Evil tidings travel fast in these our days of electricity, and true it was that the unfortunate Allan Graham had fallen into the hands of the Bedouins, but nothing more was known.
He had disappeared from Matarieh!
When his detachment marched into headquarters, Sergeant Farquharson reported that the Master of Aberfeldie had left the village for a ramble in the vicinity one evening, so far as could be known, and had not returned. After a careful search by the Highlanders at a certain spot, a cigar-case which had been given to him by Cameron of Stratherroch had been found, and in the immediate vicinity the soil bore the impression of foot and hoof marks, as if a struggle of some kind had taken place. If killed he had not been killed there, as his body could not be found.
Beyond these meagre and unsatisfactory details nothing more was known, save that the Bedouins, intent on plunder and outrage, had been daily hovering about in the vicinity of the mounds and ruins of Heliopolis.
Allan had felt very lonely after the loss of his friend Cameron, all the more lonely and full of tender interest for the general circumstances of his life and fate, and thus—as the sergeant reported—he had rambled from the village where his men were cantoned, a little way into the vicinity to smoke and to ponder over the past and future.
After Cameron's catastrophe he felt himself more disposed to think of Olive, and to think kindly and tenderly, and of his mother's explanatory letter concerning the extraordinary conduct of Holcroft and Olive's love and grief; for we are told that 'among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring tide,' and in childish affection had the love of Allan Graham and Olive Raymond begun.
He lay stretched on a patch of grass, where two or three banana-trees grew near a ruined wall. The setting sun shed its red light far along the desert that stretched to the land of Goshen, with its luxuriant plains—yea, to the far horizon—and Allan, a thoughtful and a well-read man, as he looked around him, reflected, as he often did, how strange was the land where just then his duty led him—how strange that the Egyptians were there, without a tradition of a parent stock or of another land; that it was only known that a few generations after the Deluge they had become a great nation. In the words of Apollonius Rhodius:
'Oldest of mortals they who peopled earth,Ere yet in heaven the sacred signs had birth.. . . . . . . .Ere men the lunar wanderings learned to read,Ere yet the heroes of Deucalion's bloodPelasgia purpled with a glorious brood;The fertile plains of Egypt flourished then,Productive cradle of the first of men.'
Allan thought as he manipulated and lit another cigar, that the Egyptians of Arabi Pasha must be of different and inferior stuff from those to whom the poet of the Argonauts referred.
And there, but a little way off, lay Heliopolis and Matarieh, two places of great and solemn memories—Heliopolis, where Herodotus sought the wisest men in Egypt; where Strabo says they pointed out the house of Plato, where he then resided; where Potiphar lived, who bought Joseph from the patriarch; and Matarieh, a spot where the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, and the Holy Child Jesus tarried, including a well under a withered sycamore in which—according to the legendaries—the Holy Mother washed her Divine Infant's linen; a spot the turbanned Mussulmans still view with respect; and thereby was the piper of Allan's company playing 'The Evening Retreat,' and from the distance, over the flat ground, came the sound of his pipes, as he played 'The Birks of Aberfeldie.'
Perhaps it was that his reflections were not of a very lively nature, or that he was wearied by a long reconnaissance that morning in the direction of El Khan-Kah, but he, perilously for himself, dropped insensibly asleep, all unaware that a party of Bedouin horsemen, with hoofs muffled in the soft sand, had formed a kind of semi-circle round him, cutting off all chance of escape.
He could not have been asleep more than five minutes when the little prick of a lance which drew blood roughly roused him. He started to his feet and found himself confronted, surrounded indeed, by some twenty dusky sons of the desert, with hawk-like features, eyes that gleamed, and teeth that glistened exultantly.
The adjective had rather an unpleasant sound just then, so Allan said,
'And if not ransomed?'
The Bedouin slapped the butt of his Remington rifle and grinned, showing all his pearly teeth, with fierce signification.
'Who is your leader?' asked Allan, after a pause.
'That you will discover when you see him.'
'I trust he will spare my life, at all events.'
'What does your life, or the lives of all the accursed Franks in the world, matter?' exclaimed another Bedouin; 'may you all perish by the hand of God by drowning, as Pharaoh and his host perished, or by His causing the earth to open and swallow you up, as, the Koran tells us, happened to Korah!'
Whether a rumour had reached them of the sharp manner in which Colonel Warren overtook and punished the Arabian assassins of Professor Palmer and his companions in misfortune, Allan knew not. One fact was evident, that they were resolved to lose no time in carrying him off to their tents among the sandy recesses of Jebel Dimeshk.
They ambled on their way so fast, keeping him at a species of run, that he was on the point of sinking, and besought them to spare him a little; so, at the command of their leader, they halted for a little time in the starlight, and, weary and worn with toil and many emotions, he threw himself on the ground to rest.
He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to think over his new and calamitous position, and the chances of achieving an escape from it. If money was required—unless the sum demanded proved too enormous—he could produce a ransom, and he turned uneasily on his sandy couch as he thought over all his chances of success.
How like a horrible dream—a nightmare it all appeared—as those terrible hours spent in the vault at Dundargue had done.
What would be thought of his disappearance by the regiment, and at home, and memory flashed back to his soldierly father and tender mother—for, with all her aristocratic pride, tender she had ever been to him—so his first thoughts were of her. 'In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues;' so—a captain now, and in such savage hands—his first ideas were of his mother's grief, rather than of poor, repentant Olive.
He might be butchered in the desert, and never heard of again, for his life was at the mercy and caprice of the most lawless people in the world.
His disappearance as a mystery would soon become public property at home. There would, he knew, be all manner of newspaper paragraphs, suggestions, and surmises for a few weeks, and then, when these ceased, his story and his fate would be as much forgotten as last year's snow.
Again his captors began their march towards the mountains; and times there were, as he struggled forward to keep pace with them, when, in fierce revolt against the whole situation and its dreadful uncertainties, he felt as if his heart would burst, and a kind of agonised hopelessness crept into it.
The Bedouins conveyed him some five and twenty miles or more into the mountains, till they reached a kind of oasis, where their tents, which were very numerous, stood. Day was on the point of breaking, and Allan was utterly worn out. However keen excitement may be, Nature will demand her due, so he slept on a dirty Bedouinbarracan, and ere he did so, so great was the mental and bodily toil he had undergone, that he felt a kind of pleasure as drowsiness came upon him—a happiness to find oblivion—oblivion for a time even. To forget was a species of joy. And so he slept, despite those plagues of Egypt, the gnats, mosquitoes, and sand-flies.
In the morning he was informed that the chief of the tribe, who would be the arbiter of his fate, was as yet absent; and that, if he made the slightest attempt to escape, he would be shot down without mercy.
'God is great,' added his informant, who, like most Mussulmans, interlarded his conversation with pious allusions and quotations from the Koran; 'and whatever He has decreed will and must come to pass.'
For breakfast they brought him a few dates soaked in melted butter, a little sweet milk and curds. So simple are the habits of the Bedouins that one can subsist for a whole day on such a repast, and deem himself happy and luxurious if he can add a small quantity of corn-flour or a little ball of rice. Meat being usually reserved for the greatest festivals, they rarely kill a kid, save for a marriage or a funeral, though some tribes eat the flesh of the gazelle and the desert cow.
A couple of days on such food, with rough usage and toil—for they compelled him to groom their horses—a toil degrading to a man of spirit, rendered Allan somewhat faint.
He learned incidentally that there was another Frank a prisoner in their hands, who no doubt, like himself, was anxiously awaiting the return of the Bedouin chief.
With waking each morning Allan's miserable thoughts returned, and, undeterred by the threat of being shot if he attempted to escape, he thought of nothing else, and closely inspected the Bedouin camp and its vicinity with that view, despite the warning of the principal Bedouin, whose name he ascertained to be Abdallah, or 'the servant of God,' who repeatedly told him that he hoped 'the English would have their faces confounded,' the exclamation of the Angel Gabriel when he threw a handful of gravel against the foe at the battle of Bedr.
As the Bedouins never reside in towns or occupy houses, they live in encampments, pitching their tents wherever they can find pasturage for their horses and camels, changing the site of their abode as often as the support of their cattle or the vicinity of a more powerful and hostile tribe may compel them. Sometimes they sow a little Indian corn, and return to reap it when grown. The milk of their cattle and a few esculents found in the desert are their chief food.
All are trained to the use of arms, and are skilled in horsemanship, and Allan could perceive that the care of the flocks and herds was committed mostly to the women, while the youth of the tribe—all fellows spare of form, light of limb, and active as their native gazelles—were in their saddles scouring round the camp, and practising the use of the javelin, the spear, and the Remington rifle, with which many in Lower Egypt were now armed, as they had been flung away in thousands by the fugitive soldiers of Arabi.
The innate love of freedom which is fostered by the facilities for a nomadic life, and the desert-locomotion which his horses and camels afford him, impart to the Bedouin a dignified and haughty bearing, which contrasts powerfully with the servility and pusillanimity of the rustic sons of Egypt.
Unchanged from unknown generations, they are the same as when Volney wrote of them—'Pacific in their camp, they are everywhere else in a habitual state of war. The husbandmen whom they pillage hate them; the travellers whom they despoil speak ill of them; and the Turks, who dread them, endeavour to divide and corrupt them.'
Their wandering life affords more freedom to their women than usually falls to the lot of Moslem females, and the wild desert, where they always dwell, becomes in many cases the actual scene of those keen and passionate love adventures which are depicted in the tales and poems of the Arabians.
If Allan would escape from these Bedouins, he would require to have all his wits about him, and not risk the slightest mistake.
'The child of the desert, reared in continual wandering, possesses in the fullest degree the activity ofsense,' says a writer. 'His spirit is all abroad in his perceptive organs; he is voluble and sagacious, quick, passionate, and sympathetic, but by no means intellectual. Quickness of perception and strength of imagination are mental characteristics of the Bedouin, and superstition, the child of ignorance, is nowhere more powerful than among the wanderers of the desert.'
But in what direction was Allan to bend his steps, if he contrived to elude his captors? He might only wander into the barren desert—a sea of sand—there to perish of hunger and thirst, or be overtaken to suffer a cruel death.
Reflection showed him that it would be better to temporise—to await the return of the sheikh, and endeavour to treat about a ransom.
Beyond the encampment of rude tents, which they carry with them from wadi to wadi—the male portion employing their horses and camels in the transport from one oasis to another—Allan could see the desert, traversed by the camel-route to Suez by Regum-el-Khel, spreading far away to the north-east, the horizon enveloped in fog in the morning and evening, for the season was moist now.
Near the camp was the tomb of a santon, or holy man, surmounted by a little white dome, and shaded by date-trees.
Had the camp been pitched on higher ground, instead of in a green hollow, Allan might have known his precise whereabouts, as he would have seen in the distance to the south Mount Mokattam, crowned by the citadel of Cairo, with the many minarets of the great capital at its base.
On the third day, a commotion was caused by the arrival of the sheikh, who rode in, accompanied by an escort, all well armed and mounted. Allan was at once brought before him, full of natural anxiety to learn his fate, and great was his satisfaction to discover in him Zeid-el-Ourdeh, the Bedouin whom he had found wounded and bleeding near the camp of the Black Watch, and whom he had succoured and sent rearward to the hospital at Ismailia.
The recognition was mutual. He sprang from his horse, tossed the bridle to an attendant, and welcomed Allan to his tents, adding,
'I called you my brother when, after Kassassin, I thought the hand of death was upon me; and you are not the less my brother now that you have eaten bread and salt with my people.'
He had quite recovered from his sword-wound apparently, and as he moved about in his long, flowing dress, with the ends of his shawl-turban floating over his shoulders, his bearing and aspect were stately and graceful.
Allan, encouraged to find that his personal safety was now so far secured, ventured to speak of his liberty; but Zeid shook his head, while a glitter, suggestive, not of cruelty, but unmistakably of greed and avarice, came into his eyes; and he informed his prisoner that he would have to accompany the tribe further into the desert, to another oasis, where the grass was green.
His heart sank on hearing this.
Whether Zeid-el-Ourdeh meant to retain him as a species of hostage, in the hope of a ransom, or in the absurd idea of attaching him to his own fortunes, as useful from his knowledge of arms and European tactics, Allan could not divine. Anyway, his life for the present was safe in his hands, though Zeid's power might fail to protect him from other Bedouins, or the exasperated fellaheen of Arabi Pasha.
Zeid gave him back his claymore, which Allan greatly valued, as it was a family heirloom—an old Ferrara blade, which his father and grandfather had worn in the Black Watch long before him.
Zeid's own sword was a very remarkable one, which he had found in the sand near the Red Sea. It was long, straight, and double-edged, with a cross-guard of the middle ages, and had evidently been the trusty blade of some pious crusader, who had lost it, with his life perhaps, on the way to Jerusalem; and, like the sword of the Cid, it was inscribed,Ave Maria gratia plena dominus tecum.
'You look half-starved!' said Zeid, as he regarded Allan's face.
'I am wholly starved. I have had only some dates and milk for three days,' replied Allan, who, with some satisfaction, heard him order a kid to be killed, that they might have a repast together, and then he ordered the other Frankish prisoner to be brought before him.
'Holcroft!' exclaimed Allan, in a breathless voice, and scarcely able to believe his senses, when one, who seemed undoubtedly that obnoxious personage, was dragged before the sheikh with a sullen and defiant air scarcely suited to the situation. His European surtout and trousers were discoloured, tattered, and torn; he had on a scarlet tarboosh, and wore his fair beard at some length now.
'Holcroft!' exclaimed Allan again, 'you here? Here in Egypt—what miracle is this?'
'Your words express more surprise than pleasure,' replied Holcroft, while Zeid-el-Ourdeh looked from one to the other in some surprise at their evident sudden recognition. 'Ah,' he continued, with a malevolent grimace, 'you thought I was drowned, no doubt, and feeding the fishes in the Solent!'
'You are reserved for a drier and more deserved death, I presume,' said Allan.
'Sneer as you may over me and my misfortunes——'
'Misfortunes, you miscreant! But how in the name of wonder——'
'If you care to know how I come to be here, in the same unpleasant and unsavoury hands with yourself—a gunboat picked me up off Southsea, for I am a strong swimmer, but, for all that, was too exhausted to be sent ashore. I was put into the sick-bay and brought on here, all the way to Ismailia, and then turned adrift to live by my wits. I made my way to Cairo, and was fain to become billiard-marker at the hotel where I saw you, and once again at the review before the Abdin palace. The 196hotels, and cafes too, tired of me. I was setting out on foot to overtake some of your invalids en route to Ismailia when these infernal Bedouins nabbed me, and I am here.'
'And now that you are here, may I inquire what you mean to do with your precious self?'
'Take office under the Khedive's government. There will be no end of nice pickings for Europeans now that the shindy is over.'
'Office—as what?'
'Oh, anything—I am not particular—Inspector-General of Harems would suit me to a hair—down to the ground, in fact.'
'Bantering villain! And how about those diamonds you stole from Miss Raymond—a luckless heirloom in our family, always bringing evil to the holder or wearer?'
'Well, they have brought no evil to me yet,' replied Holcroft, with a defiant grin—a dogged one too; 'I have them safe here,' he added, slapping his breast pocket, 'and don't mean to part with them. They are quite a fortune to me.'
And he had the folly, the madness, in mere bravado, to show them for a moment.
'Keep these, fellow—they are certain to bring you ill-luck in some way.'
Allan was nearer the truth than he thought, as the sharp eyes of the sheikh saw the flash of the stones, and the spirit of acquisition was instantly kindled in his breast.
'Well,' thought Allan, 'this unexpected meeting is a strange coincidence; but, as Miss Braddon says, "life is made up of curious coincidences."'
Allan was aware that the sheikh had seen the jewels, though for a moment only, that were in Holcroft's possession. He knew that greed and theLex Talionis, or law of retaliation, are distinctive marks of the Bedouin character; but he also knew that their regard for hospitality is not a less remarkable characteristic, and that even an enemy is secure if he can obtain refuge in a tent.
Ali Bey (otherwise known as Don Pedro de la Badia) relates that when a Bedouin heard that his wife had given food to his mortal foe, who had sought charity at his tent, not knowing who or what he was, observed, 'I should probably have slain my enemy had I found him here; but I should not have spared my wife had she neglected the sacred laws of hospitality.'
But Allan felt doubtful how the sheikh might be disposed to respect these laws in the case of one like Holcroft, who had not fled to his tents for succour, but been brought there a captive, and had comported himself in a dogged and defiant way.
'And you had actually sunk to being a billiard-marker?' said Allan.
'For a time—yes; nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal. When taking stock of my affairs I found them shady—very; my assets falling far short of my liabilities. Thus I was forced to play out the only card left me, and put the screw upon your wealthy cousin, Miss Raymond. Sorry I can't give you a copy of that remarkable photo of Olive and myself, of which, no doubt, you all know now.'
'All,' replied Allan, amazed that the man could exult in his utter and degrading villainy. To him it seemed almost incredible that one who was by birth a gentleman, the son of a gallant old officer, and bad been the associate of gentlemen, could fall so low as Holcroft had done, and be so callous and shameless.
'Oh, for a glass of bitter or Burton and a good cigar!' said Holcroft; 'and, by the way, as you seem to speak his lingo, will you ask this old nigger in the striped counterpane why he keeps me here, and what he means to do with me.'
Allan inquired this of Zeid in Arabic; but to him it seemed that Hawke Holcroft totally failed to comprehend or to take it in that he was in any peril at all. As an Englishman he thought that no 'dashed foreigner' dared meddle with or molest him, yet these Bedouins had him at their mercy sure enough; and to judge of matters or chances by the standard of Regent Street and Piccadilly, would hardly do under the summits of the Jebel Dimeshk.
Remarking the tarboosh worn by Holcroft, and using Allan as an interpreter, the sheikh asked,
'Are you a Mussulman?'
'No,' replied Holcroft, with a laugh.
'A Christian, then?'
'No,' was the strange response.
'You must believe either in the Prophet or Christ?'
'I believe in neither.'
'Unhappy wretch!' exclaimed the sheikh, with astonishment in his tone.
'Men may believe in both, yet follow neither.'
'So do the devils believe—and like devils tremble' said the Bedouin.
'Well, I do not.'
'Do you feel no trust in God?'
'None!' was the blunt and defiant reply.
'Why?'
'He has always left me to myself.'
Allan sighed at this hopeless response, while the blasphemy of it filled the Bedouin—who, whatever his shortcomings in the way ofmeumandtuumwere, was pious in his way—with horror and indignation. After a pause, he said,
'Look at his eyes—they are grey; and does not the Koran say that on the last day "we shall gather the wicked together having grey eyes."
The twentieth chapter certainly has that curious remark, for with the Arabs—a black-eyed race—to have grey eyes is the mark of an enemy or a person to be avoided.
'You knew this man in Frangistan!' said Zeid.
'Too well,' replied Allan.
'Then he has wronged thee?' was the sharp question and suspicion of the Bedouin.
'Deeply; he tried to kill me, indeed.'
'Yet he lives?'
'Yes.'
'Why is this?'
'I thought he was dead—drowned,' replied Allan, evasively.
'Take this sword and smite off his head. The blade is sharp enough.'
Allan shook his head and drew back.
'You Franks are fools!' said Zeid, while the miserable Holcroft, though he knew not a word of what passed, guessed the terrible import of it, and glanced imploringly at Allan.
'Do you think,' said Zeid, after a pause, 'that his neck is turned to ivory, as the Koran tells us that of Moses was, when he was about to be beheaded for slaying an Egyptian?'
'The Koran—always that weary Koran!' thought Allan, impatiently.
'Will you tell him,' said Holcroft, 'that, if he expects a ransom from me, I have neither a friend nor a farthing in the world.'
Allan did so.
'Liar! may God burn thee!' exclaimed Zeid, as he thought of the diamonds, and, acting in obedience to a sign from him, Abdallah, unknown to Holcroft, was stealing behind him, armed with a heavy and deeply curved Damascus sabre of the keenest edge.
There was a flash in the sunshine as the blade was swept round by a swift back-handed stroke, and the head of the miserable Hawke Holcroft rolled along the ground, as his body fell prostrate on it in a heap, with the red blood welling out from every vein and artery of the neck.
'He has met hiskismet,' said Zeid, complacently.
At this sudden catastrophe, Allan turned away horrified—utterly appalled. He had seen men wounded in every way, and mutilated too by shot and shell, but had never seen aught like this—and in cold blood, too!
'He believed neither in the Prophet nor in Christ,' said Zeid, complacently; 'now that he is in hell, that cemetery for lost souls, he may learn the truth.'
And, torn from the pocket of the wretched creature's tattered surtout, the fatal diamonds were placed in the hands of Zeid-el-Ourdeh.
Allan, as he saw them sparkling in the sunshine, thought of all he heard his father say of them, and marvelled to whom they would bring evil next. If to the sheikh, he was fated never to know.
It was some time before he recovered the shock this scene gave him, but it rendered his desire to be gone—to be free—irrepressible; yet he dreaded just then to approach the subject with Zeid. Whether it was the excitement of a blood-shedding or acquisition of the diamonds, or both together, Zeid was in high good humour, and about noon gave Allan a dinner unusually sumptuous in his own tent.
Upon a tray of tinned copper were placed saucers of pickles, salad, and salt, with thin cakes of bread, and in the centre a dish of rice, highly seasoned with spice and saffron. Neither forks nor spoons were there, and he had to use his fingers. Thus it made him shiver to see the sheikh plunge his copper-coloured digits into the dish one moment and thrust them half-way down his open throat the next.
He always clapped his hands when he wanted any attendance.
A cotton towel surrounded the tray on the ground, on which they occasionally wiped their hands; then pipes of tobacco followed, and the sheikh became sociable, as he reclined back against a saddle over which some shawls and a barracan were spread, and Allan began to cast about in his own mind how to approach the subject of his departure.
He gathered courage from the knowledge that, after eating bread and salt together, or even salt alone, in the East, produces mutual obligations of friendship.
The sheikh was a man of great piety, after his own fashion. He said his prayers five times daily, the first time being between daybreak and sunrise, turning towards Mecca, and five times daily he washed his hands. He was a firm believer in magic, and that there existed somewhere in Upper Egypt, Ishmonie, or the Petrified City—so called on account of the great number of statues, representing men, women, children, and animals, with which its silent streets abound—all of which he believed to have been once animated creatures, miraculously changed into stone by a whisper of the prophet, in all the various attitudes of standing, sitting, or falling, but none of which are ever visible save to true believers.
He also firmly believed in the miraculous egg laid by a hen after Tel-el-Kebir, on which was inscribed the words—'Arabi has lost the battle because he mutilated the corpses of the enemy. Allah has punished him, but He will give victory to him in the end, if he will keep the commands in the future.'
'Hah!' said he, after a long pull at his chibouque, 'at Tel-el-Kebir your bare-legged men came on as hell will come at the last day.'
'How is that?'
'As the Koran tells us, with seventy thousand halters, each dragged by seventy thousand angels—a power nothing can withstand.'
'Accursed as you unbelievers are,' said he, after a pause, 'God seems to give you a wondrous power, even as he gave Solomon the gift of miracles in a degree greater than anyone before him; the animals and the vegetables obeyed him, and he was carried by the winds of heaven above the stars therein, and his power over the genii was by a seal ring, of which one part was brass and the other iron, and upon it was graven the great name of God. Yes, though unbelievers, you are swift in action as the pigeons of Aleppo; not like the Osmanli, who would catch hares in waggons,' he added, with reference to the proverbial slowness of the Turks.
'Sheikh,' said Allan, in his most persuasive manner, 'you know that I befriended you when in sore peril.'
'Yes, as my brother would have done,' said Zeid, his expressive face lighting up and his black eyes sparkling under the hood of his burnous, as he pointed with his left hand to his right shoulder, which had been slashed by the long sword of one of our Life-Guardsmen.
'Well, in memory of that you will allow me to depart home freely to my people?'
'Why? Are you not comfortable enough here? Is not one place that God has made as good as another? And who and what are your people? With all their skill and power, they are but wretched unbelievers, who go to battle with their legs bare, accompanied by bags of devils, that squall and groan, like those who strove to defame Solomon.'
'Do be just, sheikh!' urged Allan.
'I shall—is not justice the sister of piety?'
'You will allow me to go, then?'
'I have not said so. Why leave the desert and go back to cities, where men become intoxicated with the pleasures of this life, and forget that which is to come?'
Allan sighed. By this time he was weary of the sheikh and his stilted conversation.
Beginning with the inevitable aphorism, 'There is only one God and Mohammed is his Prophet,' the sheikh, after a pause, continued thus between long whiffs of his cherry-stick pipe: 'Stay with us and pray with us five times a day, each time turning to the Kebbah; eat not in the daytime during the whole feast of Ramadan, make the pilgrimage to Mecca, give alms to the widow and the orphan. These are the sources from which all goodness springs. Stay with us and do all these things. Become my brother indeed—a son of the desert. Why go back among the accursed Franks? You know how to use the sword, the spear, and the rifle. Stay with us; we shall give you a rich pelisse, a good blood mare, and a Bedouin girl, beautiful, good, and virtuous.'
This programme scarcely suited the views of the Master of Aberfeldie, but the situation was such a grave one that he dared not laugh at it.
'But you need not go to Mecca,' said the sheikh, as an after-thought.
'Why?'
'God is everywhere—why seek Him at Mecca, when we have Him here in the desert?'
Allan pled hard, and spoke of bribes and ransom, but apparently in vain, and he began to get sorely perplexed by the prospect before him, especially if the tribe took their departure—of which there was every prospect—in search of 'pastures new' further from Grand Cairo, and towards the plain of Muggreh.
He was obliged to dissemble his disgust and mortification, and could only hope of finding an opportunity of 'making,' as he thought, 'a clean bolt of it.'
A few uneventful days passed, and during these he could not help being struck with the simplicity of the domestic life and manners of the Sheikh Zeid-el-Ourdeh and his family.
Though the commander of more than six hundred horse, he did not disdain to saddle and bridle his own steed or to give him his barley and chopped straw.
In his humble tent his wife made the coffee, kneaded the dough, and cooked all the victuals, though a kind of princess in the desert and among her people. His daughters and kinswomen attended to the linen, and, closely veiled, went to the wells or springs for water, with classic-looking pitchers of brown ware balanced on their gracefully-carried heads—in ways, manners, and ideas all unchanged from those described by Homer, or as we find them in the history of Abraham and in Genesis.
It was while a prisoner thus with Zeid, that Allan heard the strange story promulgated by Arabi, that all Egyptians who fell fighting for the faith would come back to earth as spirits mounted on snow-white horses and armed with miraculous swords to completely exterminate the British—an idea evidently borrowed from the Koran, which ascribes Mohamed's victory at Bedr to his having as allies three thousand spirits led by the angel Gabriel mounted on his horse Haizum.
On this subject the ParisTempsrecorded that an Arab servant belonging to their correspondent asked the latter whether he had seen any of the returned spirits from Kassassin in recent encounters, and, on being answered in the negative, declared that the correspondent could not see them because he wasnotan Englishman.
And now to glance homeward at more civilised scenes—to the catastrophe at Hurdell Hall.
The terrible tidings were soon made known to Eveline that Sir Paget, on the homeward ride from Furzydown, had been suddenly seized by an unaccountable fit of irritation, and, in defiance of all advice and entreaty, though a bad horseman, had lashed and spurred the bay hunter—a vicious brute—while needlessly rushing it at a high fence, and been thrown with terrible violence.
In short, his neck was broken, and he had died on the spot without pain. A door had been procured from an adjoining barnyard, and on this humble bier the body had been brought to the Hall.
As one in a dreadful dream Eveline listened to all this, and the awful shadow of something—something, as yet unthought of and unconceived, fell blackly and bleakly across the dark horizon of her life, as she saw the body borne past her—the body she shrank from touching—borne past her indoors; and a darker shadow would yet fall, when she learned the news from Egypt.
Weakened by all she had undergone hitherto, and overcome by the sudden horror of the present event, Eveline could scarcely stand.
'You cannot go up the staircase to bed,' said Lucretia Hurdell, kindly.
'Oh—yes; yes, I can,' replied Eveline, with dry lips.
But she sank in a heap on the Persian carpet.
'Lift her up, Harry,' said his sister.
Harry was only too ready, and raised her at once in his strong arms.
'Oh, please to put me down,' said Eveline, imploringly; 'don't touch me—I can walk.'
'Nonsense, dear Lady Puddicombe—you must permit me,' he urged.
And holding the helpless girl close to him—so close as to preclude all attempted resistance on her part—he bore her steadily upstairs, and past the room whereitlay, covered with a sheet, and straight to a new apartment prepared for her, followed by his sister and Clairette.
The fast, horsey baronet's breath mingled with hers, but unconsciously for her, poor girl! Her soft face reclined on his shoulder, and he saw just then, more than ever, how fair and delicate—how very lovely she was; and he began to develop—or scheme out—some very ambitious plans of his own.
Hurdell Hall and the Hurdell estates were rather deeply dipped, and thus 'Old Pudd's money, even if encumbered by such a lovely bride, would be very acceptable when the time came.'
So thought Sir Harry, with the man—but a few hours dead—lying stark and stiff within a few yards of him.
Fortunately for Eveline, 'Nature's innocent opium, fatigue'—with her it was fatigue of mind—procured her some sleep; thus she was supposed to be the better able for what she would be compelled to hear on the morrow, as a telegram had arrived from Lady Aberfeldie—addressed to her—a document that, as Sir Harry said, 'proved a regular floorer, by Jove!'
In the morning, he said,
'She must not be told, as yet, of what yesterday's paper contained—the mysterious disappearance of her brother, to whom she seems most tenderly attached.'
'But how about the telegram from Southsea?' asked Lucretia. 'No doubt it refers to that event. Indeed, we do not know what it contains, good or bad news. It must be given to her; we have no right to conceal or keep it back, and may commit mischief by doing so.'
Sir Harry tugged his straw-coloured moustache with an air of perplexity, and said, while busy with coffee and game-pie,
'By all means, then; if Lady Puddicombe is to know about her brother—which, I fear, will cut her up more than poor old Puddicombe's catastrophe—there is no one who can break the news to her better than you, Lucretia.'
'How?'
'You are such a precious cool hand, don't you know.'
Miss Hurdell looked as if this was not very flattering, but quitted the luxurious breakfast-table, saying,
'Poor thing, she is not fit to hear any more bad news; she has such a worn-out look already.'
The telegramdidrefer to Allan—a most unwise mode of breaking such terrible intelligence—but Lady Aberfeldie never doubted that her daughter must have seen the public prints.
Eveline uttered a low wail, and fainted. A cry of terror escaped Clairette, who drew away the pillows from under her mistress's head, opened the collar of her laced night-dress, to let the air play freely about her delicate neck and white bosom, while she bathed her temples freely with Rimmel and Eau-de-Cologne; and Miss Hurdell, whose nature was somewhat hard, and who had never seen anyone faint before, looked on with some fear and suspicion, as animation slowly came back to the lovely face, with gasping sobs on the lips and heavy respirations, which made her bosom heave and fall.
George Eliot says, with truth, 'It is a wonderful moment the first time we stand by one who has fainted, and witness the fresh birth of consciousness spreading itself over the blank features like the rising sunlight on the Alpine summits that lay ghastly and dead under the leaden twilight. A slight shudder, and the frost-bound eyes recover their liquid light, for an instant they show the inward semi-consciousness of an infant, then with a little start they open wider, and begin to look, the present is visible, but only as a strange writing, and the interpreter memory is not yet there.'
The dull mental agony that comes after acute anguish or a great shock, proved too much for Eveline now, and she became prostrate, seriously ill in the hands of her new friends, and Clairette wrote instantly to Olive Raymond.
Eveline at times burst into passionate sobs, then she would lie very still with her long lashes closed and the tears oozing from under them, slowly down her pale cheeks, though her slender throat would be agitated by those after-sobs that seem so uncontrollable. Other times she would lie perfectly still, lost in deep thought, as she pictured all the past and tender love her manly brother had ever borne her, and how gently he pitied her, when he discovered her love for the lost Evan Cameron.
'The devil!' said Sir Harry to himself, as he smoked a cigar on the terrace under her windows, and looked up there from time to time and twirled his long fair moustache; 'who could have imagined all this! She must have loved that old fellow after all.'
'In the light of a father, perhaps,' suggested Mr. Pyke Poole.
'Of course—you are right; how else could she have looked upon him. Her sorrow must be for her brother.'
'Perhaps both.'
'Who the devil are all those cads crossing the park?' exclaimed Sir Harry, with sudden anger, perhaps at his friend's mild suggestion.
'The coroner's inquest.'
The latter was 'a thundering bore' to Sir Harry, who was provoked to see 'a parcel of louts in half bullet hats' gaping about the Hall. However, the matter was soon over, permission was given for the interment, and, after unlimited brandies-and-sodas in the butler's premises, they all departed in high good-humour with themselves.
Lord Aberfeldie came to attend the funeral, and brought with him Olive to remain with Eveline. Lady Aberfeldie did not think the Hurdells 'good form,' so she remained, as yet, at Southsea.
Eveline's father and cousin were shocked by the expression of her face. Intense mental pain seemed written on her brow; and her eyes, if sunk and inflamed, seemed to have gathered much of intensity.
The stipulated number of days allowed by custom to elapse between the day of death and that of interment were over, and the funeral too; Lord Aberfeldie, Sir Harry, Mr. Pyke Poole, and many others in scarfs and hatbands of wonderful length had departed with the remains for Slough-cum-Sloggit by train, and some of their carriages were now returning through the sunshiny park, where the soft rain was falling, and, as the clouds were breaking up, bright gleams of radiance danced along the sward.
Unused to death and unsympathetic, Lucretia Hurdell felt intense relief.
The great Tudor hall, with all its window blinds down and shrouded in silence and gloom, had seemed to her for all these days like one large sepulchre, though an odour of hothouse flowers was everywhere as the gardener brought all his treasures—hyacinths, waxen camelias, gardenia, faint Dijon roses, and so forth—to decorate the corridor, the death-chamber, and the coffin, while, unconscious of all the mischief he had wrought, the bay hunter enjoyed his corn and beans as usual.
So the coffin was laid in 'the family vault,' where lay the first baronet of the House of Puddicombe and the first wife of Sir Paget.
'I shall never lie there,' thought Eveline, with a shudder, when her father, before returning to Southsea, gave her the final details.
Poor Sir Paget was gone, but no one seemed sad about it, and everyone seemed to grow bright now that he was gone finally. Sunshine and air came freely into the house through the open windows now, and the nameless hush that for days had pervaded the vicinity of the dead was no longer necessary. The decorous sadness that was acted, even in the servants' hall, imposed by the presence of death—especially the death of a very rich man—was no longer required. The butler might whistle as he cleaned the plate, the housemaids might laugh freely now, and Mademoiselle Clairette indulge in a merry little French chauson unchecked by that rigid matron in black moire, the housekeeper.
So one of the closing scenes of a sudden tragedy had been acted in that fine old English manor-house, standing amid its richly-wooded chase, the undulating sward of which was of such a brilliant emerald that it reminded those who saw it that Hurdell Hall stood in the most fertile part of Hampshire.
When Sir Harry invited Sir Paget to visit him and join him in the fatal—as it eventually proved—cub-hunting, his object had been a nefarious one, but quite adapted to the tone of ablaséman about town like himself, the hope of engaging the beautiful young wife of his elderly club friend in a very decided case of flirtation—so ignorant was he of Eveline's character, and how her ill-assorted marriage was brought about.
Now he hoped by a more honourable course to secure both her purse and person.
By will, however, it was soon known that Sir Paget, to prevent a younger successor enjoying any of his pelf through her, had stripped her of everything but what he had been compelled to settle upon her for life.
However, Sir Harry thought she was every way a most desirable widow to win, but her sorrow and sadness were a sore worry to Lucretia.
'Don't weep, dear,' she would say, in that hard, sharp tone peculiar to some selfish women. 'It is the worst possible thing for one's eyes in every way.'
And, sooth to say, Miss Hurdell's cold, steely orbs did not seem even to have been much afflicted with the weakness of weeping.
'Ah—we all have our trials, dear Lady Puddicombe,' she resumed, after a pause. 'Do try to bear this patiently, and believe it all for—all for——'
'All for what?'
'Well—the best.'
'The best—how, Miss Hurdell?'
'Well—he was so old and you so young, don't you see,' replied this very matter-of-fact person.
Free—for whom and to what extent? Eveline never viewed the dispensation of Providence thus; but till Olive came with her soothing presence, every night amid the darkness of her room, the pent-up tempest in her bosom—the tempest of unavailing regrets—would burst forth with loud whispers and sobs till sleep came, as it always did, at last.
Before Olive arrived, Lucretia was ever by the bed-side of her 'sweet Eveline,' sitting for hours together, putting Eau-de-Cologne on her handkerchiefs and Rimmel on her temples, arranging her pillow or her footstool if she left her couch for a chair, telling her stories of foreign life at Naples, Homburg, and Monaco, and so forth, for she believed that Eveline had been left with a splendid jointure, and a Scottish estate by a former lover; while Sir Harry lounged about impatiently in the stables and kennels, with his briar-root, and thinking 'when will all this end? Andhowcan she go on as she does about that old pump?'
But a little time before Eveline had been unconscious of any special blessedness in her life;now—with regard to the fate of her brother and Evan Cameron—it seemed as if the restoration of the past, even while encumbered with captious, fretful, and jealous old Sir Paget, would be worth years of happiness.
'Oh, my brother—my brother Allan? Were there not wicked people enough in the world to be taken, that you must be reft from us?'
And these words found a terrible echo in the heart of Olive. More weary and empty than ever did life look to both, these girls. Everyone seemed to have some one to love them—some object in life to engross them—but neither of them had any now.
'If I could only die—if I could only die!' Eveline would murmur, as she tossed her sweet face and dishevelled hair on her pillow, and thought of that grave in the desert, and betrayed a frame of mind beyond the conception of mundane Lucretia Hurdell.
And her mind would go back to the old days with all their brightness at Dundargue and in Mayfair, before Sir Paget came into the family picture, and when pleasure seemed all her thought and occupation, and care quite beyond her province!
And the girl lay there thinking—thinking—it was impossible for her not to think and surmise. But for this sudden accident, how long might Sir Paget have lived at his years: and how long would he have tormented her about Evan?
As if to infer that she desired his death, how often had he said in the bitterness of his heart, before the news of Cameron's fall in action came, that 'he would cheat her yet, and live as long as she could do!'
She was free now, and not past her girlhood; and, if in life, Evan would be loving her still. But she thrust that natural thought aside; why brood over it now, when Evan was no more, for somehow there seemed in it a species of treason to her dead husband—little as she had loved him—now that he too was in his grave.
If this was her mode of viewing Evan Cameron, how little chance had Sir Harry Hurdell of affecting her heart!
Now that Sir Paget was gone, Eveline repented that his last thoughts of her as a wife had been bitter, and tried to think of him as a friend who had been kind at one time, a husband whose settlements had been generous, and would have been greater but for the jealousy that made him alter his will.
She now recalled with something like an emotion of pleasure, or certainly of satisfaction, that though she did not love, she had ever respected him, though his references to Evan Cameron had always made her wince and shiver.
'Poor man!' she exclaimed; 'and his soul went out into the night—in a moment—without time for a prayer or supplication to God!'
'So did the souls of our brave fellows at Tel-el-Kebir and elsewhere,' replied Olive, who had rather more metal in her composition than the softer Eveline.
Olive knew enough of life and of human nature to feel certain that her cousin was too young to relinquish all the hopes and fears, the many vague and brilliant dreams of girlhood. Another would come, butwho?
Time would show that.
'She'll get over all this nonsense by-and-by, poor little thing,' said Sir Harry to his chum, Pyke Poole, as they knocked the balls about in the billiard-room, trying canons and so forth for practice. 'She is, by Jove, the best groomed woman in the whole stud of our acquaintances—perfect in all her points. I'll go in for her, if I can—but it is too soon to begin the running yet. Girls' fancies are, however, easily drawn from one object to another.'
'And I don't think she could have fancied old Pudd much,' said Poole, as he mixed himself a glass of brandy-and-soda. 'I've seen many a rough spill in the field, but never such a devil of a cropper as he came!'
'You know I might do worse than marry such a sweet girl, Pyke?'
'You might, by Jingo!' replied Mr. Poole, with a knowing wink, and thinking—'Why should not he himself enter stakes for such a prize?'
'Puddicombe's settlements are splendid, I hear, but pass away if she dies without an heir. No chance ofthat, I think; and then some soft-headed Scotch fellow—if there is such a thing in the world—who loved her, has left her a place in the Highlands, where one could knock over the grouse and blackcock every year. We'll get married before the Derby. She'll have had plenty of time to air her grief and her weeds—Jay's "unutterable woe," no doubt—for old Pudd by that time. I've a heavy bet upon Dasher, and I'll have her in the grand stand on Cup Day, with my jockey's colours somewhere about her dress. She'll look, as she always does, a stunner!'
Poole could not help laughing as his friend ran on thus, in perfect confidence, and stroked his long yellow moustache. Though rather a bit of a reprobate, Sir Harry looked every inch a gentleman, a long-limbed sanguine blond, alternately blunt and overbearing; resolute and indolent, with the general air of a man who has seen everything that was to be seen—done everything that was to be done, and 'had found nothing in it.'
'To speak to her for a space would never do. I'll take my time,' he resumed; 'none but a fool meets trouble half-way.'
She would learn to love him in time—hang it all, how could she resist! This comfortable impression made him feel quite easy on the subject, and by degrees the satisfaction that always accompanies a weak mind took possession of him.
Olive never doubted that when Eveline got over the death, not of Sir Paget, but of Evan Cameron, she would marry again. She was too young to treasure a morbid grief; but Olive would not like to have seen her Lady of Hurdell Hall, for, with all a woman's sharp instincts, she had indefinable doubts about Sir Harry.
After Olive joined her, the two girls were never weary of comparing their hopeless notes and sorrows, and of searching the public prints. Eveline could do so freely and unchidden now for any further meagre tidings that might come of the lost one.
An unexpected and startling event—to be detailed in its place—did happen, and was duly recorded, but was unnoticed by them; and those who did see it, cared not to speak or write of it, while others were unaware of the deep and vital interest it possessed for them both.
'Dear Olive, but for you coming to me I think I might have lost my life—my reason—certainly my peace of mind—everything!' exclaimed the affectionate and effusive Eveline, wreathing her soft white arms round her cousin's neck, and nestling her face therein.
The first day she was 'downstairs' was quite an event at Hurdell Hall, so great was the fuss made of her by the baronet and his sister.
In her dressing-room she had been fully attired in her crape dress by Clairette, who might as well have dressed a lav-figure for all the apparent power of volition there was in Eveline. Again and again she had tried to bathe her cheeks into some colour, to smooth her hair, and went with slow reluctant steps to the drawing-room at last; and there the extreme depth of her mourning, her girlish face and figure, and her pure whiteness of complexion—the soft white of the arum lily—made her delicate beauty seem more striking than ever.
Sir Harry was beside himself with pleasure, and when he rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room after dinner, and after all the champagne he had imbibed at table, his attention and extreme effusiveness were such that Eveline was compelled at last to say, coldly,
'Sir Harry, I wish you would go away and leave me—leave me to my own thoughts.'
He urged his extreme joy at seeing her again after her long seclusion.
Eveline had now a horror of Hurdell Hall. It was associated in her mind with three dire calamities—Evan's death—though she had first heard of that from Sir Harry in London; Sir Paget's terrible catastrophe, and, collaterally with it, the strange disappearance of her darling brother.
She must get away, without delay, she thought, as the atmosphere of the place seemed to oppress her. So, in a few days, arrangements were complete for her departure to join her parents, who were still at Southsea.
Well, that was not a thousand miles from Hurdell Hall, thought Sir Harry; and it was too soon to venture on the subject of love or marriage yet; but a time would come, and a jolly one he doubted not it would be.
But, ere that time came, some very unforseen events had come to pass with reference to Eveline.
Allan had heard of Private Thomas Keith, of the 72nd Highlanders, who, after being taken prisoner in Egypt in 1807, rose to the rank of Aga of the Mamelukes and Governor of Medina; but the prospects of promotion in the desert, held out to him by Zeid, did not prove very attractive; and here we may mention that the name of Zeid is of great antiquity, for it was that of the adopted son of Mohammed, whom he placed on the Black Stone of the Caaba, and to whom he gave a wife named Zinab.
Zeid's wife had already suggested that Allan should have his head shaved, and that a turban or tarboosh should be substituted for his tropical helmet, with its red 42nd hackle; so he began to think that something must be done to put an end to this life of idleness and annoyance.
At times he thought he would affect to fall into the views of Zeid-el-Ourdeh; get the blood mare and put a burnous over his regimental jacket and kilt, and—leaving the 'Bedouin girl' out of the category—take an opportunity of trying the speed of the said mare, and escaping.
But the time for departing further into the desert drew near, and no mare was given him; he had, however, the offer of a camel, but that would not do at all.
He thought of the distress his disappearance must cause his family—if deemed dead, their sorrow; and ere long the deletion of his name from the army list, and from his position in what he deemed a family regiment, and the whole complication of the situation maddened him.
In that Bedouin band were hundreds of dusky robbers with whom he had not eaten the mystic bread and salt of the East, and who owed him neither favour nor protection; and thus the grotesque views and oppressive friendship of Zeid might fail to secure his life at their hands.
He knew that they would think no more of killing him than of killing a kid, and he recalled with sufficient disgust the swift catastrophe of the wretched Holcroft.
When rambling on the skirts of the black tented camp, under close surveillance, however, Allan observed that the tomb of the Santon had a remarkably broad and peculiar cornice round its dome, that it was curved upward like the rim of a billycock hat, and that a vine tendril of considerable strength had ascended, in the lapse of years, from the base to the summit of the dome; and thus he conceived, if he could ascend thereinto unseen, he might lieen perdue, till the tribe departed, and then he should be safe.
The day before the tents were to be struck, Zeid ordered some food to be procured by his huntsmen, who—though the food of the tribe was generally farinaceous—succeeded in capturing some of these gazelles that live in the open plain, where they browse upon the saline and pungent herbage.
Fully experienced in the haunts and habits of these animals, Abdallah and others concealed themselves in a hollow dug out of the sand and carefully covered over with brambles, and there they captured their prey by means of a rude network attached to stakes—the former being slightly concealed in the sand, and raised by means of a rope pulled when a number of the herd has ventured within its precincts. Thus twenty or thirty of these beautiful creatures, with their bright hazel eyes, spiral horns, and slender limbs were taken at a time.
The gun was used only when other means failed, as ammunition is too costly for ordinary occasions in obtaining the supplies of food. Allan, while hovering about the huntsmen, effected a final reconnaisance of the Santon's tomb, and resolved to make the attempt that very night.
When sudden darkness fell as usual, instantly after sunset, and no moon as yet had risen, while Zeid and his family were busy with their final ablutions and prayers, Allan—his bold heart beating wildly the while—crept softly out of the tent, under the uplifted canvas wall thereof, and crawling flatly on his hands and knees, with the blade of his drawn sword in his teeth, began to leave the hated encampment behind him.
It was a time of keen and poignant excitement. Every moment he expected to hear an outcry announcing that he was missed from his place, or seen even amid the gloom and obscurity, by the keen eye of some practised son of the desert.
Fortunately all were at their prayers or engaged in preparations for departure on the morrow, and, as the distance increased between himself and the dark camp, his spirit began to rise, and he thought to himself, why had he not made this attempt before? But, sooth to say, it would have been impossible, as he was less watched latterly than he had been at first.
Even at the distance of half-a-mile he did not assume an erect attitude, lest his figure might be seen between the sky and horizon, but continued to creep steadily on, till at last he ventured to rise from the ground, and strode swiftly towards the tomb of the Santon, which was about two miles from the camp.
The stars were coming out now, and a sigh of relief escaped him as he reached it—a sigh that ended in an exclamation of dismay as a tall Bedouin, who seemed to spring from the ground, so sudden was his appearance, stood face to face with him, and in a moment he recognised Abdallah, the second in command under Zeid!
He perceived Allan's sword in his hand, and, knowing that he was escaping, drew a pistol from his girdle—a pistol the explosion of which would have proved most disastrous, but by one trenchant stroke Allan hewed the Arab's left hand off by the wrist, and hand and pistol fell on the sand together.
Muttering a terrible malediction, the Bedouin, wrapping the bleeding stump in the folds of his burnous, furiously assailed Allan with his formidable sabre, shouting, as he did so, something to this purpose:—
'Unbelieving wretch, you shall go from hence to hell, where your hands will be chained to your neck, and you will be compelled to oppose your face to the flames.'
'Oho!' thought Allan, 'the Koran again!'
If he had time or means to give an alarm, all would be over.
It was a life for a life now, and both men fought desperately; both were expert swordsmen, and both were filled with blackest fury—the Bedouin by the agony of his wound, and Allan by the peril which menaced him.
After pausing to draw breath for a moment, Abdallah came rushing on with blind rage; Allan warded a cut, and, closing in, caught his sword-hand by the wrist and held it with an iron grasp; then, adroitly dropping the basket hilt of the claymore from his right hand, he caught the shortened blade and plunged it, dagger fashion, into the breast of the Arab, who fell at his feet and expired.
Inspired by an instant thought, he dragged the dead body away, and the hand and pistol also, to some distance from the vicinity of the tomb, and, returning, proceeded stealthily and speedily, if worn, breathless, and feeling rather sick by his recent work, to climb by the branches of the vine up the wall of the circular edifice, and over its heavily curved cornice, behind which he crouched down flat, and there he lay for hours, exposed to a shower of rain, the fall of which he hailed with thankfulness, as it would obliterate any traces of blood in his vicinity, and also his footmarks from the bruised branches of the vine which he had used as a ladder.
He knew that, if retaken now, the discovery of Abdallah's fate would seal his own; so, if found, nothing was left him but to die sword in hand.
Each respiration came heavily, as he lay there listening for every passing sound, and wondering how he had achieved the first chapter of his escape, and all the bloody and necessary work so well.
Strange it was that his hand should avenge the miserable Holcroft; but he did not think of that till afterwards; nor did he think of the too baleful effect the wet and damp of the Egyptian night might have upon his own health.
At length the rain ceased, and the blue dome of heaven appeared in all its wondrous beauty—for wondrous indeed it is by the shores of the Nile, though this was in the first season of the Egyptian year, when the weather is generally moist.
But the sky is so cloudless, and the brightness of the moon so intense, that the natives, when sleeping in the open air, as they often do, cover their eyes, as the effect of the moon's rays upon the sight is more dangerous and violent than that of the sun.
No sleep, however, visited the eyes of Allan that night; he remained without desire to close them, preternaturally, acutely, and painfully awake, and watchful as a lynx.
It was all as Allan anticipated. Day had scarcely dawned, and the striking of the tents begun, ere he was conscious that his absence was discovered, and more than a hundred swiftly-mounted horsemen, with cries and shouts, darted from the camp in every direction around it in search, and, if afoot, he must inevitably have been overtaken; but, concealed where he was, he lay in safety, though his heart throbbed so violently that he seemed to hear its pulsations, as he heard the Bedouins, at full speed, pass and repass the Santon's tomb, with guns and rifles unslung, intent on his recapture and destruction.
He clenched the hilt of his claymore. If traced to where he lay—if discovered—he could but sell his life, and dearly did he resolve to do so!
He heard their voices, their surmises, their suggestions, and their threats; and lucky it was for him that the rain and subsequently the heavy dew, of the past night had obliterated the traces of his footsteps near the tomb and on the tendrils of the vine, also the traces of the blood of Abdallah, the discovery of whose body was greeted by yells of rage that pierced the air; but the rain and the dew were ere long to have a baleful effect on Allan in the time to come.
At last the riders seemed to give up the search as hopeless, and by twos and threes came slowly back to camp, with horses weary and bridles loose. After mid-day, the tents were finally struck, stowed away, with all household utensils, on the backs of camels and horses, and the whole tribe of Zeid-el-Ourdeh took its departure in a north-easterly direction, towards the great desert, through which lies the route taken by Bonaparte in 1799, and, before evening fell, the last of them, like black specks, were alone visible, and ere long they quite disappeared from view.
Now Allan, worn and weary, after a day without food or drink, slept for a time, and the moon, clear, bright, and refulgent, was high in the heavens when he prepared to descend from his lurking place.
He looked keenly, anxiously, and carefully round him, as it was possible that some of the Bedouins might return to their late camping-ground for some object of their own; and, moreover, others were to be avoided quite as much as they.
No living thing was visible, and the most awful silence seemed to reign around him.
Allan descended from his perch, stiff, benumbed, and well-nigh powerless, to begin his lonely and perilous journey; but whither?
Ignorant of the country and of the way to pursue, he knew not that the canal which leads from Belbeis to Grand Cairo lay on his left; and after toiling on without adventure for a few days and nights, subsisting on dates, wild-beans, and lotus-roots, with a little water from an occasional spring, he found himself, weary, worn, and faint, with pains in his head and loins, and shivering in his limbs—the forerunners of a deadly illness—crossing what is the camel-route to Suez, as he penetrated into another portion of the desert.
He saw occasionally vultures, storks, and pelicans; and now and then a herd of beautiful antelopes swept past him; but—as he thanked heaven—no Bedouins. More than once he came upon nitre springing up in the sandy waste, like crystallised fruit. At times these spots seemed as if overgrown by moss and coated with hoar frost—hoar frost under a fervid Egyptian sun; and according to the quantity of the nitre, their fantastic shapes were either a dazzling white, or more or less tinted by the yellow hue of the sand.
More than once in his fitful slumbers by night under the baleful dew, there came before him in a dream the agony of his lurking on the summit of the tomb in momentary dread of discovery, and then he was again closing in combat hand-in-hand with Abdallah, the aspect of whose dark face, with gleaming eyes and glistening teeth, curiously blended with an idea of Holcroft, came vividly before him; and then, when just in the act of plunging in his shortened sword-blade, he would awake with a nervous start to find himself still in solitude with quiet stars looking down upon him.
At last when about to sink he saw before him the well-known fringes of greenery and foliage that indicate the line of a canal, and it proved to be a portion of that of Moses, and a cry of joy escaped him when he heard the whistle of a locomotive and saw the welcome smoke of a train running westward.
How much the sound and sight we deem alike so hideous spoke to his heart of home, of ease, of peace, safety, and civilisation. In short, he soon discovered that he was midway between Kassassin and Mahsameh and by a liberal promise of backsheesh to an Egyptian labourer whom he met, and whose assistance he solicited, he reached a railway station and obtained all the succour he needed from the European officials there.
By them he was placed in a train for Ismailia, and ere long he saw once more those places which were familiar to him as having passed them with the troops—Ramses, Tel-el-Mahuta, and El-Magfar, where the Black Watch had encamped, and where he had befriended Zeid-el-Ourdeh; and ere long he could recognise, when he had left the sea of sand behind him, the white-walled houses of Ismailia against the deep blue of the sky, and the tall forest of masts, those of our transports and warships in the adjoining lake of Timsah.
He had no recollection of more, or even of reaching the railway station. His heart beat wildly, his head swam round him, and a darkness seemed to envelop him. He had fainted.