Chapter VIII
In the short interval at our camp I had given Ab-Domen explicit orders as to just what to do. Twenty of the best tribesmen and all the available horses came with me. The men were mostly Moplahs with a few Kadas. They had long roamed the desert and having had much experience with tourists, were as rapacious and blood-thirsty a lot as one could wish. In addition I had Swank and Whinney, trusted and true, with the exact amount of intelligence necessary to handle the turbulent natives and no more.
Ab-Domen stayed with the caravan. His instructions were to retrace his steps with the outfit which was, of course, slow moving. He was to make one day’s journey after which he was to pitch camp and be prepared to welcome us back or dig in and resist to the death should Allah so will. My parting with the ponderous dragoman had been unusually affecting and it was with a stern, set countenance that I headed my impetuous band.
For some time we rode in silence. The vault of heaven was still black at the zenith but at its eastern edge glowed a widening band of silver that flickered and ran fitfully about the horizon as the flame runs around the wick of an oil stove. I never light my four-cylinder blue-flame without thinking of that momentous hour. Back of us the star, El Whizbang, sank to its usual matinal extinction, a faithful and exemplary planet, having performed its good deed for the night. We soon reached the crouching form of the Circassian woman with whom I left supplies, a loaf of bread, a goatskin of camels-milk and several of the latest magazines and whose location I marked for Ab-Domen’s guidance with a small red flag mounted on a spear. Thus we left her, looking like the eighteenth green of a desert golf course.
In the growing light the trained eyes of my Moplahs easily followed the vague tracks of my previous ride. No wind had risen to disturb the shifting sands and though invisible to me their practised vision easily picked up the trail. They were much puzzled when we reached the site of my struggle with the sorrel where the deep hoof marks and trampled sand were plain to all. “You fell?” asked Ouidja, a cadaverous Kada. I laughed atthe idea and shortly narrated the incident to their great delight, and ejaculations of “Bishmillah!” “Biskra!” and “Wahully!”
Day now streamed lucidly over the undulating plain but though the tension of the previous hours was somewhat relaxed by action the increasing light brought to me an increase of anxiety. By now Azad’s camp would be astir. At this very moment the attack might be beginning if—alas! it had not already ended. This despairful thought prompted an attempt on my part to shorten the distance between us.
Between our present position and the original site of Azad’s camp lay an hour’s hard riding. From that point he had gone north while my course had been east. We had been describing two sides of a right angle. Obviously the intelligent thing to do was to close the triangle and take the shortest possible route along its hypotenuse. “Halt!” I ordered.
THE RESCUE“Superb! you are like a swift-running tide-race foaming over a hidden reef.”
The Rescue
Hastily dismounting I drew an accurate diagram on the desert, which is ideally adapted for geometric study. All my life long I have clung to the knowledge that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. It stood me in good stead now. Quicklyfiguring the approximate distance which Azad and I must have travelled I leaped into the saddle with a cry of “Q.E.D.” to the mystification of my followers. From now on I was leader indeed. According to my figures and time allowance the distance to be travelled should be about nineteen miles which, with our superb animals, we could expect to travel in a little more than an hour. “Pray Heaven Euclid was right,” I murmured.
The sun had cleared the horizon and struck brightly on our flowing cloaks.
“You are a wonderful sight!” cried Swank, who had ridden off at a distance to take a photograph. “Superb! You are like a swift-running tide-race foaming over a hidden reef!”
But I was oblivious to his poetic similes for, far off but dead ahead, I seemed to see an answering gleam of white and a faint dusty blur on the horizon. My heart stood still as my horse bounded forward more swiftly than ever.
“On!” I shouted hoarsely. The others caught the infection of my excitement and we thundered onward.
Yes! ... it was Azad and his assassins!
After an interminable half-hour we could see them plainly. The attack was on in all its fury. Veryevidently Azad’s men had seen our approach, even as we had detected them, and had thrown themselves on their quarry with the idea of having that part of the job done with before we could come up. But they had reckoned without the intelligence and courage of Lady Wimpole and the brute obstinacy of her husband. Wimpole, it appeared later, the instant he suspected the hostile intentions of Azad’s party, had formed his group into a British square which he considered absolutely unbreakable.
We could see the huddled formation in the center with the encircling cordon of Bassikunus galloping about it. The sight of a merry-go-round invariably brings back that tragic picture. Soon we heard the fierce cries of “Blida! Laghouat blida!” a Bassikunu form of unprintable torture which clearly accounted for the desperate resistance of Effendi and his men. Poor Effendi! I had feared he would give up at the first shot, but I did him an injustice.
Now we were only a half-mile away but O, what dire things can happen in a half-mile. How I cursed the desert for its magnificent distances as I urged my horse forward. An occasional shot, a scream, an imprecation now mingled with the risingdust. At intervals twos and threes of the attacking party broke from the circle, darted forward and plucked some screeching fragment from the human wall. A camel dashed by me, bellowing piteously, the upper third of his hump cut cleanly off by some terrific sabre-swing which gave him the singular look of a table topped mountain. Brick by brick, stone by stone, life by life, the living parapet was being torn away.
Now in the center I could see the little group of defenders, smoking revolvers in hand, Effendi-Bazam crouching low, praying and firing simultaneously, Lord Wimpole, white as paper, Lady Sarah—my Sarah! redder than ever; a flaming beacon of courage, her bottle-green veil flying behind her and her eyes snapping behind her dark-blue glasses. Horrors! The square had crumbled!—the wall was down.
With a loud cry of “Blida!” the desert-scum rose like a tidal-wave overcoming the gallant group in a final heart-rending crash. A cloud of dust, pierced by wails of agony, obscured the ghastly details of the picture.
At times like this one does not think clearly; one acts. It was so in this instance. Without a word being spoken Swank and Whinney ranged themselveson either side of me, my Moplahs forming a dense triangle at our backs. The enemy had instantly whirled about presenting everywhere a front bristling with guns, lances and gleamingsimlas—the long, curved desert-swords. With increasing speed we hurled ourselves at the mass. Representing as I did what efficiency experts call the “point of contact” my position was one of extreme danger.
Let me but dispose of the first man! He was a gigantic fellow with a gun approximately twelve feet long pointed directly at me. As he pressed his finger to the trigger my automatic barked and he crumpled up with a blue-edged hole in his forehead. The next instant our crushing wedge split Azad’s warriors into fragments. In that first moment of terrific impact Swank and Whinney stood by me nobly. Only men trained in the rush-hour tactics of civilized subways could have come through alive.
With the first penetration accomplished it was a case of hand to hand fighting. Everywhere were struggling knots of humanity, swaying, plunging, stabbing, slicing ... it was hell let loose. A single thought in mind, I searched frantically for Lady Sarah. She was nowhere to be seen. Weaving my way between sprawling groups I fought toward theedge of the battle. Then I saw the devilish Azad’s scheme, for at a distance of a hundred yards were two horsemen, a muffled figure between them, galloping furiously to the southward. Crafty villain! under cover of the fighting his idea was to escape.
Free of all obstacles I sped after them, rapidly gaining on their encumbered progress. It was two to one but what cared I. Seeing themselves overtaken they reined up while Azad’s bodyguard took deliberate aim through the sights of his long gun. I could almost feel its cold muzzle on my brow. But they had reckoned without the power of the woman they carried. With a convulsive spring she threw herself about the marksman and his bullet whistled over my head; a second later he fell pierced by the last ball from my automatic which I flung into the sand. In a flash I was alongside.
“Azad,” I shrieked—“your hour has come!”
His usually calm face was twisted with evil passion, not unmixed with terror. Without the help of his henchmen the weight of the English woman had been too much for him and I saw her huddled body slip from his grasp and fall heavily to the sands. He pulled savagely at his beast’s mouth with the evident intention of backing and trampling her to death. But at that second I resorted to an old Moplah trick which is the pride of our tribe.
SHEIK TO SHEIK“Azad,” I shrieked,—“your hour has come——.”
Sheik to Sheik
At a distance of ten feet I pointed the muzzle of my gun into the sand and using it as a vaulting pole described an arc in the air. Even so I should have been severely if not fatally wounded for the low-lived creature was alertly awaiting my descent to meet me with an inescapable blow of his razor edgedsimla.... I say “inescapable” for who can dodge in the air? But wait.... At the very second when by all the laws of gravitation I should fall against the sweeping blade, at the very instant when the wiry desert pirate delivered what he meant should be my death blow ... I pressed the trigger of my gun and fired it into the sand. The recoil of these Arab weapons is enormous. For an appreciable time my flight was not only arrested but reversed.
Bird-like I leaped lightly clear of the whirring blade only to fall with a crash on the baffled nomad’s head, enveloping him in my burnous under the folds of which I dragged him to the ground.
It was now a Sheik to Sheik contest; in-fighting of the most inward character.
Fighting in a burnous is very much like fighting under the bed clothes, a pastime in which I hadoften indulged during my school-boy days. Moreover I was master of numerous grips and holds which are not in the Arab vocabulary. But Azad was at grips with death and knew it; in addition I felt sure that he still had his pistol which, if he could but press it against my side, would be unfortunate.
His wiry strength surprised me. He constantly slipped from my grasp. It was like fighting a basket of eels in a clothes-hamper. Hither and yon we thrashed. Once I got a grip on his Adam’s apple and thought to have wrenched it from his throat but his teeth closed on my ear lobe and I loosened my hold. Now I heard the thud of horses’ hoofs, footsteps and approaching voices.
“Club him! Club him!” shouted some one.
But the rescuing party were in a dilemma. They could not tell which of the struggling forms to club. Resolved not to let go of my enemy, with my brain reeling and the blood pounding in my temples I decided on a desperate expedient.
“Club us both,” I shouted with my last ounce of breath.
A heavy blow sounded and the figure in my arms relaxed. Before I could cry “Hold!” a second blow fell. A white light blazed before my eyes and I knew no more.