text:  The old Sultan Mahassan worn out with age and infirmities had resigned the management of affairs almost entirely to his fiery son Hamed who encouraged not only by his success in baffling the former attempt but by the smallness of the force which had accompanied the British commissioner [46] openly set him at defiance declaring that he himself and not his father was now the Sultan of the Bedoweens: that his father was but an imbecile old man; and that any promise which might have been extorted from him could not be regarded as of any avail: and in short that the place should not be given up upon any terms