KISMET.
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 the _Lex 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 of
_meum_ and _tuum_ were, 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 his _kismet_,' 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 Paris _Temps_ recorded 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 was _not_ an Englishman.