We nightly pitch our moving tent,A day’s march nearer home.
We nightly pitch our moving tent,A day’s march nearer home.
We nightly pitch our moving tent,A day’s march nearer home.
Was Mr. Stuart in his right mind again, or was it some coincidence of his delirium, that he should have chosen this for his song? With moist eyes his friends looked back through the darkness, for well they knew that home was very near to this wanderer. Gradually the voice died away into a hum, and was absorbed once more into the masterful silence of the desert.
“My dear old chap, I hope you’re not hurt?” said Belmont, laying his hand upon Cochrane’s knee.
The Colonel had straightened himself, though he still gasped a little in his breathing.
“I am all right again, now. Would you kindly show me which was the man who struck me?”
“It was the fellow in front there—with his camel beside Fardet’s.”
“The young fellow with the moustache—I can’t see him very well in this light, but I think I could pick him out again. Thank you, Belmont!”
“But I thought some of your ribs were gone.”
“No, it only knocked the wind out of me.”
“You must be made of iron. It was a frightful blow. How could you rally from it so quickly?”
The Colonel cleared his throat and hummed and stammered.
“The fact is, my dear Belmont—I’m sure you would not let it go further—above all not to the ladies; but I am rather older than I used to be, and rather than lose the military carriage which has always been dear to me, I—”
“Stays, be Jove!” cried the astonished Irishman.
“Well, some slight artificial support,” said the Colonel stiffly, and switched the conversation off to the chances of the morrow.
It still comes back in their dreams to those who are left, that long night’s march in the desert. It was like a dream itself, the silence of it as they were borne forward upon those soft, shuffling sponge feet, and the flitting, flickering figures which oscillated upon every side of them. The whole universe seemed to be hung as a monstrous time-dial in front of them. A star would glimmer like a lantern on the very level of their path. They looked again, and it was a hand’s-breadth up, and another was shining beneath it. Hour after hour the broad stream flowed sedately across the deep blue background, worlds and systems drifting majestically overhead, and pouring over the dark horizon. In their vastness and their beauty there was a vague consolation to the prisoners; for their own fate, and their own individuality, seemed trivial and unimportant amid the play of such tremendous forces. Slowly the grand procession swept across the heaven, first climbing, then hanging long with little apparent motion, and then sinking grandly downwards, until away in the east the first cold grey glimmer appeared, and their own haggard faces shocked each other’s sight.
The day had tortured them with its heat, and now the night had brought the even more intolerable discomfort of cold. The Arabs swathed themselves in their gowns and wrapped up their heads. The prisoners beat their hands together and shivered miserably. Miss Adams felt it most, for she was very thin, with the impaired circulation of age. Stephens slipped off his Norfolk jacket and threw it over her shoulders. He rode beside Sadie, and whistled and chatted to make her believe that her aunt was really relieving him by carrying his jacket for him, but the attempt was too boisterous not to be obvious; and yet it was so far true that he probably felt the cold less than any of the party, for the old, old fire was burning in his heart, and a curious joy was inextricably mixed with all his misfortunes, so that he would have found it hard to say if this adventure had been the greatest evil or the greatest blessing of his lifetime. Aboard the boat, Sadie’s youth, her beauty, her intelligence and humour, all made him realise that she could at the best only be expected to charitably endure him. But now he felt that he was really of some use to her, that every hour she was learning to turn to him as one turns to one’s natural protector; and above all, he had begun to find himself—to understand that there really was a strong, reliable man behind all the tricks of custom which had built up an artificial nature, which had imposed even upon himself. A little glow of self-respect began to warm his blood. He had missed his youth when he was young, and now in his middle age it was coming up like some beautiful belated flower.
“I do believe that you are all the time enjoying it, Mr. Stephens,” said Sadie with some bitterness.
“I would not go so far as to say that,” he answered. “But I am quite certain that I would not leave you here.”
It was the nearest approach to tenderness which he had ever put into a speech, and the girl looked at him in surprise.
“I think I’ve been a very wicked girl all my life,” she said after a pause. “Because I have had a good time myself, I never thought of those who were unhappy. This has struck me serious. If ever I get back I shall be a better woman—a more earnest woman—in the future.”
“And I a better man. I suppose it is just for that that trouble comes to us. Look how it has brought out the virtues of all our friends. Take poor Mr. Stuart, for example. Should we ever have known what a noble, constant man he was? And see Belmont and his wife, in front of us there, going fearlessly forward, hand in hand, thinking only of each other. And Cochrane, who always seemed on board the boat to be a rather stand-offish, narrow sort of man! Look at his courage, and his unselfish indignation when any one is ill used. Fardet, too, is as brave as a lion. I think misfortune has done us all good.”
Sadie sighed.
“Yes, if it would end right here one might say so; but if it goes on and on for a few weeks or months of misery, and then ends in death, I don’t know where we reap the benefit of those improvements of character which it brings. Suppose you escape, what will you do?”
The lawyer hesitated, but his professional instincts were still strong.
“I will consider whether an action lies, and against whom. It should be with the organisers of the expedition for taking us to the Abousir Rock—or else with the Egyptian Government for not protecting their frontiers. It will be a nice legal question. And what will you do, Sadie?”
It was the first time that he had ever dropped the formal Miss, but the girl was too much in earnest to notice it.
“I will be more tender to others,” she said. “I will try to make some one else happy in memory of the miseries which I have endured.”
“You have done nothing all your life but made others happy. You cannot help doing it,” said he. The darkness made it more easy for him to break through the reserve which was habitual with him. “You need this rough schooling far less than any of us. How could your character be changed for the better?”
“You show how little you know me. I have been very selfish and thoughtless.”
“At least you had no need for all these strong emotions. You were sufficiently alive without them. Now it has been different with me.”
“Why did you need emotions, Mr. Stephens?”
“Because anything is better than stagnation. Pain is better than stagnation. I have only just begun to live. Hitherto I have been a machine upon the earth’s surface. I was a one-ideaed man, and a one-ideaed man is only one remove from a dead man. That is what I have only just begun to realise. For all these years I have never been stirred, never felt a real throb of human emotion pass through me. I had no time for it. I had observed it in others, and I had vaguely wondered whether there was some want in me which prevented my sharing the experience of my fellow-mortals. But now these last few days have taught me how keenly I can live—that I can have warm hopes, and deadly fears—that I can hate, and that I can—well, that I can have every strong feeling which the soul can experience. I have come to life. I may be on the brink of the grave, but at least I can say now that I have lived.”
“And why did you lead this soul-killing life in England?”
“I was ambitious—I wanted to get on. And then there were my mother and my sisters to be thought of. Thank Heaven, here is the morning coming. Your aunt and you will soon cease to feel the cold.”
“And you without your coat!”
“Oh, I have a very good circulation. I can manage very well in my shirt-sleeves.”
And now the long, cold, weary night was over, and the deep blue-black sky had lightened to a wonderful mauve-violet, with the larger stars still glinting brightly out of it. Behind them the grey line had crept higher and higher, deepening into a delicate rose-pink, with the fan-like rays of the invisible sun shooting and quivering across it. Then, suddenly, they felt its warm touch upon their backs, and there were hard black shadows upon the sand in front of them. The Dervishes loosened their cloaks and proceeded to talk cheerily among themselves. The prisoners also began to thaw, and eagerly ate the doora which was served out for their breakfasts. A short halt had been called, and a cup of water handed to each.
“Can I speak to you, Colonel Cochrane?” asked the dragoman.
“No, you can’t,” snapped the Colonel.
“But it is very important—all our safety may come from it.”
The Colonel frowned and pulled at his moustache.
“Well, what is it?” he asked at last.
“You must trust to me, for it is as much to me as to you to get back to Egypt. My wife and home, and children, are on one part, and a slave for life upon the other. You have no cause to doubt it.”
“Well, go on!”
“You know the black man who spoke with you—the one who had been with Hicks?”
“Yes, what of him?”
“He has been speaking with me during the night. I have had a long talk with him. He said that he could not very well understand you, nor you him, and so he came to me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that there were eight Egyptian soldiers among the Arabs—six black and two fellaheen. He said that he wished to have your promise that they should all have very good reward if they helped you to escape.”
“Of course they shall.”
“They asked for one hundred Egyptian pounds each.”
“They shall have it.”
“I told him that I would ask you, but that I was sure that you would agree to it.”
“What do they propose to do?”
“They could promise nothing, but what they thought best was that they should ride their camels not very far from you, so that if any chance should come they would be ready to take advantage.”
“Well, you can go to him and promise two hundred pounds each if they will help us. You do not think we could buy over some Arabs?”
Mansoor shook his head. “Too much danger to try,” said he. “Suppose you try and fail, then that will be the end to all of us. I will go tell what you have said.” He strolled off to where the old negro gunner was grooming his camel and waiting for his reply.
The Emirs had intended to halt for a half-hour at the most, but the baggage-camels which bore the prisoners were so worn out with the long, rapid march, that it was clearly impossible that they should move for some time. They had laid their long necks upon the ground, which is the last symptom of fatigue. The two chiefs shook their heads when they inspected them, and the terrible old man looked with his hard-lined, rock features at the captives. Then he said something to Mansoor, whose face turned a shade more sallow as he listened.
“The Emir Abderrahman says that if you do not become Moslem, it is not worth while delaying the whole caravan in order to carry you upon the baggage-camels. If it were not for you, he says that we could travel twice as fast. He wishes to know therefore, once for ever, if you will accept the Koran.” Then in the same tone, as if he were still translating, he continued: “You had far better consent, for if you do not he will most certainly put you all to death.”
The unhappy prisoners looked at each other in despair. The two Emirs stood gravely watching them.
“For my part,” said Cochrane, “I had as soon die now as be a slave in Khartoum.”
“What do you say, Norah?” asked Belmont.
“If we die together, John, I don’t think I shall be afraid.”
“It is absurd that I should die for that in which I have never had belief,” said Fardet. “And yet it is not possible for the honour of a Frenchman that he should be converted in this fashion.” He drew himself up, with his wounded wrist stuck into the front of his jacket, “Je suis Chretien. J’y reste,” he cried, a gallant falsehood in each sentence.
“What do you say, Mr. Stephens?” asked Mansoor in a beseeching voice. “If one of you would change, it might place them in a good humour. I implore you that you do what they ask.”
“No, I can’t,” said the lawyer quietly.
“Well then, you, Miss Sadie? You, Miss Adams? It is only just to say it once, and you will be saved.”
“Oh, auntie, do you think we might?” whimpered the frightened girl. “Would it be so very wrong if we said it?”
The old lady threw her arms round her. “No, no, my own dear little Sadie,” she whispered. “You’ll be strong! You would just hate yourself for ever after. Keep your grip of me, dear, and pray if you find your strength is leaving you. Don’t forget that your old aunt Eliza has you all the time by the hand.”
For an instant they were heroic, this line of dishevelled, bedraggled pleasure-seekers. They were all looking Death in the face, and the closer they looked the less they feared him. They were conscious rather of a feeling of curiosity, together with the nervous tingling with which one approaches a dentist’s chair. The dragoman made a motion of his hands and shoulders, as one who has tried and failed. The Emir Abderrahman said something to a negro, who hurried away.
“What does he want a scissors for?” asked the Colonel.
“He is going to hurt the women,” said Mansoor, with the same gesture of impotence.
A cold chill fell upon them all. They stared about them in helpless horror. Death in the abstract was one thing, but these insufferable details were another. Each had been braced to endure any evil in his own person, but their hearts were still soft for each other. The women said nothing, but the men were all buzzing together.
“There’s the pistol, Miss Adams,” said Belmont. “Give it here! We won’t be tortured! We won’t stand it!”
“Offer them money, Mansoor! Offer them anything!” cried Stephens. “Look here, I’ll turn Mohammedan if they’ll promise to leave the women alone. After all, it isn’t binding—it’s under compulsion. But I can’t see the women hurt.”
“No, wait a bit, Stephens!” said the Colonel. “We mustn’t lose our heads. I think I see a way out. See here, dragoman! You tell that grey-bearded old devil that we know nothing about his cursed tinpot religion. Put it smooth when you translate it. Tell him that he cannot expect us to adopt it until we know what particular brand of rot it is that he wants us to believe. Tell him that if he will instruct us, we are perfectly willing to listen to his teaching, and you can add that any creed which turns out such beauties as him, and that other bounder with the black beard, must claim the attention of every one.”
With bows and suppliant sweepings of his hands the dragoman explained that the Christians were already full of doubt, and that it needed but a little more light of knowledge to guide them on to the path of Allah. The two Emirs stroked their beards and gazed suspiciously at them. Then Abderrahman spoke in his crisp, stern fashion to the dragoman, and the two strode away together. An instant later the bugle rang out as a signal to mount.
“What he says is this,” Mansoor explained, as he rode in the middle of the prisoners. “We shall reach the wells by mid-day, and there will be a rest. His own Moolah, a very good and learned man, will come to give you an hour of teaching. At the end of that time you will choose one way or the other. When you have chosen, it will be decided whether you are to go to Khartoum or to be put to death. That is his last word.”
“They won’t take ransom?”
“Wad Ibrahim would, but the Emir Abderrahman is a terrible man. I advise you to give in to him.”
“What have you done yourself? You are a Christian, too.”
Mansoor blushed as deeply as his complexion would allow.
“I was yesterday morning. Perhaps I will be to-morrow morning. I serve the Lord as long as what He ask seem reasonable; but this is very otherwise.”
He rode onwards amongst the guards with a freedom which showed that his change of faith had put him upon a very different footing to the other prisoners.
So they were to have a reprieve of a few hours, though they rode in that dark shadow of death which was closing in upon them. What is there in life that we should cling to it so? It is not the pleasures, for those whose hours are one long pain shrink away screaming when they see merciful Death holding his soothing arms out for them. It is not the associations, for we will change all of them before we walk of our own free-wills down that broad road which every son and daughter of man must tread. Is it the fear of losing the I, that dear, intimate I, which we think we know so well, although it is eternally doing things which surprise us? Is it that which makes the deliberate suicide cling madly to the bridge-pier as the river sweeps him by? Or is it that Nature is so afraid that all her weary workmen may suddenly throw down their tools and strike, that she has invented this fashion of keeping them constant to their present work? But there it is, and all these tired, harassed, humiliated folk rejoiced in the few more hours of suffering which were left to them.
THERE was nothing to show them as they journeyed onwards that they were not on the very spot that they had passed at sunset upon the evening before. The region of fantastic black hills and orange sand which bordered the river had long been left behind, and everywhere now was the same brown, rolling, gravelly plain, the ground-swell with the shining rounded pebbles upon its surface, and the occasional little sprouts of sage-green camel-grass. Behind and before it extended, to where far away in front of them it sloped upwards towards a line of violet hills. The sun was not high enough yet to cause the tropical shimmer, and the wide landscape, brown with its violet edging, stood out with a hard clearness in that dry, pure air. The long caravan straggled along at the slow swing of the baggage-camels. Far out on the flanks rode the vedettes, halting at every rise, and peering backwards with their hands shading their eyes. In the distance their spears and rifles seemed to stick out of them, straight and thin, like needles in knitting.
“How far do you suppose we are from the Nile?” asked Cochrane. He rode with his chin on his shoulder and his eyes straining wistfully to the eastern skyline.
“A good fifty miles,” Belmont answered.
“Not so much as that,” said the Colonel. “We could not have been moving more than fifteen or sixteen hours, and a camel does not do more than two and a half miles an hour unless it is trotting. That would only give about forty miles, but still it is, I fear, rather far for a rescue. I don’t know that we are much the better for this postponement. What have we to hope for? We may just as well take our gruel.”
“Never say die!” cried the cheery Irishman. “There’s plenty of time between this and mid-day. Hamilton and Hedley of the Camel Corps are good boys, and they’ll be after us like a streak. They’ll have no baggage-camels to hold them back, you can lay your life on that! Little did I think, when I dined with them at mess that last night, and they were telling me all their precautions against a raid, that I should depend upon them for our lives.”
“Well, we’ll play the game out, but I’m not very hopeful,” said Cochrane. “Of course, we must keep the best face we can before the women. I see that Tippy Tilly is as good as his word, for those five niggers and the two brown Johnnies must be the men he speaks of. They all ride together and keep well up, but I can’t see how they are going to help us.”
“I’ve got my pistol back,” whispered Belmont, and his square chin and strong mouth set like granite. “If they try any games on the women, I mean to shoot them all three with my own hand, and then we’ll die with our minds easy.”
“Good man!” said Cochrane, and they rode on in silence. None of them spoke much. A curious, dreamy, irresponsible feeling crept over them. It was as if they had all taken some narcotic drug—the merciful anodyne which Nature uses when a great crisis has fretted the nerves too far. They thought of their friends and of their past lives in the comprehensive way in which one views that which is completed. A subtle sweetness mingled with the sadness of their fate. They were filled with the quiet serenity of despair.
“It’s devilish pretty,” said the Colonel, looking about him. “I always had an idea that I should like to die in a real, good, yellow London fog. You couldn’t change for the worse.”
“I should have liked to have died in my sleep,” said Sadie. “How beautiful to wake up and find yourself in the other world! There was a piece that Hetty Smith used to say at the College: ‘Say not good-night, but in some brighter world wish me good-morning.’”
The Puritan aunt shook her head at the idea. “It’s a terrible thing to go unprepared into the presence of your Maker,” said she.
“It’s the loneliness of death that is terrible,” said Mrs. Belmont. “If we and those whom we loved all passed over simultaneously, we should think no more of it than of changing our house.”
“If the worst comes to the worst, we won’t be lonely,” said her husband. “We’ll all go together, and we shall find Brown and Headingly and Stuart waiting on the other side.”
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. He had no belief in survival after death, but he envied the two Catholics the quiet way in which they took things for granted. He chuckled to think of what his friends in the Café Cubat would say if they learned that he had laid down his life for the Christian faith. Sometimes it amused and sometimes it maddened him, and he rode onwards with alternate gusts of laughter and of fury, nursing his wounded wrist all the time like a mother with a sick baby.
Across the brown of the hard, pebbly desert there had been visible for some time a single long, thin, yellow streak, extending north and south as far as they could see. It was a band of sand not more than a few hundred yards across, and rising at the highest to eight or ten feet. But the prisoners were astonished to observe that the Arabs pointed at this with an air of the utmost concern, and they halted when they came to the edge of it like men upon the brink of an unfordable river. It was very light, dusty sand, and every wandering breath of wind sent it dancing into the air like a whirl of midges. The Emir Abderrahman tried to force his camel into it, but the creature, after a step or two, stood still and shivered with terror. The two chiefs talked for a little, and then the whole caravan trailed off with their heads for the north, and the streak of sand upon their left.
“What is it?” asked Belmont, who found the dragoman riding at his elbow. “Why are we going out of our course?”
“Drift sand,” Mansoor answered. “Every sometimes the wind bring it all in one long place like that. To-morrow, if a wind comes, perhaps there will not be one grain left, but all will be carried up into the air again. An Arab will sometimes have to go fifty or a hundred miles to go round a drift. Suppose he tries to cross, his camel breaks its legs, and he himself is sucked in and swallowed.”
“How long will this be?”
“No one can say.”
“Well, Cochrane, it’s all in our favour. The longer the chase the better chance for the fresh camels!” and for the hundredth time he looked back at the long, hard skyline behind them. There was the great, empty, dun-coloured desert, but where the glint of steel or the twinkle of white helmet for which he yearned?
And soon they cleared the obstacle in their front. It spindled away into nothing, as a streak of dust would which has been blown across an empty room. It was curious to see that when it was so narrow that one could almost jump it, the Arabs would still go for many hundreds of yards rather than risk the crossing. Then, with good, hard country before them once more, the tired beasts were whipped up, and they ambled on with a double-jointed jogtrot, which set the prisoners nodding and bowing in grotesque and ludicrous misery. It was fun at first, and they smiled at each other, but soon the fun had become tragedy as the terrible camel-ache seized them by spine and waist, with its deep, dull throb, which rises gradually to a splitting agony.
“I can’t stand it, Sadie,” cried Miss Adams suddenly. “I’ve done my best. I’m going to fall.”
“No, no, auntie, you’ll break your limbs if you do. Hold up, just a little, and maybe they’ll stop.”
“Lean back, and hold your saddle behind,” said the Colonel. “There, you’ll find that will ease the strain.” He took the puggaree from his hat, and tying the ends together, he slung it over her front pommel. “Put your foot in the loop,” said he. “It will steady you like a stirrup.”
The relief was instant, so Stephens did the same for Sadie. But presently one of the weary doora camels came down with a crash, its limbs starred out as if it had split asunder, and the caravan had to come down to its old sober gait.
“Is this another belt of drift sand?” asked the Colonel presently.
“No, it’s white,” said Belmont. “Here, Mansoor, what is that in front of us?”
But the dragoman shook his head.
“I don’t know what it is, sir. I never saw the same thing before.”
Right across the desert, from north to south, there was drawn a white line, as straight and clear as if it had been slashed with chalk across a brown table. It was very thin, but it extended without a break from horizon to horizon. Tippy Tilly said something to the dragoman.
“It’s the great caravan route,” said Mansoor.
“What makes it white, then?”
“The bones.”
It seemed incredible, and yet it was true, for as they drew nearer they saw that it was indeed a beaten track across the desert, hollowed out by long usage, and so covered with bones that they gave the impression of a continuous white ribbon. Long, snouty heads were scattered everywhere, and the lines of ribs were so continuous that it looked in places like the framework of a monstrous serpent. The endless road gleamed in the sun as if it were paved with ivory. For thousands of years this had been the highway over the desert, and during all that time no animal of all those countless caravans had died there without being preserved by the dry, antiseptic air. No wonder, then, that it was hardly possible to walk down it now without treading upon their skeletons.
“This must be the route I spoke of,” said Stephens. “I remember marking it upon the map I made for you, Miss Adams. Baedeker says that it has been disused on account of the cessation of all trade which followed the rise of the Dervishes, but that it used to be the main road by which the skins and gums of Darfur found their way down to Lower Egypt.”
They looked at it with a listless curiosity, for there was enough to engross them at present in their own fates. The caravan struck to the south along the old desert track, and this Golgotha of a road seemed to be a fitting avenue for that which awaited them at the end of it. Weary camels and weary riders dragged on together towards their miserable goal.
And now, as the critical moment approached which was to decide their fate, Colonel Cochrane, weighed down by his fears lest something terrible should befall the women, put his pride aside to the extent of asking the advice of the renegade dragoman. The fellow was a villain and a coward, but at least he was an Oriental, and he understood the Arab point of view. His change of religion had brought him into closer contact with the Dervishes, and he had overheard their intimate talk. Cochrane’s stiff, aristocratic nature fought hard before he could bring himself to ask advice from such a man, and when he at last did so, it was in the gruffest and most unconciliatory voice.
“You know the rascals, and you have the same way of looking at things,” said he. “Our object is to keep things going for another twenty-four hours. After that it does not much matter what befalls us, for we shall be out of the reach of rescue. But how can we stave them off for another day?”
“You know my advice,” the dragoman answered; “I have already answered it to you. If you will all become as I have, you will certainly be carried to Khartoum in safety. If you do not, you will never leave our next camping-place alive.”
The Colonel’s well-curved nose took a higher tilt, and an angry flush reddened his thin cheeks. He rode in silence for a little, for his Indian service had left him with a curried-prawn temper, which had had an extra touch of cayenne added to it by his recent experiences. It was some minutes before he could trust himself to reply.
“We’ll set that aside,” said he at last. “Some things are possible and some are not. This is not.”
“You need only pretend.”
“That’s enough,” said the Colonel abruptly.
Mansoor shrugged his shoulders.
“What is the use of asking me, if you become angry when I answer? If you do not wish to do what I say, then try your own attempt. At least you cannot say that I have not done all I could to save you.”
“I’m not angry,” the Colonel answered after a pause, in a more conciliatory voice, “but this is climbing down rather farther than we care to go. Now, what I thought is this. You might, if you chose, give this priest, or Moolah, who is coming to us, a hint that we really are softening a bit upon the point. I don’t think, considering the hole that we are in, that there can be very much objection to that. Then, when he comes, we might play up and take an interest and ask for more instruction, and in that way hold the matter over for a day or two. Don’t you think that would be the best game?”
“You will do as you like,” said Mansoor. “I have told you once for ever what I think. If you wish that I speak to the Moolah, I will do so. It is the fat, little man with the grey beard, upon the brown camel in front there. I may tell you that he has a name among them for converting the infidel, and he has a great pride in it, so that he would certainly prefer that you were not injured if he thought that he might bring you into Islam.”
“Tell him that our minds are open, then,” said the Colonel. “I don’t suppose thepadrewould have gone so far, but now that he is dead I think we may stretch a point. You go to him, Mansoor, and if you work it well we will agree to forget what is past. By the way, has Tippy Tilly said anything?”
“No, sir. He has kept his men together, but he does not understand yet how he can help you.”
“Neither do I. Well, you go to the Moolah, then, and I’ll tell the others what we have agreed.”
The prisoners all acquiesced in the Colonel’s plan, with the exception of the old New England lady, who absolutely refused even to show any interest in the Mohammedan creed. “I guess I am too old to bow the knee to Baal,” she said. The most that she would concede was that she would not openly interfere with anything which her companions might say or do.
“And who is to argue with the priest?” asked Fardet, as they all rode together, talking the matter over. “It is very important that it should be done in a natural way, for if he thought that we were only trying to gain time, he would refuse to have any more to say to us.”
“I think Cochrane should do it, as the proposal is his,” said Belmont.
“Pardon me!” cried the Frenchman. “I will not say a word against our friend the Colonel, but it is not possible that a man should be fitted for everything. It will all come to nothing if he attempts it. The priest will see through the Colonel.”
“Will he?” said the Colonel with dignity.
“Yes, my friend, he will, for, like most of your countrymen, you are very wanting in sympathy for the ideas of other people, and it is the great fault which I find with you as a nation.”
“Oh, drop the politics!” cried Belmont impatiently.
“I do not talk politics. What I say is very practical. How can Colonel Cochrane pretend to this priest that he is really interested in his religion when, in effect, there is no religion in the world to him outside some little church in which he has been born and bred? I will say this for the Colonel, that I do not believe he is at all a hypocrite, and I am sure that he could not act well enough to deceive such a man as this priest.”
The Colonel sat with a very stiff back and the blank face of a man who is not quite sure whether he is being complimented or insulted.
“You can do the talking yourself if you like,” said he at last. “I should be very glad to be relieved of it.”
“I think that I am best fitted for it, since I am equally interested in all creeds. When I ask for information, it is because in verity I desire it, and not because I am playing a part.”
“I certainly think that it would be much better if Monsieur Fardet would undertake it,” said Mrs. Belmont with decision, and so the matter was arranged.
The sun was now high, and it shone with dazzling brightness upon the bleached bones which lay upon the road. Again the torture of thirst fell upon the little group of survivors, and again, as they rode with withered tongues and crusted lips, a vision of the saloon of theKoroskodanced like a mirage before their eyes, and they saw the white napery, the wine-cards by the places, the long necks of the bottles, the siphons upon the sideboard. Sadie, who had borne up so well, became suddenly hysterical, and her shrieks of senseless laughter jarred horribly upon their nerves. Her aunt on one side of her, and Mr. Stephens on the other, did all they could to soothe her, and at last the weary, overstrung girl relapsed into something between a sleep and a faint, hanging limp over her pommel, and only kept from falling by the friends who clustered round her. The baggage-camels were as weary as their riders, and again and again they had to jerk at their nose-ropes to prevent them from lying down. From horizon to horizon stretched that one huge arch of speckless blue, and up its monstrous concavity crept the inexorable sun, like some splendid but barbarous deity, who claimed a tribute of human suffering as his immemorial right.
Their course still lay along the old trade route, but their progress was very slow, and more than once the two Emirs rode back together, and shook their heads as they looked at the weary baggage-camels on which the prisoners were perched. The greatest laggard of all was one which was ridden by a wounded Soudanese soldier. It was limping badly with a strained tendon, and it was only by constant prodding that it could be kept with the others. The Emir Wad Ibrahim raised his Remington, as the creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet through its brain. The wounded man flew forwards out of the high saddle, and fell heavily upon the hard track. His companions in misfortune, looking back, saw him stagger to his feet with a dazed face. At the same instant a Baggara slipped down from his camel with a sword in his hand.
“Don’t look! don’t look!” cried Belmont to the ladies, and they all rode on with their faces to the south. They heard no sound, but the Baggara passed them a few minutes afterwards. He was cleaning his sword upon the hairy neck of his camel, and he glanced at them with a quick, malicious gleam of his teeth as he trotted by. But those who are at the lowest pitch of human misery are at least secured against the future. That vicious, threatening smile which might once have thrilled them left them now unmoved—or stirred them at most to vague resentment. There were many things to interest them in this old trade route, had they been in a condition to take notice of them. Here and there along its course were the crumbling remains of ancient buildings, so old that no date could be assigned to them, but designed in some far-off civilisation to give the travellers shade from the sun or protection from the ever-lawless children of the desert. The mud bricks with which these refuges were constructed showed that the material had been carried over from the distant Nile. Once, upon the top of a little knoll, they saw the shattered plinth of a pillar of red Assouan granite, with the wide-winged symbol of the Egyptian god across it, and the cartouche of the second Rameses beneath. After three thousand years one cannot get away from the ineffaceable footprints of the warrior-king. It is surely the most wonderful survival of history that one should still be able to gaze upon him, high-nosed and masterful, as he lies with his powerful arms crossed upon his chest, majestic even in decay, in the Gizeh Museum. To the captives, the cartouche was a message of hope, as a sign that they were not outside the sphere of Egypt. “They’ve left their card here once, and they may again,” said Belmont, and they all tried to smile.
And now they came upon one of the most satisfying sights on which the human eye can ever rest. Here and there, in the depressions at either side of the road, there had been a thin scurf of green, which meant that water was not very far from the surface. And then, quite suddenly, the track dipped down into a bowl-shaped hollow, with a most dainty group of palm-trees, and a lovely green sward at the bottom of it. The sun gleaming upon that brilliant patch of clear, restful colour, with the dark glow of the bare desert around it, made it shine like the purest emerald in a setting of burnished copper. And then it was not its beauty only, but its promise for the future: water, shade, all that weary travellers could ask for. Even Sadie was revived by the cheery sight, and the spent camels snorted and stepped out more briskly, stretching their long necks and sniffing the air as they went. After the unhomely harshness of the desert, it seemed to all of them that they had never seen anything more beautiful than this. They looked below at the green sward with the dark, star-like shadows of the palm-crowns; then they looked up at those deep green leaves against the rich blue of the sky, and they forgot their impending death in the beauty of that Nature to whose bosom they were about to return.
The wells in the centre of the grove consisted of seven large and two small saucer-like cavities filled with peat-coloured water, enough to form a plentiful supply for any caravan. Camels and men drank it greedily, though it was tainted by the all-pervading natron. The camels were picketed, the Arabs threw their sleeping-mats down in the shade, and the prisoners, after receiving a ration of dates and of doora, were told that they might do what they would during the heat of the day, and that the Moolah would come to them before sunset. The ladies were given the thicker shade of an acacia tree, and the men lay down under the palms. The great green leaves swished slowly above them; they heard the low hum of the Arab talk, and the dull champing of the camels, and then in an instant, by that most mysterious and least understood of miracles, one was in a green Irish valley, and another saw the long straight line of Commonwealth Avenue, and a third was dining at a little round table opposite to the bust of Nelson in the Army and Navy Club, and for him the swishing of the palm branches had been transformed into the long-drawn hum of Pall Mall. So the spirits went their several ways, wandering back along the strange, un-traced tracks of the memory, while the weary, grimy bodies lay senseless under the palm-trees in the Oasis of the Libyan Desert.
COLONEL COCHRANE was awakened from his slumber by some one pulling at his shoulder. As his eyes opened they fell upon the black, anxious face of Tippy Tilly, the old Egyptian gunner. His crooked finger was laid upon his thick, liver-coloured lips, and his dark eyes glanced from left to right with ceaseless vigilance.
“Lie quiet! Do not move!” he whispered, in Arabic. “I will lie here beside you, and they cannot tell me from the others. You can understand what I am saying?”
“Yes, if you will talk slowly.”
“Very good. I have no great trust in this black man, Mansoor. I had rather talk direct with the Miralai.”
“What have you to say?”
“I have waited long, until they should all be asleep, and now in another hour we shall be called to evening prayer. First of all, here is a pistol, that you may not say that you are without arms.”
It was a clumsy, old-fashioned thing, but the Colonel saw the glint of a percussion cap upon the nipple, and knew that it was loaded. He slipped it into the inner pocket of his Norfolk jacket.
“Thank you,” said he; “speak slowly, so that I may understand you.”
“There are eight of us who wish to go to Egypt. There are also four men in your party. One of us, Mehemet Ali, has fastened twelve camels together, which are the fastest of all save only those which are ridden by the Emirs. There are guards upon watch, but they are scattered in all directions. The twelve camels are close beside us here—those twelve behind the acacia tree. If we can only get mounted and started, I do not think that many can overtake us, and we shall have our rifles for them. The guards are not strong enough to stop so many of us. The water-skins are all filled, and we may see the Nile again by to-morrow night.”
The Colonel could not follow it all, but he understood enough to set a little spring of hope bubbling in his heart. The last terrible day had left its mark in his livid face and his hair, which was turning rapidly to grey. He might have been the father of the spruce well-preserved soldier who had paced with straight back and military stride up and down the saloon deck of the Korosko.
“That is excellent,” said he. “But what are we to do about the three ladies?” The black soldier shrugged his shoulders. “Mefeesh!” said he. “One of them is old, and in any case there are plenty more women if we get back to Egypt. These will not come to any hurt, but they will be placed in the harem of the Khalifa.”
“What you say is nonsense,” said the Colonel sternly. “We shall take our women with us, or we shall not go at all.”
“I think it is rather you who talk the thing without sense,” the black man answered angrily. “How can you ask my companions and me to do that which must end in failure? For years we have waited for such a chance as this, and now that it has come, you wish us to throw it away owing to this foolishness about the women.”
“What have we promised you if we come back to Egypt?” asked Cochrane.
“Two hundred Egyptian pounds and promotion in the army—all upon the word of an Englishman.”
“Very good. Then you shall have three hundred each if you can make some new plan by which you can take the women with you.”
Tippy Tilly scratched his woolly head in his perplexity.
“We might, indeed, upon some excuse, bring three more of the faster camels round to this place. Indeed, there are three very good camels among those which are near the cooking fire. But how are we to get the women upon them?—and if we had them upon them, we know very well that they would fall off when they began to gallop. I fear that you men will fall off, for it is no easy matter to remain upon a galloping camel; but as to the women, it is impossible. No, we shall leave the women, and if you will not leave the women, then we shall leave all of you and start by ourselves.”
“Very good! Go!” said the Colonel abruptly, and settled down as if to sleep once more. He knew that with Orientals it is the silent man who is most likely to have his way.
The negro turned and crept away for some little distance, where he was met by one of his fellaheen comrades, Mehemet Ali, who had charge of the camels. The two argued for some little time—for those three hundred golden pieces were not to be lightly resigned. Then the negro crept back to Colonel Cochrane.
“Mehemet Ali has agreed,” said he. “He has gone to put the nose-rope upon three more of the camels. But it is foolishness, and we are all going to our death. Now come with me, and we shall awaken the women and tell them.”
The Colonel shook his companions and whispered to them what was in the wind. Belmont and Fardet were ready for any risk. Stephens, to whom the prospect of a passive death presented little terror, was seized with a convulsion of fear when he thought of any active exertion to avoid it, and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. Then he pulled out his Baedeker and began to write his will upon the flyleaf, but his hand twitched so that he was hardly legible. By some strange gymnastic of the legal mind a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a place in the order of things, while a death which overtook one galloping frantically over a desert was wholly irregular and discomposing. It was not dissolution which he feared, but the humiliation and agony of a fruitless struggle against it.
Colonel Cochrane and Tippy Tilly had crept together under the shadow of the great acacia tree to the spot where the women were lying. Sadie and her aunt lay with their arms round each other, the girl’s head pillowed upon the old woman’s bosom. Mrs. Belmont was awake, and entered into the scheme in an instant.
“But you must leave me,” said Miss Adams earnestly. “What does it matter at my age, anyhow?”
“No, no, Aunt Eliza; I won’t move without you! Don’t you think it!” cried the girl. “You’ve got to come straight away or else we both stay right here where we are.”
“Come, come, ma’am, there is no time for arguing, or nonsense,” said the Colonel roughly. “Our lives all depend upon your making an effort, and we cannot possibly leave you behind.”
“But I will fall off.”
“I’ll tie you on with my puggaree. I wish I had the cummerbund which I lent poor Stuart. Now, Tippy, I think we might make a break for it!”
But the black soldier had been staring with a disconsolate face out over the desert, and he turned upon his heel with an oath.
“There!” said he sullenly. “You see what comes of all your foolish talking! You have ruined our chances as well as your own!”
Half-a-dozen mounted camel-men had appeared suddenly over the lip of the bowl-shaped hollow, standing out hard and clear against the evening sky where the copper basin met its great blue lid. They were travelling fast, and waved their rifles as they came. An instant later the bugle sounded an alarm, and the camp was up with a buzz like an overturned bee-hive. The Colonel ran back to his companions, and the black soldier to his camel. Stephens looked relieved, and Belmont sulky, while Monsieur Fardet raved, with his one uninjured hand in the air.
“Sacred name of a dog!” he cried. “Is there no end to it, then? Are we never to come out of the hands of these accursed Dervishes?”
“Oh, they really are Dervishes, are they?” said the Colonel in an acid voice. “You seem to be altering your opinions. I thought they were an invention of the British Government.”
The poor fellows’ tempers were getting frayed and thin. The Colonel’s sneer was like a match to a magazine, and in an instant the Frenchman was dancing in front of him with a broken torrent of angry words. His hand was clutching at Cochrane’s throat before Belmont and Stephens could pull him off.
“If it were not for your grey hairs—” he said.
“Damn your impudence!” cried the Colonel.
“If we have to die, let us die like gentlemen, and not like so many corner-boys,” said Belmont with dignity.
“I only said I was glad to see that Monsieur Fardet has learned something from his adventures,” the Colonel sneered.
“Shut up, Cochrane! What do you want to aggravate him for?” cried the Irishman.
“Upon my word, Belmont, you forget yourself! I do not permit people to address me in this fashion.”
“You should look after your own manners, then.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, here are the ladies!” cried Stephens, and the angry, over-strained men relapsed into a gloomy silence, pacing up and down, and jerking viciously at their moustaches. It is a very catching thing, ill-temper, for even Stephens began to be angry at their anger, and to scowl at them as they passed him. Here they were at a crisis in their fate, with the shadow of death above them, and yet their minds were all absorbed in some personal grievance so slight that they could hardly put it into words. Misfortune brings the human spirit to a rare height, but the pendulum still swings.
But soon their attention was drawn away to more important matters. A council of war was being held beside the wells, and the two Emirs, stern and composed, were listening to a voluble report from the leader of the patrol. The prisoners noticed that, though the fierce, old man stood like a graven image, the younger Emir passed his hand over his beard once or twice with a nervous gesture, the thin, brown fingers twitching among the long, black hair.
“I believe the Gippies are after us,” said Belmont. “Not very far off either, to judge by the fuss they are making.”
“It looks like it. Something has scared them.”
“Now he’s giving orders. What can it be? Here, Mansoor, what is the matter?”
The dragoman came running up with the light of hope shining upon his brown face.
“I think they have seen something to frighten them. I believe that the soldiers are behind us. They have given the order to fill the water-skins, and be ready for a start when the darkness comes. But I am ordered to gather you together, for the Moolah is coming to convert you all. I have already told him that you are all very much inclined to think the same with him.”
How far Mansoor may have gone with his assurances may never be known, but the Mussulman preacher came walking towards them at this moment with a paternal and contented smile upon his face, as one who has a pleasant and easy task before him. He was a one-eyed man, with a fringe of grizzled beard and a face which was fat, but which looked as if it had once been fatter, for it was marked with many folds and creases. He had a green turban upon his head, which marked him as a Mecca pilgrim. In one hand he carried a small brown carpet, and in the other a parchment copy of the Koran. Laying his carpet upon the ground, he motioned Mansoor to his side, and then gave a circular sweep of his arm to signify that the prisoners should gather round him, and a downward wave which meant that they should be seated. So they grouped themselves round him, sitting on the short green sward under the palm-tree, these seven forlorn representatives of an alien creed, and in the midst of them sat the fat little preacher, his one eye dancing from face to face as he expounded the principles of his newer, cruder, and more earnest faith. They listened attentively and nodded their heads as Mansoor translated the exhortation, and with each sign of their acquiescence the Moolah became more amiable in his manner and more affectionate in his speech.
“For why should you die, my sweet lambs, when all that is asked of you is that you should set aside that which will carry you to everlasting Gehenna, and accept the law of Allah as written by his prophet, which will assuredly bring you unimaginable joys, as is promised in the Book of the Camel? For what says the chosen one?”—and he broke away into one of those dogmatic texts which pass in every creed as an argument. “Besides, is it not clear that God is with us, since from the beginning, when we had but sticks against the rifles of the Turks, victory has always been with us? Have we not taken El Obeid, and taken Khartoum, and destroyed Hicks and slain Gordon, and prevailed against every one who has come against us? How, then, can it be said that the blessing of Allah does not rest upon us?”
The Colonel had been looking about him during the long exhortation of the Moolah, and he had observed that the Dervishes were cleaning their guns, counting their cartridges, and making all the preparations of men who expected that they might soon be called upon to fight. The two Emirs were conferring together with grave faces, and the leader of the patrol pointed, as he spoke to them, in the direction of Egypt. It was evident that there was at least a chance of a rescue if they could only keep things going for a few more hours. The camels were not recovered yet from their long march, and the pursuers, if they were indeed close behind, were almost certain to overtake them.
“For God’s sake, Fardet, try and keep him in play,” said he. “I believe we have a chance if we can only keep the ball rolling for another hour or so.”
But a Frenchman’s wounded dignity is not so easily appeased. Monsieur Fardet sat moodily with his back against the palm-tree, and his black brows drawn down. He said nothing, but he still pulled at his thick, strong moustache.
“Come on, Fardet! We depend upon you,” said Belmont.
“Let Colonel Cochrane do it,” the Frenchman answered snappishly. “He takes too much upon himself this Colonel Cochrane.”
“There! There!” said Belmont soothingly, as if he were speaking to a fractious child. “I am quite sure that the Colonel will express his regret at what has happened, and will acknowledge that he was in the wrong—”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” snapped the Colonel.
“Besides, that is merely a personal quarrel,” Belmont continued hastily. “It is for the good of the whole party that we wish you to speak with the Moolah, because we all feel that you are the best man for the job.”
But the Frenchman only shrugged his shoulders and relapsed into a deeper gloom.
The Moolah looked from one to the other, and the kindly expression began to fade away from his large, baggy face. His mouth drew down at the corners, and became hard and severe.
“Have these infidels been playing with us, then?” said he to the dragoman. “Why is it that they talk among themselves and have nothing to say to me?”
“He’s getting impatient about it,” said Cochrane. “Perhaps I had better do what I can, Belmont, since this damned fellow has left us in the lurch.”
But the ready wit of a woman saved the situation.
“I am sure, Monsieur Fardet,” said Mrs. Belmont, “that you, who are a Frenchman, and therefore a man of gallantry and honour, would not permit your own wounded feelings to interfere with the fulfilment of your promise and your duty towards three helpless ladies.”
Fardet was on his feet in an instant, with his hand over his heart.
“You understand my nature, madame,” he cried. “I am incapable of abandoning a lady. I will do all that I can in this matter. Now, Mansoor, you may tell the holy man that I am ready to discuss through you the high matters of his faith with him.”
And he did it with an ingenuity which amazed his companions. He took the tone of a man who is strongly attracted, and yet has one single remaining shred of doubt to hold him back. Yet as that one shred was torn away by the Moolah, there was always some other stubborn little point which prevented his absolute acceptance of the faith of Islam. And his questions were all so mixed up with personal compliments to the priest and self-congratulations that they should have come under the teachings of so wise a man and so profound a theologian, that the hanging pouches under the Moolah’s eyes quivered with his satisfaction, and he was led happily and hopefully onwards from explanation to explanation, while the blue overhead turned into violet, and the green leaves into black, until the great serene stars shone out once more between the crowns of the palm-trees.
“As to the learning of which you speak, my lamb,” said the Moolah, in answer to some argument of Fardet’s, “I have myself studied at the University of El Azhar at Cairo, and I know that to which you allude. But the learning of the faithful is not as the learning of the unbeliever, and it is not fitting that we pry too deeply into the ways of Allah. Some stars have tails, oh my sweet lamb, and some have not; but what does it profit us to know which are which? For God made them all, and they are very safe in His hands. Therefore, my friend, be not puffed up by the foolish learning of the West, and understand that there is only one wisdom, which consists in following the will of Allah as His chosen prophet has laid it down for us in this book. And now, my lambs, I see that you are ready to come into Islam, and it is time, for that bugle tells that we are about to march, and it was the order of the excellent Emir Abderrahman that your choice should be taken, one way or the other, before ever we left the wells.”
“Yet, my father, there are other points upon which I would gladly have instruction,” said the Frenchman, “for, indeed, it is a pleasure to hear your clear words after the cloudy accounts which we have had from other teachers.”
But the Moolah had risen, and a gleam of suspicion twinkled in his single eye.
“This further instruction may well come afterwards,” said he, “since we shall travel together as far as Khartoum, and it will be a joy to me to see you grow in wisdom and in virtue as we go.” He walked over to the fire, and stooping down, with the pompous slowness of a stout man, he returned with two half-charred sticks, which he laid cross-wise upon the ground. The Dervishes came clustering over to see the new converts admitted into the fold. They stood round in the dim light, tall and fantastic, with the high necks and supercilious heads of the camels swaying above them.
“Now,” said the Moolah, and his voice had lost its conciliatory and persuasive tone, “there is no more time for you. Here upon the ground I have made out of two sticks the foolish and superstitious symbol of your former creed. You will trample upon it, as a sign that you renounce it, and you will kiss the Koran, as a sign that you accept it, and what more you need in the way of instruction shall be given to you as you go.”
They stood up, the four men and the three women, to meet the crisis of their fate. None of them, except perhaps Miss Adams and Mrs. Belmont, had any deep religious convictions. All of them were children of this world, and some of them disagreed with everything which that symbol upon the earth represented. But there was the European pride, the pride of the white race which swelled within them, and held them to the faith of their countrymen. It was a sinful, human, un-Christian motive, and yet it was about to make them public martyrs to the Christian creed. In the hush and tension of their nerves low sounds grew suddenly loud upon their ears. Those swishing palm-leaves above them were like a swift-flowing river, and far away they could hear the dull, soft thudding of a galloping camel.
“There’s something coming,” whispered Cochrane. “Try and stave them off for five minutes longer, Fardet.”
The Frenchman stepped out with a courteous wave of his uninjured arm, and the air of a man who is prepared to accommodate himself to anything.
“You will tell this holy man that I am quite ready to accept his teaching, and so I am sure are all my friends,” said he to the dragoman. “But there is one thing which I should wish him to do in order to set at rest any possible doubts which may remain in our hearts. Every true religion can be told by the miracles which those who profess it can bring about. Even I who am but a humble Christian, can, by virtue of my religion, do some of these. But you, since your religion is superior, can no doubt do far more, and so I beg you to give us a sign that we may be able to say that we know that the religion of Islam is the more powerful.”
Behind all his dignity and reserve, the Arab has a good fund of curiosity. The hush among the listening Arabs showed how the words of the Frenchman as translated by Mansoor appealed to them.
“Such things are in the hands of Allah,” said the priest. “It is not for us to disturb His laws. But if you have yourself such powers as you claim, let us be witnesses to them.”
The Frenchman stepped forward, and raising his hand he took a large, shining date out of the Moolah’s beard. This he swallowed and immediately produced once more from his left elbow. He had often given his little conjuring entertainment on board the boat, and his fellow-passengers had had some good-natured laughter at his expense, for he was not quite skilful enough to deceive the critical European intelligence. But now it looked as if this piece of obvious palming might be the point upon which all their fates would hang. A deep hum of surprise rose from the ring of Arabs, and deepened as the Frenchman drew another date from the nostril of a camel and tossed it into the air, from which, apparently, it never descended. That gaping sleeve was obvious enough to his companions, but the dim light was all in favour of the performer. So delighted and interested was the audience that they paid little heed to a mounted camel-man who trotted swiftly between the palm trunks. All might have been well had not Fardet, carried away by his own success, tried to repeat his trick once more, with the result that the date fell out of his palm, and the deception stood revealed. In vain he tried to pass on at once to another of his little stock. The Moolah said something, and an Arab struck Fardet across the shoulders with the thick shaft of his spear.
“We have had enough child’s play,” said the angry priest. “Are we men or babes, that you should try to impose upon us in this manner? Here is the cross and the Koran—which shall it be?”
Fardet looked helplessly round at his companions.
“I can do no more; you asked for five minutes. You have had them,” said he to Colonel Cochrane.
“And perhaps it is enough,” the soldier answered. “Here are the Emirs.”
The camel-man, whose approach they had heard from afar, had made for the two Arab chiefs, and had delivered a brief report to them, stabbing with his forefinger in the direction from which he had come. There was a rapid exchange of words between the Emirs, and then they strode forward together to the group around the prisoners. Bigots and barbarians, they were none the less two most majestic men, as they advanced through the twilight of the palm grove. The fierce old greybeard raised his hand and spoke swiftly in short, abrupt sentences, and his savage followers yelped to him like hounds to a huntsman. The fire that smouldered in his arrogant eyes shone back at him from a hundred others. Here were to be read the strength and danger of the Mahdi movement; here in these convulsed faces, in that fringe of waving arms, in these frantic, red-hot souls, who asked nothing better than a bloody death, if their own hands might be bloody when they met it.
“Have the prisoners embraced the true faith?” asked the Emir Abderrahman, looking at them with his cruel eyes.
The Moolah had his reputation to preserve, and it was not for him to confess to a failure.
“They were about to embrace it, when—
“Let it rest for a little time, O Moolah.” He gave an order, and the Arabs all sprang for their camels. The Emir Wad Ibrahim filed off at once with nearly half the party. The others were mounted and ready, with their rifles unslung.
“What’s happened?” asked Belmont.
“Things are looking up,” cried the Colonel. “By George, I think we are going to come through all right. The Gippy Camel Corps are hot on our trail.”
“How do you know?”
“What else could have scared them?”
“O Colonel, do you really think we shall be saved?” sobbed Sadie. The dull routine of misery through which they had passed had deadened all their nerves until they seemed incapable of any acute sensation, but now this sudden return of hope brought agony with it like the recovery of a frost-bitten limb. Even the strong, self-contained Belmont was filled with doubts and apprehensions. He had been hopeful when there was no sign of relief, and now the approach of it set him trembling.
“Surely they wouldn’t come very weak,” he cried. “Be Jove, if the Commandant let them come weak, he should be court-martialled.”
“Sure we’re in God’s hands, anyway,” said his wife, in her soothing, Irish voice. “Kneel down with me, John, dear, if it’s the last time, and pray that, earth or heaven, we may not be divided.”
“Don’t do that! Don’t!” cried the Colonel anxiously, for he saw that the eye of the Moolah was upon them. But it was too late, for the two Roman Catholics had dropped upon their knees and crossed themselves. A spasm of fury passed over the face of the Mussulman priest at this public testimony to the failure of his missionary efforts. He turned and said something to the Emir.
“Stand up!” cried Mansoor. “For your life’s sake, stand up! He is asking for leave to put you to death.”
“Let him do what he likes!” said the obstinate Irishman; “we will rise when our prayers are finished, and not before.”
The Emir stood listening to the Moolah, with his baleful gaze upon the two kneeling figures. Then he gave one or two rapid orders, and four camels were brought forward. The baggage-camels which they had hitherto ridden were standing unsaddled where they had been tethered.
“Don’t be a fool, Belmont!” cried the Colonel; “everything depends upon our humouring them. Do get up, Mrs. Belmont! You are only putting their backs up!”
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders as he looked at them. “Mon Dieu!” he cried, “were there ever such impracticable people?Voilà!” he added, with a shriek, as the two American ladies fell upon their knees beside Mrs. Belmont. “It is like the camels—one down, all down! Was ever anything so absurd?”
But Mr. Stephens had knelt down beside Sadie and buried his haggard face in his long, thin hands. Only the Colonel and Monsieur Fardet remained standing. Cochrane looked at the Frenchman with an interrogative eye.
“After all,” said he, “it is stupid to pray all your life, and not to pray now when we have nothing to hope for except through the goodness of Providence.” He dropped upon his knees with a rigid, military back, but his grizzled, unshaven chin upon his chest. The Frenchman looked at his kneeling companions, and then his eyes travelled onwards to the angry faces of the Emir and Moolah.
“Sapristi!” he growled. “Do they suppose that a Frenchman is afraid of them?” and so, with an ostentatious sign of the cross, he took his place upon his knees beside the others. Foul, bedraggled, and wretched, the seven figures knelt and waited humbly for their fate under the black shadow of the palm-tree.
The Emir turned to the Moolah with a mocking smile, and pointed at the results of his ministrations. Then he gave an order, and in an instant the four men were seized. A couple of deft turns with a camel-halter secured each of their wrists. Fardet screamed out, for the rope had bitten into his open wound. The others took it with the dignity of despair.
“You have ruined everything. I believe you have ruined me also!” cried Mansoor, wringing his hands. “The women are to get upon these three camels.”
“Never!” cried Belmont. “We won’t be separated!” He plunged madly, but he was weak from privation, and two strong men held him by each elbow.
“Don’t fret, John!” cried his wife, as they hurried her towards the camel. “No harm shall come to me. Don’t struggle, or they’ll hurt you, dear.”
The four men writhed as they saw the women dragged away from them. All their agonies had been nothing to this. Sadie and her aunt appeared to be half senseless from fear. Only Mrs. Belmont kept a brave face. When they were seated the camels rose, and were led under the tree behind where the four men were standing.
“I’ve a pistol in me pocket,” said Belmont, looking up at his wife. “I would give me soul to be able to pass it to you.”
“Keep it, John, and it may be useful yet. I have no fears. Ever since we prayed I have felt as if our guardian angels had their wings round us.” She was like a guardian angel herself as she turned to the shrinking Sadie, and coaxed some little hope back into her despairing heart.
The short, thick Arab, who had been in command of Wad Ibrahim’s rearguard, had joined the Emir and the Moolah; the three consulted together, with occasional oblique glances towards the prisoners. Then the Emir spoke to Mansoor.
“The chief wishes to know which of you four is the richest man?” said the dragoman. His fingers were twitching with nervousness and plucking incessantly at the front of his covercoat.
“Why does he wish to know?” asked the Colonel.
“I do not know.”