“Stoppa! Backa!” cried the native pilot to the European engineer.
The bluff bows of the stern-wheeler had squelched into the soft brown
mud, and the current had swept the boat alongside the bank. The long
gangway was thrown across, and the six tall soldiers of the Soudanese
escort filed along it, their light-blue gold-trimmed zouave uniforms,
and their jaunty yellow and red forage-caps, showing up bravely in the
clear morning light. Above them, on the top of the bank, was ranged the
line of donkeys, and the air was full of the clamour of the boys.
In shrill strident voices each was crying out the virtues of his own
beast, and abusing that of his neighbour.
Colonel Cochrane and Mr. Belmont stood together in the bows, each
wearing the broad white puggareed hat of the tourist. Miss Adams and
her niece leaned against the rail beside them.
“Sorry your wife isn’t coming, Belmont,” said the Colonel.
“I think she had a touch of the sun yesterday. Her head aches very
badly.”
His voice was strong and thick like his figure.
“I should stay to keep her company, Mr. Belmont,” said the little
American old maid; “but I learn that Mrs. Shlesinger finds the ride too
long for her, and has some letters which she must mail to-day, so Mrs.
Belmont will not be lonesome.”
“You’re very good, Miss Adams. We shall be back, you know, by two
o’clock.”
“Is that certain?”
“It must be certain, for we are taking no lunch with us, and we shall be
famished by then.”
“Yes, I expect we shall be ready for a hock and seltzer at any rate,”
said the Colonel. “This desert dust gives a flavour to the worst
wine.”
“Now, ladies and gentlemen!” cried Mansoor, the dragoman, moving forward
with something of the priest in his flowing garments and smooth,
clean-shaven face. “We must start early that we may return before the
meridial heat of the weather.” He ran his dark eyes over the little
group of his tourists with a paternal expression. “You take your green
glasses, Miss Adams, for glare very great out in the desert. Ah, Mr.
Stuart, I set aside very fine donkey for you--prize donkey, sir, always
put aside for the gentleman of most weight. Never mind to take your
monument ticket to-day. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if _you_ please!”
Like a grotesque frieze the party moved one by one along the plank
gangway and up the brown crumbling bank. Mr. Stephens led them, a thin,
dry, serious figure, in an English straw hat. His red “Baedeker”
gleamed under his arm, and in one hand he held a little paper of notes,
as if it were a brief. He took Miss Sadie by one arm and her aunt by
the other as they toiled up the bank, and the young girl’s laughter rang
frank and clear in the morning air as “Baedeker” came fluttering down at
their feet. Mr. Belmont and Colonel Cochrane followed, the brims of
their sun-hats touching as they discussed the relative advantages of the
Mauser, the Lebel, and the Lee-Metford. Behind them walked Cecil Brown,
listless, cynical, self-contained. The fat clergyman puffed slowly up
the bank, with many gasping witticisms at his own defects. “I’m one of
those men who carry everything before them,” said he, glancing ruefully
at his rotundity, and chuckling wheezily at his own little joke.
Last of all came Headingly, slight and tall, with the student stoop
about his shoulders, and Fardet, the good-natured, fussy, argumentative
Parisian.
“You see we have an escort to-day,” he whispered to his companion.
“So I observed.”
“Pah!” cried the Frenchman, throwing out his arms in derision; “as well
have an escort from Paris to Versailles. This is all part of the play,
Monsieur Headingly. It deceives no one, but it is part of the play.
_Pourquoi ces droles de militaires, dragoman, hein?_”
It was the dragoman’s _role_ to be all things to all men, so he looked
cautiously round before he answered, to make sure that the English were
mounted and out of earshot.
“_C’est ridicule, monsieur!_” said he, shrugging his fat shoulders.
“_Mais que voulez-vous? C’est l’ordre official Egyptien._”
“_Egyptien! Pah, Anglais, Anglais--toujours Anglais!_” cried the angry
Frenchman.
The frieze now was more grotesque than ever, but had changed suddenly to
an equestrian one, sharply outlined against the deep-blue Egyptian sky.
Those who have never ridden before have to ride in Egypt, and when the
donkeys break into a canter, and the Nile Irregulars are at full charge,
such a scene of flying veils, clutching hands, huddled swaying figures,
and anxious faces is nowhere to be seen. Belmont, his square figure
balanced upon a small white donkey, was waving his hat to his wife, who
had come out upon the saloon-deck of the _Korosko_. Cochrane sat very
erect with a stiff military seat, hands low, head high, and heels down,
while beside him rode the young Oxford man, looking about him with
drooping eyelids as if he thought the desert hardly respectable, and had
his doubts about the Universe. Behind them the whole party was strung
along the bank in varying stages of jolting and discomfort, a
brown-faced, noisy donkey-boy running after each donkey. Looking back,
they could see the little lead-coloured stern-wheeler, with the gleam of
Mrs. Belmont’s handkerchief from the deck. Beyond ran the broad, brown
river, winding down in long curves to where, five miles off, the square,
white block-houses upon the black, ragged hills marked the outskirts of
Wady Halfa, which had been their starting-point that morning.
“Isn’t it just too lovely for anything?” cried Sadie joyously. “I’ve
got a donkey that runs on casters, and the saddle is just elegant.
Did you ever see anything so cunning as these beads and things round his
neck? You must make a memo. _re_ donkey, Mr. Stephens. Isn’t that
correct legal English?”
Stephens looked at the pretty, animated, boyish face looking up at him
from under the coquettish straw hat, and he wished that he had the
courage to tell her in her own language that she was just too sweet for
anything. But he feared above all things lest he should offend her, and
so put an end to their present pleasant intimacy. So his compliment
dwindled into a smile.
“You look very happy,” said he.
“Well, who could help feeling good with this dry, clear air, and the
blue sky, and the crisp yellow sand, and a superb donkey to carry you?
I’ve just got everything in the world to make me happy.”
“Everything?”
“Well, everything I have any use for just now.”
“I suppose you never know what it is to be sad?”
“Oh, when I _am_ miserable, I am just too miserable for words. I’ve sat
and cried for days and days at Smith’s College, and the other girls were
just crazy to know what I was crying about, and guessing what the reason
was that I wouldn’t tell them, when all the time the real true reason
was that I didn’t know myself. You know how it comes like a great dark
shadow over you, and you don’t know why or wherefore, but you’ve just
got to settle down to it and be miserable.”
“But you never had any real cause?”
“No, Mr. Stephens, I’ve had such a good time all my life that I really
don’t think, when I look back, that I ever had any real cause for
sorrow.”
“Well, Miss Sadie, I hope with all my heart that you will be able to say
the same when you are the same age as your aunt. Surely I hear her
calling.”
“I wish, Mr. Stephens, you would strike my donkey-boy with your whip if
he hits the donkey again,” cried Miss Adams, jogging up on a high,
raw-boned beast. “Hi, dragoman, Mansoor, you tell this boy that I won’t
have the animals ill used, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself.
Yes, you little rascal, you ought! He’s grinning at me like an
advertisement for a tooth paste. Do you think, Mr. Stephens, that if I
were to knit that black soldier a pair of woollen stockings he would be
allowed to wear them? The poor creature has bandages round his legs.”
“Those are his putties, Miss Adams,” said Colonel Cochrane, looking
back at her. “We have found in India that they are the best support to
the leg in marching. They are very much better than any stocking.”
“Well, you don’t say! They remind me mostly of a sick horse. But it’s
elegant to have the soldiers with us, though Monsieur Fardet tells me
there’s nothing for us to be scared about.”
“That is only my opinion, Miss Adams,” said the Frenchman hastily.
“It may be that Colonel Cochrane thinks otherwise.”
“It is Monsieur Fardet’s opinion against that of the officers who have
the responsibility of caring for the safety of the frontier,” said the
Colonel coldly. “At least we will all agree that they have the effect
of making the scene very much more picturesque.”
The desert upon their right lay in long curves of sand, like the dunes
which might have fringed some forgotten primeval sea. Topping them they
could see the black, craggy summits of the curious volcanic hills which
rise upon the Libyan side. On the crest of the low sand-hills they
would catch a glimpse every now and then of a tall, sky-blue soldier,
walking swiftly, his rifle at the trail. For a moment the lank, warlike
figure would be sharply silhouetted against the sky. Then he would dip
into a hollow and disappear, while some hundred yards off another would
show for an instant and vanish.
“Wherever are they raised?” asked Sadie, watching the moving figures.
“They look to me just about the same tint as the hotel boys in the
States.”
“I thought some question might arise about them,” said Mr. Stephens, who
was never so happy as when he could anticipate some wish of the pretty
American. “I made one or two references this morning in the ship’s
library. Here it is--_re_--that’s to say, about black soldiers. I have
it on my notes that they are from the 10th Soudanese battalion of the
Egyptian army. They are recruited from the Dinkas and the Shilluks--two
negroid tribes living to the south of the Dervish country, near the
Equator.”
“How can the recruits come through the Dervishes, then?” asked Headingly
sharply.
“I dare say there is no such very great difficulty over that,” said
Monsieur Fardet, with a wink at the American.
“The older men are the remains of the old black battalions. Some of
them served with Gordon at Khartoum, and have his medal to show.
The others are many of them deserters from the Mahdi’s army,” said the
Colonel.
“Well, so long as they are not wanted, they look right elegant in those
blue jackets,” Miss Adams observed. “But if there was any trouble, I
guess we would wish they were less ornamental and a bit whiter.”
“I am not so sure of that, Miss Adams,” said the Colonel. “I have seen
these fellows in the field, and I assure you that I have the utmost
confidence in their steadiness.”
“Well, I’ll take your word without trying,” said Miss Adams, with a
decision which made every one smile.
So far their road had lain along the side of the river, which was
swirling down upon their left hand deep and strong from the cataracts
above. Here and there the rush of the current was broken by a black
shining boulder over which the foam was spouting. Higher up they could
see the white gleam of the rapids, and the banks grew into rugged
cliffs, which were capped by a peculiar, outstanding semi-circular rock.
It did not require the dragoman’s aid to tell the party that this was
the famous landmark to which they were bound. A long, level stretch lay
before them, and the donkeys took it at a canter. At the farther side
were scattered rocks, black upon orange; and in the midst of them rose
some broken shafts of pillars and a length of engraved wall, looking in
its greyness and its solidity more like some work of Nature than of man.
The fat, sleek dragoman had dismounted, and stood waiting in his
petticoats and his cover-coat for the stragglers to gather round him.
“This temple, ladies and gentlemen,” he cried, with the air of an
auctioneer who is about to sell it to the highest bidder, “very fine
example from the eighteenth dynasty. Here is the cartouche of Thotmes
the Third,” he pointed up with his donkey-whip at the rude, but deep,
hieroglyphics upon the wall above him. “He live sixteen hundred years
before Christ, and this is made to remember his victorious exhibition
into Mesopotamia. Here we have his history from the time that he was
with his mother, until he return with captives tied to his chariot.
In this you see him crowned with Lower Egypt, and with Upper Egypt
offering up sacrifice in honour of his victory to the God Ammon-ra.
Here he bring his captives before him, and he cut off each his right
hand. In this corner you see little pile--all right hands.”
“My sakes, I shouldn’t have liked to be here in those days,” said Miss
Adams.
“Why, there’s nothing altered,” remarked Cecil Brown. “The East is
still the East. I’ve no doubt that within a hundred miles, or perhaps a
good deal less, from where you stand--”
“Shut up!” whispered the Colonel, and the party shuffled on down the
line of the wall with their faces up and their big hats thrown
backwards. The sun behind them struck the old grey masonry with a
brassy glare, and carried on to it the strange black shadows of the
tourists, mixing them up with the grim, high-nosed, square-shouldered
warriors, and the grotesque, rigid deities who lined it. The broad
shadow of the Reverend John Stuart, of Birmingham, smudged out both the
heathen King and the god whom he worshipped.
“What’s this?” he was asking in his wheezy voice, pointing up with a
yellow Assouan cane.
“That is a hippopotamus,” said the dragoman; and the tourists all
tittered, for there was just a suspicion of Mr. Stuart himself in the
carving.
“But it isn’t bigger than a little pig,” he protested. “You see that
the King is putting his spear through it with ease.”
“They make it small to show that it was a very small thing to the King,”
said the dragoman. “So you see that all the King’s prisoners do not
exceed his knee--which is not because he was so much taller, but so much
more powerful. You see that he is bigger than his horse, because he is
a king and the other is only a horse. The same way, these small women
whom you see here and there are just his trivial little wives.”
“Well, now!” cried Miss Adams indignantly. “If they had sculpted that
King’s soul it would have needed a lens to see it. Fancy his allowing
his wives to be put in like that.”
“If he did it now, Miss Adams,” said the Frenchman, “he would have more
fighting than ever in Mesopotamia. But time brings revenge. Perhaps
the day will soon come when we have the picture of the big strong wife
and the trivial little husband--_hein?_”
Cecil Brown and Headingly had dropped behind, for the glib comments of
the dragoman, and the empty, light-hearted chatter of the tourists
jarred upon their sense of solemnity. They stood in silence watching
the grotesque procession, with its sun-hats and green veils, as it
passed in the vivid sunshine down the front of the old grey wall.
Above them two crested hoopoes were fluttering and calling amid the
ruins of the pylon.
“Isn’t it a sacrilege?” said the Oxford man at last.
“Well, now, I’m glad you feel that about it, because it’s how it always
strikes me,” Headingly answered with feeling. “I’m not quite clear in
my own mind how these things should be approached--if they are to be
approached at all--but I am sure this is not the way. On the whole, I
prefer the ruins that I have not seen to those which I have.”
The young diplomatist looked up with his peculiarly bright smile, which
faded away too soon into his languid, _blase_ mask.
“I’ve got a map,” said the American, “and sometimes far away from
anything in the very midst of the waterless, trackless desert, I see
‘ruins’ marked upon it--or ‘remains of a temple,’ perhaps. For example,
the temple of Jupiter Ammon, which was one of the most considerable
shrines in the world, was hundreds of miles away back of anywhere.
Those are the ruins, solitary, unseen, unchanging through the centuries,
which appeal to one’s imagination. But when I present a check at the
door, and go in as if it were Barnum’s show, all the subtle feeling of
romance goes right out of it.”
“Absolutely!” said Cecil Brown, looking over the desert with his dark,
intolerant eyes. “If one could come wandering here alone--stumble upon
it by chance, as it were--and find one’s self in absolute solitude in
the dim light of the temple, with these grotesque figures all round, it
would be perfectly overwhelming. A man would be prostrated with wonder
and awe. But when Belmont is puffing his bulldog pipe, and Stuart is
wheezing, and Miss Sadie Adams is laughing--”
“And that jay of a dragoman speaking his piece,” said Headingly;
“I want to stand and think all the time, and I never seem to get the
chance. I was ripe for manslaughter when I stood before the Great
Pyramid, and couldn’t get a quiet moment because they would boost me on
to the top. I took a kick at one man which would have sent _him_ to the
top in one jump if I had hit meat. But fancy travelling all the way
from America to see the pyramid, and then finding nothing better to do
than to kick an Arab in front of it!”
The Oxford man laughed in his gentle, tired fashion. “They are starting
again,” said he, and the two hastened forwards to take their places at
the tail of the absurd procession.
Their route ran now among large, scattered boulders, and between stony,
shingly hills. A narrow winding path curved in and out amongst the
rocks. Behind them their view was cut off by similar hills, black and
fantastic, like the slag-heaps at the shaft of a mine. A silence fell
upon the little company, and even Sadie’s bright face reflected the
harshness of Nature. The escort had closed in, and marched beside them,
their boots scrunching among the loose black rubble. Colonel Cochrane
and Belmont were still riding together in the van.
“Do you know, Belmont,” said the Colonel, in a low voice, “you may think
me a fool, but I don’t like this one little bit.”
Belmont gave a short gruff laugh.
“It seemed all right in the saloon of the _Korosko_, but now that we are
here we _do_ seem rather up in the air,” said he. “Still, you know, a
party comes here every week, and nothing has ever gone wrong.”
“I don’t mind taking my chances when I am on the war-path,” the Colonel
answered. “That’s all straightforward and in the way of business.
But when you have women with you, and a helpless crowd like this, it
becomes really dreadful. Of course, the chances are a hundred to one
that we have no trouble; but if we should have--well, it won’t bear
thinking about. The wonderful thing is their complete unconsciousness
that there is any danger whatever.”
“Well, I like the English tailor-made dresses well enough for walking,
Mr. Stephens,” said Miss Sadie from behind them. “But for an afternoon
dress, I think the French have more style than the English. Your
milliners have a more severe cut, and they don’t do the cunning little
ribbons and bows and things in the same way.”
The Colonel smiled at Belmont.
“_She_ is quite serene in her mind, at any rate,” said he. “Of course,
I wouldn’t say what I think to any one but you, and I daresay it will
all prove to be quite unfounded.”
“Well, I could imagine parties of Dervishes on the prowl,” said Belmont.
“But what I cannot imagine is that they should just happen to come to
the pulpit rock on the very morning when we are due there.”
“Considering that our movements have been freely advertised, and that
every one knows a week beforehand what our programme is, and where we
are to be found, it does not strike me as being such a wonderful
coincidence.”
“It is a very remote chance,” said Belmont stoutly, but he was glad in
his heart that his wife was safe and snug on board the steamer.
And now they were clear of the rocks again, with a fine stretch of firm
yellow sand extending to the very base of the conical hill which lay
before them. “Ay-ah! Ay-ah!” cried the boys, whack came their sticks
upon the flanks of the donkeys, which broke into a gallop, and away they
all streamed over the plain. It was not until they had come to the end
of the path which curves up the hill that the dragoman called a halt.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are arrived for the so famous pulpit rock
of Abousir. From the summit you will presently enjoy a panorama of
remarkable fertility. But first you will observe that over the rocky
side of the hill are everywhere cut the names of great men who have
passed it in their travels, and some of these names are older than the
time of Christ.”
“Got Moses?” asked Miss Adams.
“Auntie, I’m surprised at you!” cried Sadie.
“Well, my dear, he was in Egypt, and he was a great man, and he may have
passed this way.”
“Moses’s name very likely there, and the same with Herodotus,” said the
dragoman gravely. “Both have been long worn away. But there on the
brown rock you will see Belzoni. And up higher is Gordon. There is
hardly a name famous in the Soudan which you will not find, if you like.
And now, with your permission, we shall take good-bye of our donkeys and
walk up the path, and you will see the river and the desert from the
summit of the top.”
A minute or two of climbing brought them out upon the semicircular
platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a
perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the
swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the
water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed
through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the
course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very
deep and strong, with sleek black eddies and occasional spoutings of
foam. On the other side was a frightful wilderness of black, scattered
rocks, which were the _debris_ carried down by the river at high flood.
In no direction were there any signs of human beings or their dwellings.
“On the far side,” said the dragoman, waving his donkey-whip towards the
east, “is the military line which conducts Wady Halfa to Sarras.
Sarras lies to the south, under that black hill. Those two blue
mountains which you see very far away are in Dongola, more than a
hundred miles from Sarras. The railway there is forty miles long, and
has been much annoyed by the Dervishes, who are very glad to turn the
rails into spears. The telegraph wires are also much appreciated
thereby. Now, if you will kindly turn round, I will explain, also, what
we see upon the other side.”
It was a view which, when once seen, must always haunt the mind.
Such an expanse of savage and unrelieved desert might be part of some
cold and burned-out planet rather than of this fertile and bountiful
earth. Away and away it stretched to die into a soft, violet haze in
the extremest distance. In the foreground the sand was of a bright
golden yellow, which was quite dazzling in the sunshine. Here and
there, in a scattered cordon, stood the six trusty negro soldiers
leaning motionless upon their rifles, and each throwing a shadow which
looked as solid as himself. But beyond this golden plain lay a low line
of those black slag-heaps, with yellow sand-valleys winding between
them. These in their turn were topped by higher and more fantastic
hills, and these by others, peeping over each other’s shoulders until
they blended with that distant violet haze. None of these hills were of
any height--a few hundred feet at the most--but their savage,
saw-toothed crests, and their steep scarps of sun-baked stone, gave them
a fierce character of their own.
“The Libyan Desert,” said the dragoman, with a proud wave of his hand.
“The greatest desert in the world. Suppose you travel right west from
here, and turn neither to the north nor to the south, the first houses
you would come to would be in America. That make you home-sick, Miss
Adams, I believe?”
But the American old maid had her attention drawn away by the conduct of
Sadie, who had caught her arm by one hand and was pointing over the
desert with the other.
“Well, now, if that isn’t too picturesque for anything!” she cried, with
a flush of excitement upon her pretty face. “Do look, Mr. Stephens!
That’s just the one only thing we wanted to make it just perfectly
grand. See the men upon the camels coming out from between those
hills!”
They all looked at the long string of red-turbaned riders who were
winding out of the ravine, and there fell such a hush that the buzzing
of the flies sounded quite loud upon their ears. Colonel Cochrane had
lit a match, and he stood with it in one hand and the unlit cigarette in
the other until the flame licked round his fingers. Belmont whistled.
The dragoman stood staring with his mouth half-open, and a curious slaty
tint in his full, red lips. The others looked from one to the other
with an uneasy sense that there was something wrong. It was the Colonel
who broke the silence.
“By George, Belmont, I believe the hundred-to-one chance has come off!”
said he.