The voice of a German officer breaks in, giving a sharp order in
Prussian-flavoured Turkish. There is a rush of _zabtiehs_ and
_postas_ to the door of the building where the madman is.... As they
jostle in the filthy entry, the boots of those who have got in first,
thunder on its crazy stairs; and savage shouts and the tumult of a
desperate struggle break out in the sordid room where Govan--bleeding
from a bullet-wound in the head--but equal to a dozen men in the
strength of his insanity--stands over the disfigured corpse laid out
upon a dirty sack.
In the mud courtyard below, as Hamid Bey, with the German officers;
his following and escort of police are retreating discreetly
backwards to the vantage of the courtyard gate--a prisoner with a
savage curse, dashes a handful of muddy orange-peel full in the livid
face of Hamid. The Bey, smothered with filth and choking with rage,
jerks his revolver from its holster, and promptly scatters the
offender's brains.
Were the Bey unaccompanied, a volley from the Winchesters of his
escort would silence for all time the rioters about him. But the
German commander has previously informed him that on the morrow the
War prisoners under his jurisdiction at Shechem will be deported for
purposes of exchange....
Wild shouts, and British cheers break out.... Old War-slogans are
heard again.... There is a furious rush of naked feet, but the
Military Police and the _postas_ of the guard beat back the unarmed
mutineers with rifle-butts, and drive them back on either side,
clubbing and kicking them. But less because of this the tumult is
quelled than because a tall, ragged man with long tawny hair and
beard has rushed from the archway of one of the Barrack buildings;
and bringing, in this desperate hour, the authority of the priest to
reinforce the influence of the friend and helper, exhorts, implores,
commands the maddened prisoners to submit to the brutal authority
they have no power to resist.
They are not cowed, but they obey. The clenched hands drop whatever
missiles they have chanced to seize on,--their owners, in a storm of
kicks, curses and blows with the rifle-butt, are herded back into the
Barracks by their guards.
Barney, the jester, for once at a loss for a gag, huddles on a sack
half-filled with straw on one of the wooden platforms,--six feet wide
and two above the floor--a couple of which, running parallel,
longitudinally divide each room. Divided into sections by upright
planks, each section of platform accommodates or discommodes six War
Prisoners. Perhaps Barney's room, and others on the upper floors are
a thought less vile in flavour than these on the lower storeys. He
smokes his last remaining fag, then whistles a dreary ragtime,
staring through the barred window in front of him at the unbarred
window of a room that is over the courtyard gate....
It is the window of the Commandant's office: the bare, seldom-used
room where, on Sundays, as a signal favour,--the priest has been
allowed to celebrate Mass and hold a Bible-class, and on rare
occasions an impromptu smoking-concert has been given. It is full of
Turkish _postas_ in khaki, and the braided blue of the Osmanli
gendarmerie. It is at first not possible to get a glimpse of what is
going on inside, but in obedience to some order the window is cleared
of the bodies blocking it.... Now it can be made out that the
officers are Hamid Bey and the German general, seated with the
secretary and _aide_ at a table, before which--with two troopers of
Mounted Police behind him, stands a tall, pale, emaciated man with
long red-gold hair and beard.
The man seems to be answering a series of interrogations. He
asserts, he denies emphatically, he pleads, but he does not cringe.
Driven to silent frenzy by the difficulty of seeing, and the
doubtfulness of the trend of the events that are taking place in the
room over the gateway, Barney looks at his neighbour, the Sergeant of
the R.F.C.
"Sergeant!"
"Eh?"
The Flight Sergeant's broad hands are sheltering his eyes as he lies
on his stomach on the platform. The little folding binoculars that
magnify by 20 are solving for their owner the problem of the
Commandant's Room.
"D'yer pipe wot's goin' on? In the office over the gytew'y? Where
'Amid, blarst 'im! an' the two German orficers is settin' at the
table and the Father standin' up in front? ..."
"Ay. They're playin' a scene out o' the Old Testament!" says the
Flight Sergeant, with a sarcastic twitch of a muscle in his thin
cheek.
"Wod'jer call it? ..." Barney breathes hard....
"The Scapegoat!"
"The 'ow much? ..."
"The Scapegoat. The beast the ancient Jews burdened with the sins of
the congregation--and drove into the Wilderness every year.
Only--the Padre's the Scapegoat--in this case."
"'Oo? ... Not Father Forbis?"
"Father Forbis right enough! 'Left--turn. Quick--march.
Party--shon!'" mimics the Sergeant, as the high fair head and stern
aquiline profile of the priest, with a _zabtieh's_ fezzed head
before, and another behind him,--passes across the field of vision
limited by the frame of the window, and by the opening of a door an
angle of light is thrown on the whitewashed office wall. "Now the
_sira-châwush_ is ordering out the Prison Guard escort.... It's all
over.... They're taking him away! ..."
"Dismissed after interrygation.... That's all.... Cheero! In a
minnit 'e'll come back through the yard-gyte an' go to 'is quarters
as gay as a bloomin' bird...."
Barney defends his opinion with desperate optimism. But his heart is
sinking leadenly and a lump is in his throat.
"All serene! Have it your own way. You'll see which is right of
us!" The Sergeant cautiously raises himself up. "Do you hear the
escort's looted British boots trampin' down the stairs? Now they'll
either turn in here or march out at the Main Entrance. And if they
do that, there'll be no Mass for the Catholics on Sunday morning--and
no Prayers for the rest of us when Mass is through. And no one to
get us the allowance from the Consul. And a dog's death for the
sick, ay! and a dog's burial. There! ... Do you hear? ... That's the
outside gate shutting..."
"Yus. O my Gawd! Shall we ever see 'im agyne?"
The inner gate of the Barrack courtyard has not opened. The sentries
posted right and left of it maintain their position unmoved. But the
groaning of rusty bolts in stone grooves, and the sound of the
ponderous outer gate of the Main Entrance opening and slamming,
falls, heavy as a clod of churchyard clay, on the hearts of many men.
For their priest, their helper, their counsellor and friend has gone
from his place among them, and the blank he leaves is beyond mere
words to express. And even worse than the sense of loss is the cruel
uncertainty. Wondering, conjecturing, they lie on their verminous
benches as the long hot Palestine day creeps to the sunset hour. The
prayer-call from the mosques heralds no supper. Prisoners who resent
massacre and villainous usage must, in the opinion of the Bey, have
been too lavishly fed. The soldiers of the guard divide the beans in
oil; and Barney Mossam, tightening his belt, is more than ever
certain that Virtue, outside the walls of the T.R. Drury Lane--is not
a game that pays....
The breeze freshens, the great bats come out to steal fruit, and the
lesser ones to hunt moths and mosquitoes. Night suddenly unfolds her
wings--and down comes the Dark. The jackals howl on the confines of
the town, and the pariah dogs bay hideously. The Turkish equivalent
for Lights Out! is sounded by the prison _boruzan_. Silver clear,
the trumpets and bugles of the German-Turkish garrison challenge the
echoes of Ebal and Gerizim. The radiant Hosts of Heaven come forth,
and the moon, in her last quarter, hangs over the Hills of Gilead.
Sleep has come to the prisoners. The mud walls shake with their
snoring. Only a few are wakeful. The Flight Sergeant is one of
these. Towards the middle of the night a 'plane goes over Shechem:
"A raiding or reconnoitring hydro from some carrier in the
Mediterranean? No! There's no rattling from the floats. It is a
land machine...."
The airman leaves the crowded bench, and steals to the window. In
the white effulgence of the moon all objects stand out clear. The
German look-out with the telescope on the minaret of the Great Mosque
of el Kebir.... The hooded searchlight with its dozing and waking
guardians, on the balcony lower down.... A little figure moving on
the ragged shoulder of Ebal.... A child? ... No! a woman--scrambling
up from limestone terrace to terrace.... He forgets her, for, with
the deep, vibrating song that he remembers--into the field of his
vision swims The Two-Faced Nightingale....
At about a thousand feet up, she circles smoothly above Shechem. The
search-ray from the balcony of the Great Mosque slashes at her
viciously. Its fellow from the flank of Gerizim, leaps out, but
sinks down again. Her pilot fires an orange light--and the scimitars
of radiance from the Mosque and the Mount return to their scabbards;
no strings of green rockets explore for the range of her--and no
shells from the anti-aircraft guns in the Square of the Khan scream
up at her winged shape....
As the biplane hovers against the jewel-bright blue of the Eastern
night, the little Zeiss glasses tell their owner that her pilot has a
native observer. A big Arab in a striped mantle, and headcloth bound
by a rope.... Now her pilot fires a second orange light, drops his
weighted despatch-bag, banks and climbs, launching at a dizzy height
into a descent of sweeping spirals.... Evidently he is going to land
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Shechem....
There is silence as the engine is cut out.... The big 'plane dives
out of sight behind the shoulder of Ebal, where the lowest tiers of
greyish-yellow limestone terraces are merged in the sandy, rolling
plain....
The Flight Sergeant holds his breath and waits, his eyes glued to the
binoculars. In a wonderfully short space of time the aëroplane, a
powerful tractor biplane of D.H.6 type, climbs into his field of
vision,--rises in wide, masterly spirals, banks, turns and flies away
Westwards,--leaving the Flight Sergeant wondering with his chin upon
the window-sill....
For the Two-Faced Nightingale has shed her observer, the big man in
the striped Arab _abâyi_ and roped _kuffiyeh_. Puzzled, the Flight
Sergeant creeps noiselessly back to his place on the wooden platform,
and lies awake, chewing the cud of mystery, for the rest of the long
miserable night.