II

So it was that the broad-shouldered Seti went to be a soldier, with all

the women of the village wailing behind him, and Ahassa his wife covering

her head with dust and weeping by his side as he stepped out towards

Dongola. For himself, Seti was a philosopher; that is to say, he was a

true Egyptian. Whatever was, was to be; and Seti had a good digestion,

which is a great thing in the desert. Moreover, he had a capacity for

foraging--or foray. The calmness with which he risked his life for an

onion or a water-bag would have done credit to a prince of buccaneers.

He was never flustered. He had dropped a grindstone on the head of his

rival, but the smile that he smiled then was the same smile with which he

suffered and forayed and fought and filched in the desert. With a back

like a door, and arms as long and strong as a gorilla's, with no moral

character to speak of, and an imperturbable selfishness, even an ignorant

Arab like Seti may go far. More than once his bimbashi drew a sword to

cut him down for the peaceful insolent grin with which he heard himself

suddenly charged with very original crimes; but even the officer put his

sword up again, because he remembered that though Seti was the curse of

the regiment on the march, there was no man like him in the day of

battle. Covered with desert sand and blood, and fighting and raging

after the manner of a Sikh, he could hold ten companies together like a

wall against a charge of Dervishes. The bimbashi rejoiced at this, for

he was a coward; likewise his captain was a coward, and so was his

lieutenant: for they were half Turks, half Gippies, who had seen Paris

and had not the decency to die there. Also it had been discovered that

no man made so good a spy or envoy as Seti. His gift for lying was

inexpressible: confusion never touched him; for the flattest

contradictions in the matter of levying backsheesh he always found an

excuse. Where the bimbashi and his officers were afraid to go lest the

bald-headed eagle and the vulture should carry away their heads as tit-

bits to the Libyan hills, Seti was sent. In more than one way he always

kept his head. He was at once the curse and the pride of the regiment.

For his sins he could not be punished, and his virtues were of value only

to save his life.

In this fashion, while his regiment thinned out by disease, famine,

fighting, and the midnight knife, Seti came on to Dongola, to Berber, to

Khartoum; and he grinned with satisfaction when he heard that they would

make even for Kordofan. He had outlived all the officers who left

Manfaloot with the regiment save the bimbashi, and the bimbashi was

superstitious and believed that while Seti lived he would live.

Therefore, no clansman ever watched his standard flying in the van as the

bimbashi--from behind--watched the long arm of Seti slaying, and heard

his voice like a brass horn above all others shouting his war-cry.

But at Khartoum came Seti's fall. Many sorts of original sin had been

his, with profit and prodigious pleasure, but when, by the supposed

orders of the bimbashi, he went through Khartoum levying a tax upon every

dancing-girl in the place and making her pay upon the spot at the point

of a merciless tongue, he went one step too far. For his genius had

preceded that of Selamlik Pasha, the friend of the Mouffetish at Cairo,

by one day only. Selamlik himself had collected taxes on dancing-girls

all the way from Cairo to Khartoum; and to be hoist by an Arab in a foot

regiment having no authority and only a limitless insolence, was more

than the Excellency could bear.

To Selamlik Pasha the bimbashi hastily disowned all knowledge of Seti's

perfidy, but both were brought out to have their hands and feet and heads

cut off in the Beit-el-Mal, in the presence of the dancing-girls and the

populace. In the appointed place, when Seti saw how the bimbashi wept--

for he had been to Paris and had no Arab blood in him; how he wrung his

hands--for had not absinthe weakened his nerves in the cafes of St.

Michel?--when Seti saw that he was no Arab and was afraid to die, then he

told the truth to Selamlik Pasha. He even boldly offered to tell the

pasha where half his own ill-gotten gains were hid, if he would let the

bimbashi go. Now, Selamlik Pasha was an Egyptian, and is it not written

in the Book of Egypt that no man without the most dangerous reason may

refuse backsheesh? So it was that Selamlik talked to the Ulema, the holy

men, who were there, and they urged him to clemency, as holy men will,

even in Egypt--at a price.

So it was also that the bimbashi went back to his regiment with all his

limbs intact. Seti and the other half of his ill-gotten gains were left.

His hands were about to be struck off, when he realised of how little

account his gold would be without them; so he offered it to Selamlik

Pasha for their sake. The pasha promised, and then, having found the

money, serenely prepared the execution. For his anger was great. Was

not the idea of taxing the dancing-girls his very own, the most original

tax ever levied in Egypt? And to have the honour of it filched from him

by a soldier of Manfaloot--no, Mahommed Seti should be crucified!

And Seti, the pride and the curse of his regiment, would have been

crucified between two palms on the banks of the river had it not been for

Fielding Bey, the Englishman--Fielding of St. Bartholomew's--who had

burned gloriously to reform Egypt root and branch, and had seen the fire

of his desires die down. Fielding Bey saved Seti, but not with

backsheesh.

Fielding intervened. He knew Selamlik Pasha well, and the secret of his

influence over him is for telling elsewhere. But whatever its source, it

gave Mahommed Seti his life. It gave him much more, for it expelled him

from the Khedive's army. Now soldiers without number, gladly risking

death, had deserted from the army of the Khedive; they had bought

themselves out with enormous backsheesh, they had been thieves,

murderers, panderers, that they might be freed from service by some

corrupt pasha or bimbashi; but no one in the knowledge of the world had

ever been expelled from the army of the Khedive.

There was a satanic humour in the situation pleasant to the soul of

Mahommed Seti, if soul his subconsciousness might be called. In the

presence of his regiment, drawn up in the Beit-el-Mal, before his

trembling bimbashi, whose lips were now pale with terror at the loss of

his mascot, Mahommed Seti was drummed out of line, out of his regiment,

out of the Beit-el-Mal. It was opera boufe, and though Seti could not

know what opera boufe was, he did know that it was a ridiculous fantasia,

and he grinned his insolent grin all the way, even to the corner of the

camel-market, where the drummer and the sergeant and his squad turned

back from ministering a disgrace they would gladly have shared.

Left at the corner of the camel-market, Mahommed Seti planned his future.

At first it was to steal a camel and take the desert for Berber. Then he

thought of the English hakim, Fielding Bey, who had saved his life. Now,

a man who has saved your life once may do it again; one favour is always

the promise of another. So Seti, with a sudden inspiration, went

straight to the house of Fielding Bey and sat down before it on his mat.

With the setting of the sun came a clatter of tins and a savoury odour

throughout Khartoum to its farthest precincts, for it was Ramadan, and no

man ate till sunset. Seti smiled an avid smile, and waited. At last he

got up, turned his face towards Mecca, and said his prayers. Then he

lifted the latch of Fielding's hut, entered, eyed the medicine bottles

and the surgical case with childish apprehension, and made his way to the

kitchen. There he foraged. He built a fire; his courage grew; he ran to

the bazaar, and came back with an armful of meats and vegetables.

So it was that when Fielding returned he found Mahommed Seti and a

savoury mess awaiting him. Also there was coffee and a bottle of brandy

which Seti had looted in the bazaar. In one doorway stood Fielding; in

another stood Mahommed Seti, with the same grin which had served his

purpose all the way from Cairo, his ugly face behind it, and his

prodigious shoulders below it, and the huge chest from which came forth,

like the voice of a dove:

"God give thee long life, saadat el bey!"

Now an M.D. degree and a course in St. Bartholomew's Hospital do not

necessarily give a knowledge of the human soul, though the outlying lands

of the earth have been fattened by those who thought there was knowledge

and salvation in a conquered curriculum. Fielding Bey, however, had

never made pretence of understanding the Oriental mind, so he discreetly

took his seat and made no remarks. From sheer instinct, however, when he

came to the coffee he threw a boot which caught Mahommed Seti in the

middle of the chest, and said roughly: "French, not Turkish, idiot!"

Then Mahommed Seti grinned, and he knew that he was happy; for it was

deep in his mind that that was the Inglesi's way of offering a long

engagement. In any case Seti had come to stay. Three times he made

French coffee that night before it suited, and the language of Fielding

was appropriate in each case. At last a boot, a native drum, and a wood

sculpture of Pabst the lion-headed goddess, established perfect relations

between them. They fell into their places of master and man as

accurately as though the one had smitten and the other served

for twenty years.

The only acute differences they had were upon two points--the cleaning of

the medicine bottles and surgical instruments, and the looting. But it

was wonderful to see how Mahommed Seti took the kourbash at the hands of

Fielding, when he shied from the medicine bottles. He could have broken,

or bent double with one twist, the weedy, thin-chested Fielding. But

though he saw a deadly magic and the evil eye in every stopper, and

though to him the surgical instruments were torturing steels which the

devil had forged for his purposes, he conquered his own prejudices so far

as to assist in certain bad cases which came in Fielding's way on the

journey down the Nile.

The looting was a different matter. Had not Mahommed Seti looted all his

life--looted from his native village to the borders of Kordofan? Did he

not take to foray as a wild ass to bersim? Moreover, as little Dicky

Donovan said humorously yet shamelessly when he joined them at Korosko:

"What should a native do but loot who came from Manfaloot?"

Dicky had a prejudice against the Murderer, because he was a murderer;

and Mahommed Seti viewed with scorn any white man who was not Fielding;

much more so one who was only five feet and a trifle over. So for a time

there was no sympathy between the two. But each conquered the other in

the end. Seti was conquered first.

One day Dicky, with a sudden burst of generosity--for he had a button to

his pocket--gave Mahommed Seti a handful of cigarettes. The next day

Seti said to Fielding: "Behold, God has given thee strong men for

friends. Thou hast Mahommed Seti"--his chest blew out like a bellows--

"and thou hast Donovan Pasha."

Fielding grunted. He was not a fluent man, save in forbidden language,

and Seti added:

"Behold thou, saadat el bey, who opens a man's body and turns over his

heart with a sword-point, and sewing him up with silken cords bids him

live again, greatness is in thy house! Last night thy friend, Donovan

Pasha, gave into my hands a score of those cigarettes which are like the

smell of a camel-yard. In the evening, having broken bread and prayed,

I sat down at the door of the barber in peace to smoke, as becomes a man

who loves God and His benefits. Five times I puffed, and then I stayed

my lips, for why should a man die of smoke when he can die by the sword?

But there are many men in Korosko whose lives are not as clean linen.

These I did not love. I placed in their hands one by one the cigarettes,

and with their blessings following me I lost myself in the dusk and

waited."

Mahommed Seti paused. On his face was a smile of sardonic retrospection.

"Go on, you fool!" grunted Fielding.

"Nineteen sick men, unworthy followers of the Prophet, thanked Allah in

the mosque to-day that their lives were spared. Donovan Pasha is a great

man and a strong, effendi! We be three strong men together."

Dicky Donovan's conversion to a lasting belief in Mahommed Seti came a

year later.

The thing happened at a little sortie from the Nile. Fielding was chief

medical officer, and Dicky, for the moment, was unattached. When the

time came for starting, Mahommed Seti brought round Fielding's horse and

also Dicky Donovan's. Now, Mahommed Seti loved a horse as well as a

Bagarra Arab, and he had come to love Fielding's waler Bashi-Bazouk as a

Farshoot dog loves his master. And Bashi-Bazouk was worthy of Seti's

love. The sand of the desert, Seti's breath and the tail of his yelek

made the coat of Bashi-Bazouk like silk. It was the joy of the regiment,

and the regiment knew that Seti had added a new chapter to the Koran

concerning horses, in keeping with Mahomet's own famous passage

"By the CHARGERS that pant,

And the hoofs that strike fire,

And the scourers at dawn,

Who stir up the dust with it,

And cleave through a host with it!"

But Mahomet's phrases were recited in the mosque, and Seti's, as he

rubbed Bashi-Bazouk with the tail of his yelek.

There was one thing, however, that Seti loved more than horses, or at

least as much. Life to him was one long possible Donnybrook Fair. That

was why, although he was no longer in the army, when Fielding and Dicky

mounted for the sortie he said to Fielding:

"Oh, brother of Joshua and all the fighters of Israel, I have a bobtailed

Arab. Permit me to ride with thee." And Fielding replied: "You will

fight the barn-yard fowl for dinner; get back to your stew-pots."

But Seti was not to be fobbed off. "It is written that the Lord, the

Great One, is compassionate and merciful. Wilt thou then, O saadat."

Fielding interrupted: "Go, harry the onion-field for dinner. You're a

dog of a slave, and a murderer too: you must pay the price of that

grindstone!"

But Seti hung by the skin of his teeth to the fringe of Fielding's good-

nature--Fielding's words only were sour and wrathful. So Seti grinned

and said: "For the grindstone, behold it sent Ebn Haroun to the mercy of

God. Let him rest, praise be to God!"

"You were drummed out of the army. You can't fight," said Fielding

again; but he was smiling under his long moustache.

"Is not a bobtailed nag sufficient shame? Let thy friend ride the

bobtailed nag and pay the price of the grindstone and the drum," said

Seti.

"Fall in!" rang the colonel's command, and Fielding, giving Seti a

friendly kick in the ribs, galloped away to the troop.

Seti turned to the little onion-garden. His eye harried it for a moment,

and he grinned. He turned to the doorway where a stew-pot rested, and

his mind dwelt cheerfully on the lamb he had looted for Fielding's

dinner. But last of all his eye rested upon his bobtailed Arab, the

shameless thing in an Arab country, where every horse rears his tail as a

peacock spreads his feathers, as a marching Albanian lifts his foot. The

bobtailed Arab's nose was up, his stump was high. A hundred times he had

been in battle; he was welted and scarred like a shoe-maker's apron. He

snorted his cry towards the dust rising like a surf behind the heels of

the colonel's troop.

Suddenly Seti answered the cry--he answered the cry and sprang forward.

That was how in the midst of a desperate melee twenty miles away on the

road to Dongola little Dicky Donovan saw Seti riding into the thick of

the fight armed only with a naboot of domwood, his call, "Allala-Akbar!"

rising like a hoarse-throated bugle, as it had risen many a time in the

old days on the road from Manfaloot. Seti and his bobtailed Arab, two

shameless ones, worked their way to the front. Not Seti's strong right

arm alone and his naboot were at work, but the bobtailed Arab, like an

iron-handed razor toothed shrew, struck and bit his way, his eyes

bloodred like Seti's. The superstitious Dervishes fell back before this

pair of demons; for their madness was like the madness of those who at

the Dosah throw themselves beneath the feet of the Sheikh's horse by the

mosque of El Hassan in Cairo. The bobtailed Arab's lips were drawn back

over his assaulting teeth in a horrible grin. Seti grinned too, the grin

of fury and of death.

Fielding did not know how it was that, falling wounded from his horse,

he was caught by strong arms, as Bashi-Bazouk cleared him at a bound and

broke into the desert. But Dicky Donovan, with his own horse lanced

under him, knew that Seti made him mount the bobtailed Arab with Fielding

in front of him, and that a moment later they had joined the little band

retreating to Korosko, having left sixty of their own dead on the field,

and six times that number of Dervishes.

It was Dicky Donovan who cooked Fielding's supper that night, having

harried the onion-field and fought the barn-yard fowl, as Fielding had

commanded Seti.

But next evening at sunset Mahommed Seti came into the fort, slashed and

bleeding, with Bashi-Bazouk limping heavily after him.

Fielding said that Seti's was the good old game for which V.C.'s were the

reward--to run terrible risks to save a life in the face of the enemy;

but, heretofore, it had always been the life of a man, not of a horse.

To this day the Gippies of that regiment still alive do not understand

why Seti should have stayed behind and risked his life to save a horse

and bring him wounded back to his master. But little Dicky Donovan

understood, and Fielding understood; and Fielding never afterwards

mounted Bashi-Bazouk but he remembered. It was Mahommed Seti who taught

him the cry of Mahomet:

"By the CHARGERS that pant,

And the hoofs that strike fire,

And the scourers at dawn,

Who stir up the dust with it,

And cleave through a host with it!"

And in the course of time Mahommed Seti managed to pay the price of the

grindstone and also of the drum.