ON THE NILE
It was a callous country inhabited by a callous race, thought Calder, as
he travelled down the Nile from Wadi Halfa to Assouan on his three
months' furlough. He leaned over the rail of the upper deck of the
steamer and looked down upon the barge lashed alongside. On the lower
deck of the barge among the native passengers stood an angareb,[2]
whereon was stretched the motionless figure of a human being shrouded in
a black veil. The angareb and its burden had been carried on board early
that morning at Korosko by two Arabs, who now sat laughing and
chattering in the stern of the barge. It might have been a dead man or a
dead woman who lay still and stretched out upon the bedstead, so little
heed did they give to it. Calder lifted his eyes and looked to his right
and his left across glaring sand and barren rocks shaped roughly into
the hard forms of pyramids. The narrow meagre strip of green close by
the water's edge upon each bank was the only response which the Soudan
made to Spring and Summer and the beneficent rain. A callous country
inhabited by a callous people.
[Footnote 2: The native bedstead of matting woven across a four-legged
frame.]
Calder looked downwards again to the angareb upon the barge's deck and
the figure lying upon it. Whether it was man or woman he could not
tell. The black veil lay close about the face, outlining the nose, the
hollows of the eyes and the mouth; but whether the lips wore a moustache
and the chin a beard, it did not reveal.
The slanting sunlight crept nearer and nearer to the angareb. The
natives seated close to it moved into the shadow of the upper deck, but
no one moved the angareb, and the two men laughing in the stern gave no
thought to their charge. Calder watched the blaze of yellow light creep
over the black recumbent figure from the feet upwards. It burnt at last
bright and pitiless upon the face. Yet the living creature beneath the
veil never stirred. The veil never fluttered above the lips, the legs
remained stretched out straight, the arms lay close against the side.
Calder shouted to the two men in the stern.
"Move the angareb into the shadow," he cried, "and be quick!"
The Arabs rose reluctantly and obeyed him.
"Is it a man or woman?" asked Calder.
"A man. We are taking him to the hospital at Assouan, but we do not
think that he will live. He fell from a palm tree three weeks ago."
"You give him nothing to eat or drink?"
"He is too ill."
It was a common story and the logical outcome of the belief that life
and death are written and will inevitably befall after the manner of the
writing. That man lying so quiet beneath the black covering had probably
at the beginning suffered nothing more serious than a bruise, which a
few simple remedies would have cured within a week. But he had been
allowed to lie, even as he lay upon the angareb, at the mercy of the
sun and the flies, unwashed, unfed, and with his thirst unslaked. The
bruise had become a sore, the sore had gangrened, and when all remedies
were too late, the Egyptian Mudir of Korosko had discovered the accident
and sent the man on the steamer down to Assouan. But, familiar though
the story was, Calder could not dismiss it from his thoughts. The
immobility of the sick man upon the native bedstead in a way fascinated
him, and when towards sunset a strong wind sprang up and blew against
the stream, he felt an actual comfort in the knowledge that the sick man
would gain some relief from it. And when his neighbour that evening at
the dinner table spoke to him with a German accent, he suddenly asked
upon an impulse:--
"You are not a doctor by any chance?"
"Not a doctor," said the German, "but a student of medicine at Bonn. I
came from Cairo to see the Second Cataract, but was not allowed to go
farther than Wadi Halfa."
Calder interrupted him at once. "Then I will trespass upon your holiday
and claim your professional assistance."
"For yourself? With pleasure, though I should never have guessed you
were ill," said the student, smiling good-naturedly behind his
eyeglasses.
"Nor am I. It is an Arab for whom I ask your help."
"The man on the bedstead?"
"Yes, if you will be so good. I will warn you--he was hurt three weeks
ago, and I know these people. No one will have touched him since he was
hurt. The sight will not be pretty. This is not a nice country for
untended wounds."
The German student shrugged his shoulders. "All experience is good,"
said he, and the two men rose from the table and went out on to the
upper deck.
The wind had freshened during the dinner, and, blowing up stream, had
raised waves so that the steamer and its barge tossed and the water
broke on board.
"He was below there," said the student, as he leaned over the rail and
peered downwards to the lower deck of the barge alongside. It was night,
and the night was dark. Above that lower deck only one lamp, swung from
the centre of the upper deck, glimmered and threw uncertain lights and
uncertain shadows over a small circle. Beyond the circle all was black
darkness, except at the bows, where the water breaking on board flung a
white sheet of spray. It could be seen like a sprinkle of snow driven by
the wind, it could be heard striking the deck like the lash of a whip.
"He has been moved," said the German. "No doubt he has been moved. There
is no one in the bows."
Calder bent his head downwards and stared into the darkness for a little
while without speaking.
"I believe the angareb is there," he said at length. "I believe it is."
Followed by the German, he hurried down the stairway to the lower deck
of the steamer and went to the side. He could make certain now. The
angareb stood in a wash of water on the very spot to which at Calder's
order it had been moved that morning. And on the angareb the figure
beneath the black covering lay as motionless as ever, as inexpressive of
life and feeling, though the cold spray broke continually upon its face.
"I thought it would be so," said Calder. He got a lantern and with the
German student climbed across the bulwarks on to the barge. He summoned
the two Arabs.
"Move the angareb from the bows," he said; and when they had obeyed,
"Now take that covering off. I wish my friend who is a doctor to see the
wound."
The two men hesitated, and then one of them with an air of insolence
objected. "There are doctors in Assouan, whither we are taking him."
Calder raised the lantern and himself drew the veil away from off the
wounded man. "Now if you please," he said to his companion. The German
student made his examination of the wounded thigh, while Calder held the
lantern above his head. As Calder had predicted, it was not a pleasant
business; for the wound crawled. The German student was glad to cover it
up again.
"I can do nothing," he said. "Perhaps, in a hospital, with baths and
dressings--! Relief will be given at all events; but more? I do not
know. Here I could not even begin to do anything at all. Do these two
men understand English?"
"No," answered Calder.
"Then I can tell you something. He did not get the hurt by falling out
of any palm tree. That is a lie. The injury was done by the blade of a
spear or some weapon of the kind."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Calder bent down suddenly towards the Arab on the angareb. Although he
never moved, the man was conscious. Calder had been looking steadily at
him, and he saw that his eyes followed the spoken words.
"You understand English?" said Calder.
The Arab could not answer with his lips, but a look of comprehension
came into his face.
"Where do you come from?" asked Calder.
The lips tried to move, but not so much as a whisper escaped from them.
Yet his eyes spoke, but spoke vainly. For the most which they could tell
was a great eagerness to answer. Calder dropped upon his knee close by
the man's head and, holding the lantern close, enunciated the towns.
"From Dongola?"
No gleam in the Arab's eyes responded to that name.
"From Metemneh? From Berber? From Omdurman? Ah!"
The Arab answered to that word. He closed his eyelids. Calder went on
still more eagerly.
"You were wounded there? No. Where then? At Berber? Yes. You were in
prison at Omdurman and escaped? No. Yet you were wounded."
Calder sank back upon his knee and reflected. His reflections roused in
him some excitement. He bent down to the Arab's ear and spoke in a lower
key.
"You were helping some one to escape? Yes. Who? El Kaimakam Trench? No."
He mentioned the names of other white captives in Omdurman, and to each
name the Arab's eyes answered "No." "It was Effendi Feversham, then?"
he said, and the eyes assented as clearly as though the lips had spoken.
But this was all the information which Calder could secure. "I too am
pledged to help Effendi Feversham," he said, but in vain. The Arab could
not speak, he could not so much as tell his name, and his companions
would not. Whatever those two men knew or suspected, they had no mind to
meddle in the matter themselves, and they clung consistently to a story
which absolved them from responsibility. Kinsmen of theirs in Korosko,
hearing that they were travelling to Assouan, had asked them to take
charge of the wounded man, who was a stranger to them, and they had
consented. Calder could get nothing more explicit from them than this
statement, however closely he questioned them. He had under his hand the
information which he desired, the news of Harry Feversham for which
Durrance asked by every mail, but it was hidden from him in a locked
book. He stood beside the helpless man upon the angareb. There he was,
eager enough to speak, but the extremity of weakness to which he had
sunk laid a finger upon his lips. All that Calder could do was to see
him safely bestowed within the hospital at Assouan. "Will he recover?"
Calder asked, and the doctors shook their heads in doubt. There was a
chance perhaps, a very slight chance; but at the best, recovery would be
slow.
Calder continued upon his journey to Cairo and Europe. An opportunity of
helping Harry Feversham had slipped away; for the Arab who could not
even speak his name was Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe, and his
presence wounded and helpless upon the Nile steamer between Korosko and
Assouan meant that Harry Feversham's carefully laid plan for the rescue
of Colonel Trench had failed.