Whether John Hazel dreamed or not, things have happened as he has
seen them. Conscious thought returns to him, sitting on the box of
bombs. His lungs fill with a deep breath. He yawns hugely, blinks
his eyes, squares his shoulders and looks about him. The
constellation Orion blazes over Gilead, the Pleiades are hidden from
sight by sombre clouds. There is a strange glare in the sky over the
crest of Gerizim.
In mid-song the bulbuls have fallen silent. Even the pariah-dogs and
the jackals are still. There is something abroad upon the air
to-night, that weighs upon the spirit of humanity, and daunts the
creatures, soulless as we imagine, with the sense of evil, nameless
and unseen, but dominant and powerful to harm....
And now the man who listens at his post hears the quick beat of
galloping hoofs coming along the Shechem road, and thrills with
expectation:
"That's them!" In moments of keen excitement John's grammar is apt
to fail. "Them, for a quid! Or the Colonel hasn't pulled off the
snatch, and has had--"
He breaks off as the horsemen round a curve of the road. Where a
patch of the grudging moonlight whitens the ground, he makes out that
there are only three of them. No! Four--! Three riders in ample,
flowing Arab dress, and a fourth in the close-fitting kit of a
European--who reels and sways unsteadily in his saddle, and would
fall--but for the help that another gives--with a hand that is
sometimes at his back, and sometimes at his bridle.
"By God!--"
With a great exultant throb, John swings himself down from the lorry
upon the road, as the riders check the gallop of their eager,
snorting horses.... And the hot, white limestone dust of Samaria
rises in pungent clouds.
Now through the dust an immense hand finds, grips and wrings the
priest's, and a deep resonant voice, not like any he has heard
before, and yet not strange, says rapidly:
"Thanks be to the Most High, my lord is delivered! Now, from the
servant of his house, let him take this. It comes from the Sister of
my lord" (a crumpled envelope is thrust into Julian Forbis's palm),
"by the hand of John Hazel!"
"A letter from my sister.... Sir, may God reward you! You must be
John Hazaël, I think! Though I never heard that name until to-night,
while I live I shall always bless it!"
The voice sends an electric shock volting through John. It is like
the voice he loves, as a man's may resemble a woman's, deeper,
stronger, and hollow with fatigue. He returns:
"My lord is right. I am the man John. Youngest and last of all
Hazaëls of the line save one only.... But all the Hazaëls, from the
first to the last, do battle for my lord this night in Samaria. Now
let my lord ride hard for Kir Saba. Though his enemies pursue they
shall not pass here! For, God so willing, I, thy servant, will keep
this road barred!"
"My cousin John! ..."
He hears a timid call he knows, and turning towards the quarter
whence it comes, traces it to its source in a small rebellious
bundle, held on the front of an Arab's saddle.
"O John my cousin, dost thou hear me! Entreat the Most Excellent One
to set me on the ground!"
"Mr. Hazel, with your good leave, I mean to take this lady to Kir
Saba." It is the voice that spoke to him last in the chintz
drawing-room at Kerr's Arbour. Dimly seen in the hazy moonlight, the
eyes shaded by the silken _kuffiyeh_ meet John's, and although they
are blazing with the fierce joy of the successful raider, he
recognises the eyes of Edward Yaill.
"Nay, nay! I would remain here with John Hazaël," the little
creature pleads in her distress.
"Thou wilt go with my lord and be his handmaid. When he needs thee
no longer, then return to me. Hearest thou, woman?" the deep voice
says, and Ummshni, bowing her veiled head, humbly answers:
"O Head of our House, I hear! ..."
"Farewell then, little Brave One!"
In the dark John reaches out, and pats her small cold hand.
"Not in this world, nor in the next will this that thou hast lone go
unrewarded. What is that? ... Cavalry on the road!" His hearing, in
this strange exalted mood of his, being even keener than Namrûd the
Hunter's,--has warned him that a body of mounted men, coming from the
direction of Shechem, are pushing along the road. He relapses into
his ordinary, natural tone, as he says with a slap of his heavy hand
on the flank of Fadl Anga's thoroughbred: "Ride for Kir Saba, Colonel
Yaill, and all good luck to you!"
"Thanks, Mr. Hazel, and good-bye. Though I would prefer your coming
with us. You could take Namrûd's horse--and he and I would ride and
run by turns. Not the first time we've covered distance that way!"
There is an unalterable decision in the answer:
"Much obliged, Colonel, but I've arranged to stay."
"Good luck, then, and good-bye. You will shake hands at parting? ..."
The huge hand of the big Jew, and Yaill's leaner, slenderer, smaller
hand, meet and grip hard, then John steps backwards.
"Ride like old hell, the lot of you. I stop--to carry on!"
A clatter of hoofs and they are away, in a cloud of the dust of
Samaria, flavoured with the chamomile and wormwood of the desert, the
acrid sweat of man and horse, tobacco, attar of roses, and leather
tanned by Bedwân with bitter laurel-bark. John Hazel looks about
him, fills his lungs with deep breaths and calculates his powers.
How if one man were able to move the lorry across the road!
He frees himself from his Arab head-cloth and mantle, ties the ends
of the long sleeves of his _kumbas_ together, slips the knot
Fellah-wise over his head, and pulls up the camel-hair shirt to
mid-thigh. Even as the lean, tanned Prophet girded himself for the
long race from Carmel up to Samaria, before the King in his ivory
chariot--and the rainstorm hurtling on the heels of the King....
Now he swings himself to the driver's seat, manipulates the steering
wheel, and lifts the starting-lever. Now he gets down, spins the
crank, and heaves at the near fore-wheel. The lorry shakes, the
ponderous armoured wheel moves--and the sweat pours off John Hazel.
He sets his teeth, and braces himself again, using the sound,
uninjured leg as fulcrum of the lever. With a sound like the dumping
of a load of ancient iron on the scrap-heap--the Turkish
ammunition-lorry moves across the road....
Just in time, for the clink of cavalry chain-bridles and scabbards,
and the clatter of hoofs come nearer with every instant.... John
fills the breast of his Arab shirt with bombs, and stands up on the
lorry, in the straddling but purposeful attitude attributed to the
Colossus of Rhodes.
"Old Harris and the chaps of my platoon used to call me a dirty
fighter," he thinks, reverting to the vernacular of his adoptive
land. "Well, this is going to be the dirtiest fight I ever put up.
O all you old Hazaël men, back to the very oldest, help me to keep
the road that leads to Kir Saba, for to-night! ..."
Rattle and clink. The creak and wheeze of straining leather. Half a
squadron of Turkish Mounted Police spur round the bend in the road.
Well armed, well mounted, big and bearded Turks, the pick of the
Bey's squadrons of mounted gendarmerie. The darkness hides the
crimson fez and the smart Hussar uniform of dark blue with red and
orange braiding. But what light there is is caught and given back by
long shiny jack-boots--and the barrels of Winchester
repeating-rifles--and eyes that glitter in swarthy faces that are
ablaze with the hope of a reward.
Crash! ...
A bomb falls in the middle of the road in front of the
squadron-leader, and explodes with a shattering detonation that calls
loud echoes from the hills. The squadron-leader's jaw is torn away.
He and his horse go down, the poor brute screaming in a pool of his
own innocent blood and vainly struggling to rise upon his shattered
forelegs.... Two of the other riders are wounded by flying
splinters. Crash!--another bomb falls and detonates in the road....
"A Forbis! A Forbis! May Forbis foes fall! A Forbis! A Forbis!
..."
With this strange foreign slogan the Hills of Samaria ring, and a
volley from the Winchesters of the Bey's men rattles back in answer.
Bullets flatten on the rocks--pass through the sides of the lorry,
shiver the lamps, rip the front hood, and dent the engine-bonnet. A
second Winchester-volley clatters amongst the rocks--when a bomb,
hurled by a phenomenally long arm, falls in the midst of the
squadron. And the Bey's Mounted Policemen scatter and retreat in
confusion, leaving dead men and horses behind them on the road....
John draws breath. A revolver cracks behind him--a bullet sings past
his right cheek--and another, whistling through his hair, burns as it
scores a furrow in the scalp at the top of his head....
"Bloody close! And fired from behind!"
He looks round, and is shot at from the original quarter to intimate
that the retreat was only a feint. The baffled force of
gendarmerie--trained scouts for the most part--mountaineers and
hunters, has split into two parties; the hardier spirits--as the
breaking of branches and the fluttering of birds scared from the
coverts testifies--are scrambling down the steep face of the defile,
from the northern side of the road.
Again a revolver-shot cracks out behind John. He slews his head and
catches a glimpse of the man who fired, crouching behind a boulder,
on the Jaffa side of the lorry.
_Crash! crash!_ ...
Two bombs greet the renewal of the attack upon the Shechem side....
Three, hurled one after the other with dazzling rapidity, explode in
the covert that clothes the cliff-face. Another hits the boulder by
the road, and lessens its proportions. But the sharp brain behind it
has foreseen that it would come.
Lying on his stomach, the Bey's man crawls to the opposite side of
the highway. Crouching in the shadows, he waits unseen. The scene
is handsomely illuminated now by bonfires among the brushwood. Bombs
explode east and west, the arms of the giant on the lorry whirl like
the sails of a windmill. It is at this juncture that John begins to
sing....
Never did light of moon and stars shine on a grimmer spectacle. Foul
with grime, whitened with dust, smeared and raddled with blood from
his scalp-wound, the leaping fires on either hand show him black as a
fiend from hell. The Bey's gendarme is a plucky child of Islam, but
he shudders. What if no human, killable man, but one of the demon
Sons of Iblis be he who is capering and dealing Death on the
Jaffa-Shechem road to-night? Streaming with sweat, stricken with
deadly fear, he gasps:
"_Mashallah_! I invoke the Protection of the Most High against Satan
the Stoned! ..."
And springing up, sets a foot on the wheel, and leaps into the lorry.
Next moment, locked in a wrestling-hug, two black shapes strive
together, while the _zabtiehs_ hold their fire for fear of hitting
their own man.
The struggle is over in less than half a minute. The Turk is strong,
but in those great and ruthless hands, he is dealt with easily. His
foot slips in his opponent's blood, for the giant is bleeding freely
from chips in various places. He yells as he is bent back.... Then
his spurred feet are lifted. He is tossed out of the lorry, landing
on his head--and as John continues bomb-throwing--loses temporarily,
all interest in the fight....
Now comes from the Shechem side, a charge of mounted _zabtiehs_.
John sings as he pulls pins,--pitches and proves the impotence of
flesh and blood, human and equine, pitted against H.E. The police
are shooting freely but wildly from behind and before him. Right and
left he gives them the last sigh of No. 1 box--and is diving into the
other--to rise up armed, when a bomb, that has fallen in the roadway
without the customary explosion--is picked up by a plucky _zabtieh_
and hurled back into the lorry....
John realises as the projectile falls amongst the boxed explosives
that the fight is over. He leaps from the lorry on the Jaffa side,
and knows no more. Miles away southward, as the huge detonation
shakes the hills, and avalanches of _débris_ tumble from the cliffs,
a Gunner Officer of a Field Battery of the 52nd Division, holding the
mud village of Mughar, says to his colleague indifferently, shutting
his night-glasses:
"The Huns are having the time of their lives to-night in Samaria.
Regular posh firework-display to-night on the Shechem-Jaffa road.
Now they've exploded an ammunition-dump, or something uncommonly like
it! Hope it's wiped out a few more Turks!--there are plenty of 'em
to spare!"