for a new journey we thought of making to Nejd but never set out on. The Reuter’s telegrams of the day mentioned them as “seventeen cases of arms.” Several years afterwards, while being shown over the citadel at Cairo by the then English Commandant, I found my brass cannon and the rest of the things that had been taken out of my house in store in the arsenal, and having identified them got them restored to me.