“What's the meaning of this, Mansoor?” cried Belmont, harshly. “Who are
these people, and why are you standing staring as if you had lost your
senses?”
The dragoman made an effort to compose himself, and licked his dry lips
before he answered.
“I do not know who they are,” said he, in a quavering voice. “I did not
expect to see any Arabs in this part.”
“Who they are?” cried the Frenchman. “You can see who they are. They are
armed men upon camels, Ababdeh, Bishareen--Bedouins, in short, such as
are employed by the Government upon the frontier.”
“By Jove, he may be right, Cochrane,” said Belmont, looking inquiringly
at the Colonel. “Why shouldn't it be as he says? why shouldn't these
fellows be friendlies?”
“There are no friendlies upon this side of the river,” said the Colonel,
abruptly; “I am perfectly certain about that. There is no use in mincing
matters. We must prepare for the worst.”
But in spite of his words, they stood stock-still, in a huddled group,
staring out over the plain. Their nerves were numbed by the sudden
shock, and to all of them it was like a scene in a dream, vague,
impersonal, and unreal. The men upon the camels had streamed out from a
gorge which lay a mile or so distant on the side of the path along which
they had travelled. Their retreat, therefore, was entirely cut off. It
appeared, from the dust and the length of the line, to be quite an army
which was emerging from the hills, for seventy men upon camels cover
a considerable stretch of ground. Having reached the sandy plain, they
very deliberately formed to the front, and then at the harsh call of
a bugle they trotted forward in line, the parti-coloured figures all
swaying and the sand smoking in a rolling yellow cloud at the heels of
their camels. At the same moment the six black soldiers doubled in
from the front with their Martinis at the trail, and snuggled down like
well-trained skirmishers behind the rocks upon the haunch of the hill.
Their breech-blocks all snapped together as their corporal gave them the
order to load.
And now suddenly the first stupor of the excursionists passed away, and
was succeeded by a frantic and impotent energy. They all ran about upon
the plateau of rock in an aimless, foolish flurry, like frightened fowls
in a yard. They could not bring themselves to acknowledge that there was
no possible escape for them. Again and again they rushed to the edge
of the great cliff which rose from the river, but the youngest and most
daring of them could never have descended it. The two women clung one
on each side of the trembling Mansoor, with a feeling that he was
officially responsible for their safety. When he ran up and down in his
desperation, his skirts and theirs all fluttered together. Stephens,
the lawyer, kept close to Sadie Adams, muttering mechanically, “Don't be
alarmed, Miss Sadie. Don't be at all alarmed!” though his own limbs were
twitching with agitation. Monsieur Fardet stamped about with a guttural
rolling of r's, glancing angrily at his companions, as if they had in
some way betrayed him, while the fat clergyman stood with his umbrella
up, staring stolidly with big, frightened eyes at the camel-men.
Cecil Brown curled his small, prim moustache, and looked white but
contemptuous. The Colonel, Belmont, and the young Harvard graduate were
the three most cool-headed and resourceful members of the party.
“Better stick together,” said the Colonel. “There's no escape for us, so
we may as well remain united.”
“They've halted,” said Belmont. “They are reconnoitring us. They know
very well that there is no escape from them, and they are taking their
time. I don't see what we can do.”
“Suppose we hide the women,” Headingly suggested. “They can't know how
many of us are here. When they have taken us, the women can come out of
their hiding-place and make their way back to the boat.”
“Admirable!” cried Colonel Cochrane. “Admirable! This way, please, Miss
Adams. Bring the ladies here, Mansoor. There is not an instant to be
lost.”
There was a part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and
here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of
stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest
of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two
side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the
rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible.
The two ladies were squeezed into this, and they crouched together,
Sadie's arms thrown round her aunt. When they had walled them up, the
men turned with lighter hearts to see what was going on. As they did
so there rang out the sharp, peremptory crack of a rifleshot from the
escort, followed by another and another, but these isolated shots were
drowned in the long, spattering roll of an irregular volley from the
plain, and the air was full of the phit-phit-phit of the bullets.
The tourists all huddled behind the rocks, with the exception of the
Frenchman, who still stamped angrily about, striking his sun-hat with
his clenched hand. Belmont and Cochrane crawled down to where the
Soudanese soldiers were firing slowly and steadily, resting their rifles
upon the boulders in front of them.
The Arabs had halted about five hundred yards away, and it was evident
from their leisurely movements that they were perfectly aware that there
was no possible escape for the travellers. They had paused to ascertain
their number before closing in upon them. Most of them were firing from
the backs of their camels, but a few had dismounted and were kneeling
here and there,--little shimmering white spots against the golden
background. Their shots came sometimes singly in quick, sharp throbs,
and sometimes in a rolling volley, with a sound like a boy's stick drawn
across iron railings. The hill buzzed like a bee-hive, and the bullets
made a sharp, crackling sound as they struck against the rocks.
[Illustration: You do no good by exposing yourself p86]
“You do no good by exposing yourself,” said Belmont, drawing Colonel
Cochrane behind a large jagged boulder, which already furnished a
shelter for three of the Soudanese.
“A bullet is the best we have to hope for,” said Cochrane, grimly. “What
an infernal fool I have been, Belmont, not to protest more energetically
against this ridiculous expedition! I deserve whatever I get, but it
_is_ hard on these poor souls who never knew the danger.”
“I suppose there's no help for us?”
“Not the faintest.”
“Don't you think this firing might bring the troops up from Haifa?”
“They'll never hear it. It is a good six miles from here to the steamer.
From that to Haifa would be another five.”
“Well, when we don't return, the steamer will give the alarm.”
“And where shall we be by that time?”
“My poor Norah! My poor little Norah!” muttered Belmont, in the depths
of his grizzled moustache.
“What do you suppose that they will do with us, Cochrane,” he asked
after a pause.
“They may cut our throats, or they may take us as slaves to Khartoum.
I don't know that there is much to choose. There's one of us out of his
troubles, anyhow.”
The soldier next them had sat down abruptly, and leaned forward over
his knees. His movement and attitude were so natural that it was hard to
realise that he had been shot through the head. He neither stirred nor
groaned. His comrades bent over him for a moment, and then, shrugging
their shoulders, they turned their dark faces to the Arabs once more.
Belmont picked up the dead man's Martini and his ammunition-pouch.
“Only three more rounds, Cochrane,” said he, with the little brass
cylinders upon the palm of his hand. “We've let them shoot too soon, and
too often. We should have waited for the rush.”
“You're a famous shot, Belmont,” cried the Colonel. “I've heard of you
as one of the cracks. Don't, you think you could pick off their leader?”
“Which is he?”
“As far as I can make out, it is that one on the white camel on their
right front. I mean the fellow who is peering at us from under his two
hands.”
Belmont thrust in his cartridge and altered the sights. “It's a shocking
bad light for judging distance,” said he. “This is where the low
point-blank trajectory of the Lee-Metford comes in useful. Well, we'll
try him at five hundred.” He fired, but there was no change in the white
camel or the peering rider.
“Did you see any sand fly?”
“No; I saw nothing.” “I fancy I took my sight a trifle too full.” “Try
him again.” Man and rifle and rock were equally steady, but again the
camel and chief remained unharmed. The third shot must have been
nearer, for he moved a _few_ paces to the right, as if he were becoming
restless.
Belmont threw the empty rifle down with an exclamation of disgust.
“It's this confounded light,” he cried, and his cheeks flushed with
annoyance. “Think of my wasting three cartridges in that fashion! If I
had him at Bisley I'd shoot the turban off him, but this vibrating glare
means refraction. What's the matter with the Frenchman?”
Monsieur Fardet was stamping about the plateau with the gestures of a
man who has been stung by a wasp. “_S'cré nom! S'cré nom!_” he shouted,
showing his strong white teeth under his black waxed moustache. He wrung
his right hand violently, and as he did so he sent a little spray of
blood from his finger-tips. A bullet had chipped his wrist. Headingly
ran out from the cover where he had been crouching, with the intention
of dragging the demented Frenchman into a place of safety, but he had
not taken three paces before he was himself hit in the loins, and fell
with a dreadful crash among the stones. He staggered to his feet, and
then fell again in the same place, floundering up and down like a horse
which has broken its back. “I'm done!” he whispered, as the Colonel ran
to his aid, and then he lay still, with his china-white cheek against
the black stones. When, but a year before, he had wandered under the
elms of Cambridge, surely the last fate upon this earth which he could
have predicted for himself would be that he should be slain by the
bullet of a fanatical Mohammedan in the wilds of the Libyan desert.
Meanwhile the fire of the escort had ceased, for they had shot away
their last cartridge. A second man had been killed, and a third --who
was the corporal in charge--had received a bullet in his thigh. He sat
upon a stone, tying up his injury with a grave, preoccupied look upon
his wrinkled black face, like an old woman piecing together a broken
plate. The three others fastened their bayonets with a determined
metallic rasp and snap, and the air of men who intended to sell their
lives dearly.
“They're coming!” cried Belmont, looking over the plain.
“Let them come!” the Colonel answered, putting his hands into his
trouser-pockets. Suddenly he pulled one fist out, and shook it furiously
in the air. “Oh, the cads! the confounded cads!” he shouted, and his
eyes were congested with rage.
It was the fate of the poor donkey-boys which had carried the
self-contained soldier out of his usual calm. During the firing they had
remained huddled, a pitiable group, among the rocks at the base of the
hill. Now upon the conviction that the charge of the Dervishes must
come first upon them, they had sprung upon their animals with shrill,
inarticulate cries of fear, and had galloped off across the plain. A
small flanking-party of eight or ten camel-men had worked round while
the firing had been going on, and these dashed in among the flying
donkey-boys, hacking and hewing with a cold-blooded, deliberate
ferocity. One little boy, in a flapping Galabeeah, kept ahead of his
pursuers for a time, but the long stride of the camels ran him down,
and an Arab thrust his spear into the middle of his stooping back. The
small, white-clad corpses looked like a flock of sheep trailing over the
desert.
But the people upon the rock had no time to think of the cruel fate of
the donkey-boys. Even the Colonel, after that first indignant outburst,
had forgotten all about them. The advancing camel-men had trotted to the
bottom of the hill, had dismounted, and, leaving their camels kneeling,
had rushed furiously onward. Fifty of them were clambering up the path
and over the rocks together, their red turbans appearing and vanishing
again as they scrambled over the boulders. Without a shot or a pause
they surged over the three black soldiers, killing one and stamping
the other two down under their hurrying feet. So they burst on to the
plateau at the top, where an unexpected resistance checked them for an
instant.
The travellers, nestling up against one another, had awaited, each after
his own fashion, the coming of the Arabs. The Colonel, with his hands
back in his trouser-pockets, tried to whistle out of his dry lips.
Belmont folded his arms and leaned against a rock, with a sulky frown
upon his lowering face. So strangely do our minds act that his three
successive misses and the tarnish to his reputation as a marksman was
troubling him more than his impending fate. Cecil Brown stood erect, and
plucked nervously at the upturned points of his little prim moustache.
Monsieur Fardet groaned over his wounded wrist. Mr. Stephens, in sombre
impotence, shook his head slowly, the living embodiment of prosaic
law and order. Mr. Stuart stood, his umbrella still over him, with no
expression upon his heavy face or in his staring brown eyes. Headingly
lay with that china-white cheek resting motionless upon the stones.
His sun-hat had fallen off, and he looked quite boyish with his ruffled
yellow hair and his unlined, clean-cut face. The dragoman sat upon a
stone and played nervously with his donkey-whip. So the Arabs found them
when they reached the summit of the hill.
And then, just as the foremost rushed to lay hands upon them, a most
unexpected incident arrested them. From the time of the first appearance
of the Dervishes the fat clergyman of Birmingham had looked like a man
in a cataleptic trance. He had neither moved nor spoken. But now he
suddenly woke at a bound into strenuous and heroic energy. It may have
been the mania of fear, or it may have been the blood of some Berserk
ancestor which stirred suddenly in his veins; but he broke into a wild
shout, and, catching up a stick, he struck right and left among the
Arabs with a fury which was more savage than their own. One who helped
to draw up this narrative has left it upon record that of all the
pictures which have been burned into his brain, there is none so clear
as that of this man, his large face shining with perspiration, and his
great body dancing about with unwieldy agility, as he struck at the
shrinking, snarling savages.
[Illustration: He struck at the snarling savages p 94]
Then a spear-head flashed from behind a rock with a quick, vicious
upward thrust, the clergyman fell upon his hands and knees, and the
horde poured over him to seize their unresisting victims. Knives
glimmered before their eyes, rude hands clutched at their wrists and at
their throats, and then, with brutal and unreasoning violence, they were
hauled and pushed down the steep, winding path to where the camels were
waiting below. The Frenchman waved his unwounded hand as he walked.
“Vive le Khalifa! Vive le Madhi!” he shouted, until a blow from behind
with the butt-end of a Remington beat him into silence.
And now they were herded in at the base of the Abousir Rock, this
little group of modern types who had fallen into the rough clutch of the
seventh century,--for in all save the rifles in their hands there was
nothing to distinguish these men from the desert warriors who first
carried the crescent flag out of Arabia. The East does not change, and
the Dervish raiders were not less brave, less cruel, or less fanatical
than their forebears. They stood in a circle, leaning upon their guns
and spears, and looking with exultant eyes at the dishevelled group
of captives. They were clad in some approach to a uniform, red turbans
gathered around the neck as well as the head, so that the fierce face
looked out of a scarlet frame; yellow, untanned shoes, and white tunics
with square, brown patches let into them. All carried rifles, and one
had a small, discoloured bugle slung over his shoulder. Half of them
were negroes--fine, muscular men, with the limbs of a jet Hercules; and
the other half were Baggara Arabs--small, brown, and wiry, with little,
vicious eyes, and thin, cruel lips. The chief was also a Baggara, but
he was a taller man than the others, with a black beard which came down
over his chest, and a pair of hard, cold eyes, which gleamed like
glass from under his thick, black brows. They were fixed now upon his
captives, and his features were grave with thought. Mr. Stuart had been
brought down, his hat gone, his face still flushed with anger, and his
trousers sticking in one part to his leg. The two surviving Soudanese
soldiers, their black faces and blue coats blotched with crimson, stood
silently at attention upon one side of this forlorn group of castaways.
The chief stood for some minutes, stroking his black beard, while his
fierce eyes glanced from one pale face to another along the miserable
line of his captives. In a harsh, imperious voice he said something
which brought Mansoor, the dragoman, to the front, with bent back and
outstretched, supplicating palms. To his employers there had always
seemed to be something comic in that flapping skirt and short cover-coat
above it; but now, under the glare of the mid-day sun, with those faces
gathered round them, it appeared rather to add a grotesque horror to
the scene. The dragoman salaamed like some ungainly, automatic doll, and
then, as the chief rasped out a curt word or two, he fell suddenly upon
his face, rubbing his forehead into the sand, and flapping upon it with
his hands.
[Illustration: Fell suddenly upon his face p97]
“What's that, Cochrane?” asked Belmont. “Why is he making an exhibition
of himself?”
“As far as I can understand, it is all up with us,” the Colonel
answered.
“But this is absurd,” cried the Frenchman, excitedly; “why should these
people wish any harm to me? I have never injured them. On the other
hand, I have always been their friend. If I could but speak to them, I
would make them comprehend. Hola, dragoman, Mansoor!”
The excited gestures of Monsieur Fardet drew the sinister eyes of the
Baggara chief upon him. Again he asked a curt question, and Mansoor,
kneeling in front of him, answered it.
“Tell him that I am a Frenchman, dragoman. Tell him that I am a friend
of the Khalifa. Tell him that my countrymen have never had any quarrel
with him, but that his enemies are also ours.”
“The chief asks what religion you call your own,” said Mansoor. “The
Khalifa, he says, has no necessity for any friendship from those who are
infidels and unbelievers.”
“Tell him that in France we look upon all religions as good.”
“The chief says that none but a blaspheming dog and the son of a dog
would say that all religions are one as good as the other. He says that
if you are indeed the friend of the Khalifa, you will accept the Koran
and become a true believer upon the spot. If you will do so, he will
promise on his side to send you alive to Khartoum.”
“And if not?”
“You will fare in the same way as the others.”
“Then you may make my compliments to monsieur the chief, and tell him
that it is not the custom for Frenchmen to change their religion under
compulsion.”
The chief said a few words, and then turned to consult with a short,
sturdy Arab at his elbow.
“He says, Monsieur Fardet,” said the dragoman, “that if you speak again
he will make a trough out of you for the dogs to feed from. Say nothing
to anger him, sir, for he is now talking what is to be done with us.”
“Who is he?” asked the Colonel.
“It is Ali Wad Ibrahim, the same who raided last year, and killed all of
the Nubian village.”
“I've heard of him,” said the Colonel.
“He has the name of being one of the boldest and the most fanatical
of all the Khalifa's leaders. Thank God that the women are out of his
clutches.”
The two Arabs had been talking in that stern, restrained fashion which
comes so strangely from a southern race. Now they both turned to the
dragoman, who was still kneeling upon the sand. They plied him with
questions, pointing first to one and then to another of their prisoners.
Then they conferred together once more, and finally said something to
Mansoor, with a contemptuous wave of the hand to indicate that he might
convey it to the others.
“Thank Heaven, gentlemen, I think that we are saved for the present
time,” said Mansoor, wiping away the sand which had stuck to his
perspiring forehead. “Ali Wad Ibrahim says that though an unbeliever
should have only the edge of the sword from one of the sons of the
Prophet, yet it might be of more profit to the beit-el-mal at Omdurman
if it had the gold which your people will pay for you. Until it comes
you can work as the slaves of the Khalifa; unless he should decide to
put you to death. You are to mount yourselves upon the spare camels and
to ride with the party.”
The chief had waited for the end of the explanation. Now he gave a brief
order, and a negro stepped forward with a long, dull-coloured sword in
his hand. The dragoman squealed like a rabbit who sees a ferret, and
threw himself frantically down upon the sand once more.
“What is it, Cochrane?” asked Cecil Brown,--for the Colonel had served
in the East, and was the only one of the travellers who had a smattering
of Arabic.
“As far as I can make out, he says there is no use keeping the dragoman,
as no one would trouble to pay a ransom for him, and he is too fat to
make a good slave.”
“Poor devil!” cried Brown. “Here, Cochrane, tell them to let him go. We
can't let him be butchered like this in front of us. Say that we will
find the money amongst us. I will be answerable for any reasonable sum.”
“I'll stand in as far as my means will allow,” cried Belmont.
“We will sign a joint bond or indemnity,” said, the lawyer. “If I had
a paper and pencil I could throw it into shape in an instant, and the
chief could rely upon its being perfectly correct and valid.”
But the Colonel's Arabic was insufficient, and Mansoor himself was too
maddened by fear to understand the offer which was being made for him.
The negro looked a question at the chief, and then his long black arm
swung upwards and his sword hissed over his shoulder. But the dragoman
had screamed out something which arrested the blow, and which brought
the chief and the lieutenant to his side with a new interest upon their
swarthy faces. The others crowded in also, and formed a dense circle
around the grovelling, pleading man.
The Colonel had not understood this sudden change, nor had the others
fathomed the reason of it, but some instinct flashed it upon Stephens's
horrified perceptions.
“Oh, you villain!” he cried, furiously.
“Hold your tongue, you miserable creature! Be silent! Better die--a
thousand times better die!”
But it was too late, and already they could all see the base design by
which the coward hoped to save his own life. He was about to betray the
women. They saw the chief, with a brave man's contempt upon his stern
face, make a sign of haughty assent, and then Mansoor spoke rapidly and
earnestly, pointing up the hill. At a word from the Baggara, a dozen of
the raiders rushed up the path and were lost to view upon the top. Then
came a shrill cry, a horrible, strenuous scream of surprise and terror,
and an instant later the party streamed into sight again, dragging the
women in their midst. Sadie, with her young, active limbs, kept up with
them as they sprang down the slope, encouraging her aunt all the while
over her shoulder. The older lady, struggling amid the rushing white
figures, looked with her thin limbs and open mouth like a chicken being
dragged from a coop.
[Illustration: The party streamed into sight again p103]
The chief's dark eyes glanced indifferently at Miss Adams, but gazed
with a smouldering fire at the younger woman. Then he gave an abrupt
order, and the prisoners were hurried in a miserable, hopeless drove
to the cluster of kneeling camels. Their pockets had already been
ransacked, and the contents thrown into one of the camel-food bags, the
neck of which was tied up by Ali Wad Ibrahim's own hands.
“I say, Cochrane,” whispered Belmont, looking with smouldering eyes at
the wretched Mansoor, “I've got a little hip revolver which they have
not discovered. Shall I shoot that cursed dragoman for giving away the
women?”
The Colonel shook his head.
“You had better keep it,” said he, with a sombre face. “The women may
find some other use for it before all is over.”