IV

Dawn brings surprise to him, and the other War prisoners of the

Barracks. After the distribution of the morning half-brick of gritty

black bread, they are given a second ration, and told to get ready,

as they are all going away.

To this end they are presently mustered in the courtyard, carrying

their various packs and bundles. Sick and well, unwashed, haggard,

unshorn; on naked feet, or feet that are bandaged with the remnants

of puttees. Some in tattered khaki tunics, others in cast-off German

or Turkish jackets; many bareheaded, others covered with German

military caps or broken sun-helmets,--as sorry a collection of

scarecrows as Turco-German neglect and brutality can make of two

hundred and twenty brave men.... A Turkish bimbashi of infantry,

attended by a châwush, gravely pretends to inspect the French and

British prisoners. In the name of his Empire he bids them farewell.

Some try to raise a feeble cheer when both sets of big wooden gates

are thrown open,--and they see a string of some half-dozen German

motor-lorries waiting in the sunny road. Sick and well, they are

marched forth under guard and packed into these vehicles,--those

unable to stand being carried out by _postas_. Then, followed by

some weeping wives, the Arabs, Jews and Armenians, chained neck to

neck in double file,--are led away--a disconsolate procession, bound

for no man knows where....

Even as they leave the foul place of their captivity, the Barracks is

filled from wall to wall by an entering battalion of Turkish

Reservist Rifles, part of a Brigade hastily summoned by Von

Kressenstein from the Caucasus, to be launched on the journey to

Mespot, and now brought down here. Swarthy, hairy men, armed with

the old long Martini, some covered with the fez, others with the

drill _enverieh_, some shod with sandals and leggings, others with

German Army boots.

Thus, the Railway-line from Shechem not being available--it was

extensively damaged a little while back by British bombing

aircraft--and on the repair of it many of these War prisoners have

bitterly toiled!--they are bumped over villainously bad roads to

railhead at Nakr--en route for the fierce red city of Aleppo, where

as they are now aware and Heaven knows how they have got the

knowledge!--the sick and disabled are to be picked out for Exchange

to England, _via_ Smyrna--and the able-bodied (such as they are!)

sent north to Belemkh, a station in the Taurus Mountains,

headquarters for gangs of War prisoners working on the rails....

The villainous road that buckjumps through the tumbled Palestine

landscape is crowded with Turkish Field, Horse, and Mountain

Artillery, conjured back from Mesopotamia by Von Kressenstein, and

rushing forward to the defence of Junction Station South. Battery

after battery rolls by in the blinding dust; guns and waggons pulled,

and riders carried by tough Anatolian horses, bitterly ill-used and

evidently poorly fed. But not the roll of iron-shod wheels and the

clatter of iron-shod hoofs, nor the roar of human voices talking in

many Oriental dialects, nor the curses and jeers and viler things

that are hurled at the prisoners in the jolting lorries, can shut out

the savage, irregular thudding of Turkish Krupp 75 mms., Turkish

Mountain Artillery, and machine-guns; and the steady, dogged slogging

of British Royal Garrison Artillery motor-howitzers; British Field

Artillery eighteen-pounders; and the clat-clat-clatter of Lewis

machine-guns, waging bitter battle in the west and south....

At Nakr, where there is to be a delay of several hours, owing to the

detrainment of forces from Mespot, they find a composite train of

second and third-class compartments full of Turkish War Prisoner

guards and their commanders, and horse-trucks, packed with British

officers, waiting under steam for a German Staff Deputy Director of

War Prisoners,--and a Controller of Transport,--who are going to

Aleppo and thence to Smyrna to arrange the conditions of their

exchange. The British officers are the recent captives of the

stone-prison and the wired enclosure at Shechem. Very sunburnt are

they:--very haggard, weary, thirsty, shabby and ill-shaven, and

burdened with tattered valises and heterogeneous odds and ends of

personal property, but bright of eye, elastic of bearing--full of the

indomitable spirit that from the days of Agincourt and long before

them--has been the birthright of their warlike race.

Crowding like schoolboys at the half-doors of the padlocked and

guarded horse-trucks, they shout cheery greetings, salutations and

scraps of information to the rank-and-file, clustered like swarming

bees on the grilling stretch of platform beside the iron track....

"Hear the guns, W. and S.? Putting the wind up Djemal, aren't we?"

"Halloa! Mossam of B---- Company, my late Platoon! I've not seen

you since I launched you with a note to the O.C. the water-camels at

Rashid.... Have you got hold of a new song, or are you still denying

relationship with Potsdam?"

"Aren't you Jollife, you chap with the Turkish fez and your eye in a

sling? My Orderly in front of Gaza! What price that leg of roast

goat with the skin and hair on? I'll bet you'd tuck into it quick

enough now--if you got the chance!"

A graver, older officer leans out and calls to the soldiers:

"Can any of you men give us news of Father Forbis? We've been on the

look-out for him since we heard we were to be moved."

"The Padre! ... Where's the Padre? ... What are you shaking your

heads about? Damn you, you hairy brute! Why do you savage the man?

... What the hell has he done to you? ..."

Thus the ringing British voice, sharp and acrid with indignation.

For Barney Mossam, screwing himself up to answer, has been clubbed by

a _posta's_ rifle-butt full in the mouth. He spits out blood and

broken teeth, and grins pitiably; and for his sake and his comrades',

the officers address them no more. Now the Turkish Station-Master

and the German R.T.O. who is his master, appear on the platform, as

the Deputy Director of War Prisoners and the Controller of Imperial

Transport and their escorts arrive on the scene in German Army

motor-cars. They board the dirty first-class compartment specially

reserved for them. Their orderlies and servants stow away their

luggage, the signal falls--and the train--with a non-commissioned

officer on the platform of the corridor-car conveying the German

officials--armed with binoculars and sharply on the look-out for

British bomb-carrying aircraft, jolts over the warped, unevenly-laid

metals for El Fuda Junction and Deraa, the first stages of its

journey North....

An Arab horseman, stationary beside the track with two mounted

companions, controlling his fiery dapple-grey mare with a master-hand

upon her jingling bridle--resplendent with the gold and silver

jewellery lavished on horse-furniture by the wealthier Bedwân,

gravely salutes with his long lance tufted with sable ostrich

feathers, as the composite train jolts out of Nakr. And the Deputy

Director of War Prisoners and the Controller of Imperial Transport,

sitting opposite one another in their dusty first-class compartment,

with tall tumblers of Munich beer, (iced, in this land of dust and

drouth) on a table fitted between them ... smoking the fat cigars of

Hamburg and discussing German Military Supremacy and German

World-politics--gravely finger the brims of their sun-helmets in

recognition of the salute....

"_Wer ist es!_ Who now, is that Arab? ..." asks the Controller,

whose bulging, light-grey eyes are sharp-sighted behind their tinted

glasses. "A personage of some consequence, by the gold embroidery on

his _burnus_ judging; the gold twist in his head-rope, the

gold-hilted sword in his waist-cloth--and the

also-with-precious-metal-enriched trappings of his Blauschimmel mare."

"He," the Deputy Director replies, "is one of the lesser Emirs of the

Irregular Cavalry of the King of the Hedjaz, who--as the Herr General

Controller knows,--secretly under British leadership--upon the City

of Mecca seized in June and annexed Akaba in July."

"And is now wrecking trains on the Hedjaz Rail, containing German

Ottoman forces, under the very noses of our Allied patrols,--blowing

Turkish Railway-bridges with charges of nitro-glycerine sky-high--and

in the North and East our rearguards harassing. _Donnerwetter!_ Why

is this rogue of an Arab not in fetters? What makes he, hanging

about trains containing military officials of the Fatherland?"

"Because, Herr General, the Emir Fadl Anga and his followers are of

those who the solid worth and philanthropic aims of Germany

recognise, and scorn the windy emptiness and rapacious greed of

England, the Great Swashbuckler.... They what we Germans have done

for the Turkish Army also see--and are convinced that under similar

auspices, Arabia, hand in hand with Egypt and India, might become a

powerful and war-capable State. Emir Fadl Anga estimates the number

of his party--headed by a nephew of the Mecca Sherif--as very

considerable. 'They are many,' he in his Oriental hyperbole, says,

'as the stars of Heaven, or the Desert sands!' Also, information has

by him been supplied, which, had the difference between German and

Arabic clock-time at our Shechem Headquarters been better

understood--might have resulted in a _Handstreich_ very gratifying to

Imperial Majesty at Berlin. The officer guilty of this so gross

ignorance was brought to a drumhead Court Martial and degraded, the

Herr General will be pleased to hear! However, the Emir's intentions

were agreed to be excellent, and he has now brought us a basket of

carrier-pigeons from his Chief, the nephew of the Sherif--and the

Emir is to convey back with him of these birds a similar basket,

trained at the Nazareth Headquarters of the Herr General-in-Chief,

Liman von Sanders--as soon as the pigeon-master-Sergeant with them

arrives.... Also, this is good beer! What does the Herr General say

to another bottle?"

"_Ja, ja_. _Mit Vergnügen_. It is hellishly hot! ..."

The Emir Fadl Anga, ingenious purveyor of genuine but post-dated

intelligence--salutes gravely, and wheels his dapple-grey about as

the composite train bumps out of Nakr. A muscle in his lean, dark

cheek jerks, and his thin lips under the Arab beard smile

scornfully--as his glance falls on the rank-and-file of the War

Prisoners--clustered on the platform beside the iron way....

They are hot, faint and weary under the bite of the sun, amidst this

jumble of naked hills, on whose chalk and limestone knees they have

driven elaborate systems of trenches for the enemy, under the lash of

the loaded hide-whips. But Barney Mossam, with a split top-lip and a

scarlet gap where several front teeth are missing, is making a

gallant effort to buck the others. In the middle of a spirited

rendering of "I HAVEN'T seen the Kaiser for a VERY long time. He's

the leader of a German Band, an' he AIN'T no cousin of mine!"--breaks

in the fierce interruption of an Arab voice, bitterly abusive:

"You--O you! Sons of _farrâshes_ prostitute concubines!--silence

that brother of howling apes!"

Thrusting his lance-butt in the embroidered leathern bucket, Fadl

Anga leans low from his saddle--appears to pick up something, no

doubt a pebble--rises erect, and hurls the missile savagely into the

brown of the crowd of men. It hits Barney, who picks it up, and

white teeth flash in the black beards of the other mounted Arabs, and

a laugh goes up from the Turkish guards, who are smoking and chatting

and eating water-melons, as the supposed emissary of the traitorous

nephew of the Sherif of Mecca touches his mare with the sharp edge of

the broad copper stirrup--and with a ringing shout of _"Allah ho

Akbar!_" gallops down the rocky road towards Shechem, followed by his

two companions, and leaving Barney Mossam gaping--with an embroidered

Arab purse--heavy with Turkish silver coins, clutched in his hand....

Long before the composite train went jolting out of Nakr the keen

grey eyes under the _kuffiyeh_ of Fadl Anga--eyes less miserable now

that by day and night sharp danger gives a spice to life, so empty

void of Katharine--have assured their owner, Edward Yaill,--that

Julian Forbis is not with the officers in the cattle-trucks any more

than he is with the men clustered like swarming bees upon the

grilling platform, beside the iron track.

V

The weather changes before dawn. Soggy clouds roll inland from the

sea, hide the sky of Eastern azure, blot out the shining faces of the

stars and invest the pale beauty of the Queen Planet of Night with

the flowing sable veil of a recent War Widow. It has come on to

rain--a slashing downpour of Palestinian intensity, under which the

wadis speedily become shallow cataracts of khaki water--the trenches

slashed in the terraced Judæan Hills, and manned by Turks, Germans,

or British Crusaders--mere troughs of sandy or chalky mud.

Sangars ramparted with boulders may offer some practical assurance

against shell-splinters or bullets, but against rain like this they

offer no security. Bivouacs built of stones, and roofed with

ground-sheets may in some degree keep out the rain, but they freely

admit the cold. A Scotch mist, clammy, freezing and blinding in its

damp opaqueness blankets the Hills of Ephraim, and broods over the

Maritime Plain, as on the edge of one of the limestone terraces that

fringe the robe of Mount Ebal,--a big, brawny Arab sits--nursing a

badly-ricked ankle, and swearing in the fruitiest vernacular of his

adopted land.

It is lucky for the Arab in the brown camel-hair shirt, striped

_abâyi_ and roped white linen head-cloth, that he has no audience but

the scorpions and lizards sheltering from the slashing downpour under

the grey-white boulders--as he rocks himself and nurses his ricked

ankle--and curses his luck. Presently, as the Scotch mist lifts, and

the plain is irradiated by the watery moonlight, he sets his teeth

for an effort and crawls to where a bundle tied in native cloth, and

a long, metal-tipped Arab walking-staff lie on the chalky, puddled

plain where they fell when he dropped them from the machine at the

beginning of the volplane, and screwed himself as the plain rushed

up, to wait the throttling down of the engine--the long, smooth final

glide--the flattening out following the pilot's raising of the

lever--and the slight jarring impact of the thick-tyred wheels with

the ground....

"_Now_ jump!" the sharp, strident voice of the Egyptian called when

the expected shock seemed imminent, and John Hazel set his teeth and

jumped promptly. Aware even before he crashed to ground that the

word had been given too soon. Even as he sprawled on the chalky

plain, with all the wind knocked out of his body--the machine just

missed landing on top of him. How he rolled out of the way of the

thick squat wheels, and the steel framework of the under-carriage of

the biplane, a powerful and heavy machine of D.H.6 type--he does not

know now....

Sick, faint and shaken, he picked himself up, but not before

Essenian, lithe as an acrobat, freed himself from the safety-belt,

jumped out, adjusted the controls, and swung the big propeller. As

the engine started he leaped back to his seat, looked round at Hazel,

shouted "Good-bye!" and opening the throttle, raced over the plain,

and rushed up into the air as though pursued by a fusillade of

machine-gun bullets.

"Damn and blast the Egyptian beast!" John snarls, and, as the ricked

joint rapidly swells to cricket-ball size, swears again, and thinks

as he rubs it, "Might have guessed he was out for some treachery or

other. Though how could I?--until he signalled to the enemy over

Shechem by firing the Verey light, and gave away the whole show by

dropping a message-bag! Making me swear before the start by all we

Hazels hold most holy, never by word or sign to let out anything I

might see him do. Consequently I'm his confederate--tarred with the

same brush. And now I know he murdered Captain Usborn! It was his

own revolver-bullet I showed him at the Club. If ever I get out of

here I stand some chance of getting shot myself for being back at the

Front on the quiet when I'm supposed to be on leave in Alex. But

anyhow I hope I'll see Essenian Pasha get his dose of British lead

before I do. Unless I get a chance to settle him myself. Wouldn't I

let the beggar have it! Right in the neck--where Winnie wore the

beads. But what a flier! Holy Smoke! what an A1. flier! Unless

he's a devil, which I trend to believe!--there's not a man his match."

The rain that began at two a.m. by his wrist-watch (hidden under a

broad band of untanned sheep-leather, laced on John's big wrist by a

slender thong) shows no sign of abating. Fitfully and at intervals

through the night, those guns in the west and south have held debate.

Now they begin again with redoubled energy. John has seen as the

D.H.6 travelled through the clear azure Palestine night, how the

enemy's line has been thrust back from Gaza towards Jaffa. Now with

a great blowing-up of Turco German ammunition-dumps, Junction

Station,--key of the northern railway system--announces to the

echoing hills the success of British arms.

"Good for us!" John chuckles, rather drearily--as the sullen sky in

the south is illuminated by Aurora Borealis-like effects of orange,

green and crimson--and Brock-like sheaves of flame spurt from the

horizon to descend in gold and silver showers. "Djemal Pasha's

Fourth Army Corps seems to be getting it rather badly. We're putting

the breeze up Von Kressenstein, unless I much mistake...."

Even as John Hazel hugs the thought, the train containing Djemal

Pasha's German Corps Commander is rushing towards Jerusalem. The

Turco-German Army, broken in two, is retiring eastwards upon the Holy

City and north-west through Ramleh towards Tul Keram. The brigades

that rolled into Shechem overnight--rested and fed, are rolling out

again. Fresh batteries from the Caucasus, diverted from Mesopotamia,

new battalions of infantry of the Redif and Mustafiz, and brigades of

irregular Cavalry from Kurdistan and Northern Albania, are swarming

down to reinforce the Nizam and its Ikhtiât.

Dawn comes with cessation of the freezing, pelting rain and the sun

glows fiery red through the curtain of leaden-coloured mists that yet

hang over the Mediterranean. Wounded and stragglers on foot, German

Army motor-lorries laden with escaping Teuton officers, begin to

arrive at the Holy City. It is whispered in Jerusalem the Weary that

the days of Ottoman rule in Palestine are numbered, that the German,

Turkish and Austrian officials and residents are even now preparing

to quit the town. And indeed German depots are hurriedly emptied;

sugar sold as cheap as the dirt that is in it--long held-up flour and

cereals disposed of in haste. From the high towers of the City and

from the Mount of Olives one can see the roads that are muddy

now--and will be dusty presently, crowded with lorries, carts and

pack-animals carrying fugitives with their baggage, munitions and

essential stores, north to Shechem or east to Jericho....

John, unaware of this, yet senses great happenings, as he stands

propped on his Arab staff, cursing the temporary uselessness of a man

with a sprained ankle-joint. He must lie up somewhere until the

anguish abates and the cricket-ball reduces. A hut--there are

clusters of drab-white specks, indicating a village on the northern

fringes of the stretch of plain--boulder-strewn, bush-dotted, thinly

grassed, thick with tufts of mandrake and tall blue Campanulas, and

knee-deep in growth of late-blooming, white and yellow asphodel--on

which Essenian elected to come down.... Westwards towards the sea

there are other, larger villages. South there is a broad defile,

curving east between humpy limestone hills, leading, John knows, to

the town of Shechem. Over him rises the huge and bulky Shape of

Ebal, three thousand six hundred and ninety feet above sea-level.

From terrace to terrace, a path winds up to her towering rounded

crest between hedges of tamarisk, broad-leaved grey-green cactus, and

prickly pear plentifully laden with knobby red fruit. On her summit

the map has shown John the ruins of an ancient fortress. Near the

top, on this, the west side--stands a little whitewashed cupola

surmounting a wall of mud and stone encircling a Moslem well.

Water is there; and hidden away with his revolver and cartridges on

John's big person, is a case of First Aid necessaries, a small flask

of brandy and some meat-lozenges in case of need like this. He

determines to crawl up to the place of the well, hide, and doctor

himself for a day, or even two days until the sprain is reduced, and

he can get about.

"Hard luck," he mutters to himself, "but there's no good in

grousing.... Now buck up and help me--O all you Big Old Men!"

But the Big Old Men give no sign, and their descendant, shouldering

his bundle (to bear out his role of Arab there ought to be a donkey

or a woman to carry it), limps, leaning on his staff and sweating

with pain, up the narrow pathway leading between the hedges of cactus

and prickly pear.

Blood-red, the Sun rises over the distant horizon, the glittering

drops upon the leaves, the drying puddles under John's naked,

slippered feet are reddened by the reflection. From the broad,

prickly leaves the wet begins to steam; the tufts of snapdragon, pink

and crimson, white and yellow and orange; and the blue campanulas,

growing in the tissues of the rock, stand gallantly upright,

refreshed by the dampness; the lily-like asphodel exhales its

delicate, characteristic smell.

There are goats on the Mount, John notices, presently. Their

droppings are thick upon the path he climbs. He hears them bleating,

and sees them, feeding under the ruins of the Fortress. Indeed, the

next wind of the path brings him out upon a ledge where a

heavy-uddered female is cropping the thyme that grows there, with a

jet-black kid nuzzling at her side. If one could catch the mother,

thinks John, the question of subsisting here for days would be easily

settled. Prickly pears are eatable.... Goat's milk is good....

There were lots of milch-goats in the caves of Sheria, and modern

Crusaders, dry with the drouth of battle, and as yet uncertain

whether the enemy had not poisoned the wells--milked the goats into

their tin hats and other receptacles, and drank and were mightily

refreshed. If only--even as John licks his lips, the too-nimble

dairy, skipping from ledge to ledge, recedes from view. Bleating,

the little black kid scrambles after her--and the Moslem well near

the summit of Ebal seems farther off than it did before.

John sees now a path, branching off to his right hand, which may lead

to the hut or cave of the goatherd. He strikes out upon it, and

makes some progress, until the curve of it, trending southwards,

suddenly shows him a narrow road, deeply rutted with broad-tyred

wheels, and pitted with hoof-prints, leading up the Mount from its

base on the south-eastern side. The erect brown figure of a

sentry--reduced by distance to the size of a doll--stands out against

the background. A Turkish Artillery waggon is jolting up the steep

roadway.... John hears the panting of the toiling horses, the creak

of the straining rope traces, the jingle of chains and the cracking

of the drivers' thick-lashed whips....

From behind a bush he now looks down into a sangar built of boulders,

sheltered at one end with green tarpaulin and full of Turkish

machine-guns. The tarpaulin quivers with the snores of sleeping

gunners, whose legs project beyond it, and from a nest of camouflage

lower down the mountain, the blunt nose of a howitzer snuffs at the

sky.

Still farther south a Field battery of Krupps has been posted on the

flank of Ebal; the whinnying of horses eager for their morning barley

and forage comes from a hollow where the Turks have stabled their

teams, the smell of some aromatic burning wood spices the air with

sweetness. Blue smoke columns up from fires of hidden bivouacs.

There are picquets along the foothills, and on the plain are

outposts. The Mount--except on the west and north whence danger is

not apprehended--has been converted into a veritable wasps' nest.

Holding his breath, John Hazel turns, and noiselessly retraces his

footsteps between the cactus hedges and along the path to where it

first branched off. As he sets his lame foot gingerly upon it, he

encounters a veiled native woman, toiling upwards, who carries--not

an excessive burden in this land of laden women--a bundle of canes,

and an empty gourd, and has a coarse jar of red earthenware balanced

on her head.

Perhaps the earthen Jar contains water, or milk, or _laban_, that

mixture of excessively sour milk with finely-chopped mint, peculiar

to Syria. The bare idea intensifies John's thirst.

"O my mother!" he begins in quite passable Arabic: "In the name of

Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate--"

"_Ai--e!_" The woman has started and dropped the gourd, and stands

before him trembling, "What--what wouldst thou?"

"Somewhat to wet my throat. Thou lookest on a thirsty man. Hast

thou, by any lucky chance, drink in the vessel?"

"The vessel is empty. See you, I have spoken truth!" She takes the

jar from her veiled head and turns it upside down, and John's heart

sinks to the bottom of his famished stomach. "May God relieve your

need! ..."

"Allah favour thee! Black is my fortune. Thou seest," he thrusts

out the swollen foot with the bulge at the side of the ankle-joint,

"what evil has befallen me through a slip upon the Mountain side."

"It hurts thee? ..." He cannot see the hidden face, but in the faint

voice there is a note of pity....

"_Wallah_! It hurts like very hell! Worse than the hurt is the

lameness. Now hear! By the life of my head I say: If thou, being a

woman, couldst help it somewhat! ... If thou knewest a place of

shelter where I could lie and tend the hurt, and--and--have somewhat

to eat and drink while it was mending, for this I would pay thee. By

Allah! I am no beggar, I!"

The Fellaha thinks, while a little dusky hand holds the edges of her

veil together. Then she says faintly:

"_Ala râsi_. I have--I know of a place of shelter. It is not very

far from here. There thou couldst lie, it is a cave between two

boulders and I would bring thee food and drink."

"Allah requite thee, O my sister! ..."

"Come, then, Sidi!" She returns her empty vessel to its place upon

her head, with the deft, accustomed swing of the Eastern woman, and

moves on before him, striking into another lateral path, a mere

goat-track to the unpractised eye, that scores the mountain-side,

running north. For perhaps a quarter of a mile her little bending

figure hurries along and the tall Arab, leaning on his staff, hobbles

painfully after. Where the cave between two boulders is--and less a

cave than a hollow under a projecting ledge of nummulite

limestone--he finds her waiting him....

"In here, Sidi!"

"Call me not Sidi! I am no person of degree." John thinks it well

to try on the woman the story he has invented. "No person of degree

am I. Only Ali Zaybak the Bedawi, a man who once had three camels,

and ten sheep, and five goats, and a father and two brothers, and a

wife also; and now has none; my brothers, my wife and two camels

being killed and all the rest lost...."

"May the Dispenser of Mercies atone to thee, O Ali Zaybak!" says the

thin faded voice from under the woman's veil. "How came about thy

loss? From whom dost thou claim the blood-wreaks?"

"From the Inglizi, (English) the thrice-accursed ones! who came

flying over our village--we dwelling in the Shadow of Allah in the

caves of the Wadi Sheria--I and my brothers having bought exemption

from service with the Army of the Osmanli (Turks) with the savings of

all our lives."

"Ay, ay," the thin voice assents, bitterly. "Few and small were the

gold and silver coins remaining on thy wife's head-tire, when the

Dispensers of Exemption had signed thy card."

"Verily, Allah be my witness! and it is a black shame to take the

money that was the woman's marriage-gift. We were then very

poor--but we had the three camels and the sheep and the goats

also--though the beasts were little and thin. Then came the War,

rolling all about us--with marchings and counter-marchings of hosts

of men--and we sent my brothers south so that they might sell to the

Inglizi soldiers before Gaza, all the olives stored in old oil-tins,

and all the oranges, and tobacco, and grape-treacle, and figs of last

year, that the Almani and Osmanli had not taken away...." John

cannot for the life of him restrain this vitriolic touch. "And they

went, and made much money--the Inglizi being fools and wealthy,

moreover--as all these sons of Sheitan are. This was in the month

Shbât; and coming home my two brothers encountered Fate, in the

person of a Commander of the Almani (Germans), who seized upon the

young men--they being far from their native village and not having

their _warakas_ of Exemption on them--and sent them to dig trenches

at the Bir-es Saba Works."

"A bitter tyranny the Most High beheld, and will avenge upon the

doer!"

"Then there was fighting at the Wady Sheria--because having taken the

strong place of Bir-es Saba, ay! and the ridges down to the sea, the

British desired the Place of Good Wells." John is beginning to

believe in Ali Zaybak, the Bedawi farmer, to the point of getting hot

over that individual's fictitious woes.... "Came they--they came,

and were as hornets about us, their _killis_ bursting with stench,

and smoke, and ruin--and their Devil-Birds fighting the Devil-Birds

of the Almani, and driving them down out of the air. One dropped an

egg of Eblis that killed two of our camels, and broke the leg of the

third. My father cried out on Allah and fell face downwards.... So

my wife cried out and fell, and when I went to lift them, lo!--they

were dead.... Yet was there no wound on either.... _Wallah_! Upon

neither was there a wound! ..."

"Well do I believe thee. I have seen Death come after that fashion

many times since the beginning of this War. What more, O Ali Zaybak?

..."

"This,--that my goats and sheep being gone from me--for the _Osmanli_

took them when they retired before the Inglizi--I have come to

Shechem to seek my brothers, if haply they be alive and there! ..."

"Ay, but why seek them on the Mount of Cursing, and not within the

town? ..."

Woman-like, she has put her little wasted, dusky finger on the weak

spot in John's trumped-up story. Having done it, she goes on, as he

racks his brain for a sufficiently-convincing figment:

"Thou wilt do this to-morrow, O Ali Zaybak the Bedawi, when the

swelling of thy joint hath abated and thou art rested and fed. So

creep in here between the stones--there is a sheepskin thou canst lie

on--and in somewhat less than an hour I will come back to thee with

food and drink."

"May Allah prolong thy years, O woman!" says John with the

extravagant hyperbole and the sing-song inflection proper to Oriental

gratitude. "May thy fortune be doubled upon thee, and, fair as thou

art already, may the radiance of thy beauty out-dazzle the full moon!"

She gives a queer little rustling laugh behind the folds of her

coarse, yellowish head-cloth.

"Sweet words, sweet words from a widower bereaved in Shbât! Belike,"

she cackles again, "thou hast come to the Mount of Cursing in search

of another bride? Dost thou lust for the Unrevealed? See, then, O

Ali Zaybak! what beauty hides behind this screen! ..."

And accompanying the words with a swift revealing movement, she

whisks back the heavy veil from that mutilated left side....

"My God!" John very nearly exclaims, bleaching under his natural

mahogany-colour, for a man old in War and hardened to the sight of

wounded men may yet sicken at the sight of a woman mutilated like

this. But he swallows the exclamation, and substitutes:

"I--am sorry! May Allah pity thee, poor soul! ..."

"And increase the wisdom of the Sidi! ..."

The Fellaha is re-veiled and between the pendent linen folds comes

her little rustling whisper; chilling the blood of the pretended Ali

Zaybak, under the now nearly vertical rays of the blazing Syrian

sun....

"_Who, desiring Secret Intelligence for his War-Chiefs of the British

Army, ventures into the midst of the enemy, disguised as an Arab and

alone! ..._"

The words drop, coldly as lumps of hail, on the adventurous heart of

the man. Discovered, and in the first hour by a Syrian peasant

woman.... He forgets his pain, and drawn to his full height, fixes

his black eyes threateningly upon her hidden face.

"What sayest thou? Hast thou no fear?"

"None--of a British officer, nor of a British soldier!"

The words, spoken in English with a Syrian-French accent, are such an

unexpected shock, that John jolts temporarily back into his own

adopted tongue:

"How the hell--ahem! How did you know--I'm--what you say I am?"

"Because" the voice is soft and refined, though it is thin and

toneless: "Because--sir!--when I showed you my face--you did

not--spit like a Mohammedan, or laugh like a German! And who"--the

voice suggests the shadow of a mocking smile--"who but an Englishman

would venture here--so ill-disguised and speaking such bad Arabic,

and carry himself so confidently as almost to deceive me--in spite of

the testimony of my two good ears--and my one very good eye."

The poor face she has shown to John is blind on that shattered left

side. He knows a thrill of pity even as he asks:

"You won't give me away? ..."

"If 'give away' means to betray--no, I will not betray you!"

"Thanks. You're out Scouting on your own," says John, "unless I'm

very much mistaken?" He adds still in English, as she lets this broad

hint pass.... "Since we're to be pals of sorts, do you mind telling

me your name? ..."

She gives her faint little whispering laugh.

"Ay, surely. It is Ummshni.... 'Mother Ugly' in your English

tongue. In Arabic, 'Mother of Ugliness.' ...!"

"But--but I can't call you that! ..."

"You must. It is my name here. For you I have no other."

"Then shake hands, little Ummshni," John says promptly, and thrusts

out his own huge, brown right hand.

"Need we?" She hesitates....

He says, encouragingly:

"Just once. To seal the bargain and show we're pals!"

"Once then...."

She hesitates an instant more. Now from enveloping folds, a small,

shrunken, dusky hand steals out, and is engulfed in John's. And then

a breathless cry, not loud, nor shrill, but terrible in its dire,

agonised intensity bursts from the mouth of the distorted face that

is mercifully hidden by the veil....

"God of my fathers! Who art thou?" The gasped-out words are once

more Arabic. "From whence didst thou get the Ring of the House of

Hazaël? ... Thy face, too.... It is the face of Eli! Thy voice....

Do not deny it! ... Thou art of the Blood! ..."

"Since you know it already I'll tip you the garden truth. I'm John

Benn Hazel, old Eli's grandson from London. But who in the name

of--wonder--are you? ..."

"Thy--thy unhappy Cousin Esther!" The words come stumblingly,

between terrible, dry sobs.... "Oh, do not check me. Let me weep!

I have not for so long! ..."

"Now by--the whole blooming, blessed row of Big Old Men, back to the

Very Biggest!" John says between his teeth, as leaning on his heavy

staff he stands staring blankly down at a little heaving bundle of

coarse and common feminine drapery that crouches at his big sandalled

feet amidst the short thyme-scented grass, "This is--this is the

cherry in the cocktail! Just when I'd begun to think I wouldn't

carry through--comes along the very sort of little woman to help me!

This isn't Coincidence or anything like it. This is--just--Fate! ..."

"Help thee?" Her sobs have abated, she lifts up her bowed, head.

"In what manner can I help thee? I can feed thee, tend thy hurt and

hide thee. But there is something more than these.... Tell me what

thou wouldst do? ..."

"Save a man!" No one is near, but he whispers it, stooping over the

little figure. "A War Prisoner they've got here. Get him out--and

get him away! ..."

"Yes--yes! Willingly will I help thee. Hath an Hazaël ever failed

to answer to the Call of the Blood?" The little dusky hand clutches

at his brawny wrist. She rises, and her eager breath mingles with

his, and an eye diamond-bright, black as his own, flashes between her

veils.... "What strength I have--what cunning and courage--are

thine, to the threshold of Death and beyond it. But--but, John, my

cousin! If I help thee to free thy man--thou must needs deliver

mine."

"I'm not sweet on conditions--they're things that handicap. Who's

your man?" The tone is decidedly gruff.

"He is an English officer.... There is no other in Shechem since the

big German petrol lorries rolled out this morning. For the Turks

have sent them all away ... I heard, to Aleppo."

"The hell you say! Forgive me, little Esther, but this is--pretty

rough! For I'm here--bad Arabic and all--on the track of a British

War Prisoner."

"Tell me his name," says the thin rustling voice, shaken still with

emotion....

"Julian Forbis.... Father Julian Forbis," John answers, and she

falters:

"O my cousin! in thine hour of need and mine the Most High, Blessed

be He! hath verily sent thee. For--for--thy man and my man--are one!

Come now to the secret place where I dwell alone with my sorrow.

There we can talk freely--it is safer than here. Thy hand on my

shoulder--what a big hand, like that of our grandfather Eli! ... Lean

on thy staff, but on me too. I am stronger than thou wouldst

dream...."