“_Remove the gates of thy stable to another side._”—ARABIC
PROVERB.
An ominous dawning.
Misty, silvery shadows fleeing before the coming light left no mark upon
the Crimson Desert, which stretched to the east and west a desolate
unbroken plain, to the north and south in motionless, blood-red waves of
sand. Sunrays, yellow, orange, red, spread like gigantic searchlights
across the sky from behind a mass of clouds which the west wind had
driven eastward and piled low down upon the horizon.
Copper-coloured masses against a background of green and rose and dun,
concealing the end or the beginning of an arch of clouds, which flared,
a signal of disaster, a pennant of death, blood-red, high across the
sapphire firmament, where one great star still defied its enemy—the dawn.
Over the empty plain, under the ominous arc, straight towards the
stupendous sunrise fled the three camels, leaving a dead-black trail
stretching back as far as eye could see.
Namlah the body-woman glanced over her shoulder at the Morning Star and
touched the amulet of good luck which hung about her neck. She looked
round at the ill-omened sky and back over the miles across which the huge
beasts had raced, at the almost incredible speed to which the camel can
attain when urged to its greatest effort. Scarcely a word had the riders
said since the sky had lightened when, wondering if the alarm had been
given in the camp, they had turned to see if Yussuf overtook or if Zarah
pursued them through the misty, silvery shadows.
Ralph and Helen rode side by side, their dromedaries almost touching, as
they raced death for their lives, their liberty, their love. Namlah, the
desert born, rode ahead, steering her course unerringly by the great star.
She glanced back at Helen’s face, showing death white in the shadows of
the passing night and distressed at the signs of a great fatigue, anxious
to advise, to help, touched her camel upon the right shoulder, so that
it turned to the right in a wide circle, whilst its companions, ignoring
or totally unconscious of their leader’s change of route, and utterly
lacking in imagination, reasoning power or sense of any kind, forged
ahead on a non-stop run.
Once more her keen eyes swept the vast plain which lay behind and across
which, like a band of jet on damask cloth, showed the path made by the
camels in their flight. She made no sound as she shaded her eyes and
stared and stared into the far distance, but touched the amulet for good
luck which hung at her own neck and, leaning far forward, touched the
amulet which had been fastened in a tuft of hair on the camel’s left
shoulder, thereby guaranteeing its safe arrival at the journey’s end.
“‘O thou who troublest thyself about the care of others, to whom hast
thou left thine own cares?’” She muttered the proverb, then prayed to
Allah as she smote the camel so that it finished the half circle and
formed up with its companions, which utterly ignored its return.
“What is it, Namlah?”
Helen leant sideways as she spoke to the body-servant, in whose eyes she
had seen the light of a great fear, then turned and looked back in the
direction in which the woman pointed. She turned to her lover and pointed
back along the path by which they had come, to where, hardly discernible
and as a mere speck in the far distance, something moved.
“We’re followed, Ra!” she cried, leaning towards him and stretching out
her hand.
“I know we are, sweetheart. I’ve known it for some time. Let’s hope it’s
Yussuf.” He smiled at Namlah and shouted across to her. “We’ll put up a
good fight, little sister, if they overtake us, and I swear they shall
never take you two women alive.”
“_Kismet!_ Excellency,” cried Namlah. “Perchance ’tis the blind one
riding to join us, though verily there is but Lulah who could overtake
these three beasts, the swiftest in Njed, and the black mare Yussuf does
not ride. I pray thee let me have speech with Zarah if ’tis she, before
death claims either the one or the other of us, likewise, if so be it is
the will of Allah, allow me to approach the tyrant.”
She spat as she made her request, and guided her camel close to Helen’s
and prayed to Allah, with frequent interludes of cursing, as they fled
like the wind towards the spot whence they would turn due north and, if
Allah the Merciful answered the prayers of the body-woman, would overtake
a caravan journeying towards Oman or Hareek.
“’Tis the birds of prey, Excellency,” she said later, “calling as they
ever call at dawn. Perchance from the heavens the eagles and the vultures
spy food with which to break their fast.”
Helen looked up at the sky, across which drifted and wheeled vultures,
eagles, hawks, and shook her head and smiled at the dusky little woman
who lied to allay her fears.
“Nay! Namlah, it is a voice, it is—listen!”
Faintly but clearly the cry came to them upon the morning wind. Helen
looked at her lover, and Namlah bent and touched the amulet upon the
camel’s shoulder so as to hide her eyes. The battle-cry, derisive,
challenging, even at a great distance, left no doubt as to who pursued
them.
But Namlah was of the desert, with the eyes of a hawk and the tenacity of
those whose daily life is one long fight against the greatest odds. She
shaded her eyes suddenly and stared ahead. She pointed and laughed and
kicked her camel vigorously.
But there was no sign of living thing in all the desert to Ralph and
Helen when they looked to where she pointed.
“I see nothing, Namlah.”
“Yonder, Excellency! See you not a band of men moving many, many miles
away. Allah! their backs are towards us. They go from us.” She turned
in her saddle and shook her fist at the speck in the far distance, then
put her hand to her ear. “Allah! ’tis verily a horse! Faster! Faster!
Excellencies, urge the camels, they but crawl, urge them, for in yon band
of men, be they robbers or starving Bedouins, lies our salvation.”
Infinitesimal spots upon the desert, which, ridged and wrinkled, lay like
the outstretched hand of Fate, they urged the dromedaries until they fled
to outstrip the wind, under the sky of violent colouring.
“Allah! open their eyes that they see us! Open their ears that they hear
us! Excellency! Excellency! is there no way by which to turn their heads
towards us!” Her words were lost in the rush of the tremendous speed, but
Helen, understanding the expressive gestures, turned and shouted to her
lover.
The camels paid no heed when the desert rang with the double report of
Trenchard’s revolver, but Abdul, who journeyed in the company of the
Bedouins who had succoured him, in the hope of learning news of his
white master in Hareek, turned in his saddle and looked back, whilst
Zarah, oblivious of the strain she was putting upon the mare, shouted the
battle-cry derisively when the firing shattered the desert stillness and
drove the beautiful creature at full speed over the sands, urging her
with needle-pointed spear.
Nor did she look back, else might she have seen Fate pressing hard upon
her heels.
* * * * *
“_On the day of victory no fatigue is felt._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
Like a darker shadow amongst the shadows thrown upon the desert from
the ill-omened sky, Rādi the bitch, the swiftest greyhound whelped in
Hasa, loped alongside the dromedary ridden by Yussuf, with “His Eyes,”
pillion-wise, behind him. She barely left a mark upon the sands so
lightly did she run, perplexed, upon a track which held but the common
scent of horse and camel. True, she ran in the wake of Lulah, her stable
friend, but of enemy there was no trace; therefore of what avail to spend
her strength in chasing shadows by the light of the rising sun?
“His Eyes” frowned when she broke away, and like an arrow from a bow set
off hard upon the scent of something which had crossed the path after
Lulah the mare.
“She has no interest, brother.” He tapped his message upon the blind
man’s shoulder. “Even now she turns to follow the scent of some small
beast of no account. Give me the sandal of Zarah the Cruel, so that she
holds in her fine nose the scent of the woman of whom as yet we see no
sign, but whom we hunt to the death.”
Yussuf sent a long, low call ringing across the sands, and Rādi, with
every muscle in her gaunt body trained to a hair, without checking her
speed, spun round upon her hind feet and tore back in answer to it. She
ran at an angle to overtake the black dromedary, whose price was above
that of many rubies, and recognizing the object dangled just out of
reach, leapt at the sandal, missing it by an inch; then, as trained to
do, on touching the ground turned in a circle to the right and at the
top of her terrific speed, still at an angle, tore towards the dromedary
and launched herself straight upon its back. Catching her by the throat,
the dumb youth held her back, whilst, with claws clinging to the tufts
of hair upon the dromedary’s haunches, the bitch fought to reach the
sandal, the scent of which drove her to a veritable madness of hate and
filled her with a lust to kill. She had it between her teeth when firing
suddenly shattered the desert stillness, and she fought like a fury to
keep it, until “His Eyes,” putting out all his strength, hurled her to
the ground and, clasping Yussuf round the waist, leaned far sideways and
stared ahead. In his excitement he snatched the _mihjan_ from the blind
man’s hand and, leaning backward, smote the dromedary upon the fleshy
part of its hind leg above the knee, the tenderest spot of its tough
anatomy, so that with a scream of rage it increased its pace seemingly a
hundredfold and tore like a hurricane of wrath upon the path, at the far
end of which “His Eyes” at last discerned a moving figure.
“_Bism ’allah!_” yelled Yussuf, answering the message tapped upon his
shoulder. “Allah the Merciful delivereth the tyrant into our hands. The
mare faileth, sayeth thou; the marks of her hoofs show ever deeper in
the sand. Whence came the firing? From Zarah the Cruel or from our white
brother who fleeth with the women before her vengeance? Nay! Nay! Knowest
thou so little? Can’st not discern the difference ’twixt a pistol and a
rifle? Allah strike her hand so that it is useless, and strike the mare
dead so that the woman falls to the hound, who hates her even as I hate
her in my blindness.”
He leaned down and called to the greyhound, exciting her with words as
he pointed ahead, until, sensing an enemy at last, she shot in front of
the dromedary. Then, sitting erect, he lifted his mutilated face to the
flaming heavens and chanted verses from the Korān to the honour of Allah
the one and only God, Who delivered the enemy into his hands:
“_Flight shall not profit you if ye fly from death or from
slaughter, and if it would, yet shall ye not enjoy this world
but a little!_”
“_Who is he who shall defend you against God, if He is pleased
to bring evil on you?_”
“_O Lord, give her the double of our punishment; and curse her
with a heavy curse!_”
The sonorous words range out on the stillness, barely broken by the
padding of the dromedary’s cushioned feet upon the sand, then he stopped
suddenly, alert, apprehensive.
His hearing, sharpened by his blindness, had caught the sound of the
drumming of a horse’s hoofs upon the sand many miles behind.
“Look once more behind, little brother, methought ’twould not be long
before her lover rode in pursuit. Ha! thou seest one riding like a leaf
before the wind. By the beard! ’tis the Lion riding to find his mate!
Allah smite that which he bestrides so that no harm befalls him.” He
turned round in the saddle and stared back along the path he could not
see. “Seest thou aught else behind the Lion, little brother? Far behind?
Thou seest naught! Yet is there a sound of thunder in mine ears, even the
sound of the hoofs of many horses tearing like the hurricane towards us.”
He listened for a moment, then turned again and stared unseeingly in
front towards the figure of the woman who had blinded him. He smiled as
best he could for the distortion of his mouth and threw back his head.
Zarah looked back, at last, as the challenge of the battle-cry came
to her on the wind, and, recognizing that speed alone would save her
from the death which hunted her down, drove her spear into the mare’s
hindquarters.
The exhausted beast, ridden without mercy, her satiny coat dripping, her
chest asmother with foam, bounded forward under the agony of the goad,
crossed her feet, stumbled, flinging Zarah over her head as she crashed
to her knees, then, up before the Arabian could rise, turned and fled
into the desert towards the east, where the sun showed above the clouds.
* * * * *
“_One hour for thy love, one hour for thy Lord._”—ARABIC
PROVERB.
A mighty picture made Al-Asad and the stallion as they rode in the race
to outstrip death. To aid the magnificent beast as it tore across the
plain the Nubian lay close to its satin neck, guiding with knees and
hand, coaxing and urging with his voice as it fled _ventre à terre_,
silken mane and tail flying like banners in the wind.
There was naught but vision to tell him if he gained upon the dog or
not, and even in that he dare not put his trust. For how was he to tell
if the figures before him, the camel with its two riders, the dog ahead,
the girl upon the black mare still farther off, and the three camels,
mere dots upon the horizon, became gradually clearer because the stallion
lessened the distance between itself and them or because the light made
all things clearer as the sun rose from behind the clouds?
He did not count Yussuf nor the dumb youth in the race for Zarah’s life.
A great brotherly love existed between them, protecting them from harm
one from the other; nor did he blame the blind man for taking his revenge
by setting the bitch to hunt the girl down.
In his wild heart and simple mind love, hate and revenge were
inextricably interwoven in the web of life, circumstance alone deciding
which should triumph in the end.
He would overtake them easily and pass them with a friendly shout, as he
rapidly lessened the distance which separated him from love and freedom.
His plan was of the simplest.
He would lift the woman he loved into his arms and ride away with her
to some distant part of the desert. There he would gather the fiercest
outlaws to him, and with them raid the country until his name should
become a byword in the land, whilst his riches should accumulate so that
his woman’s happiness should be great. He smiled as he rode with the
dreams in his heart and his eyes upon the greyhound and the spear loose
in his hand.
He knew that the Bedouins, who had seen Rādi hunting across the desert,
had come to swear by her endurance and resistance, and to boast to the
stranger within the land of how she hunted the night through without
water or food or rest.
Likewise she held an unbroken record.
She had never failed to kill.
He looked down at Lulah’s hoof-prints and called to the stallion as
he caressed the glossy neck. The mare’s hoof-prints showed deeper and
deeper, and in two places where she had crossed her feet under the strain
of a great fatigue. For speed she was renowned throughout the Peninsula,
but in endurance the lowest hireling from the bazaar could beat her.
And behind her ran the greyhound which had never been known to fail in a
kill.
He felt the stallion’s pace increase as he stroked the glossy neck; then,
clutching the silvery mane, he swung, head down, listening to a sound
which had come to him along the sand even above the pounding of the
stallion’s hoofs. He swung himself erect and turned and looked along the
path marked out by those who fled and those who pursued.
Led by the Patriarch, the men of the Sanctuary, stretched out in a line
across the horizon, raced towards him. They rode with the lance at rest,
and shouted as they rode, until the heavens were filled with the sound of
their voices and the thunder of their horses’ hoofs.
There was no help to be sought of them.
They rode in the joy of the hunt, in the hope of a kill, just as they had
ridden to the attack upon the white man’s camp, led by the woman who had
revolted them at last with her tyranny, and who, in the secret places of
their inconstant hearts, they hoped would die rather than the white man
and the white woman who fled before her.
Then Fate jerked the strings which hobbled them all to their destiny.
Al-Asad, riding with his eyes upon the greyhound, looked up and ahead
when Yussuf’s challenging cry came to him on the wind. Breathlessly he
watched for an instant of time, then sat back and raised his spear as the
mare stumbled and flung Zarah to the ground. In an unconscious effort
to catch the mare he pulled the stallion to the left, then pressed the
beast hard with his right knee, bringing it back to the path, and touched
its neck with the tip of the needle-pointed spear, so that it leaped
forward under the unexpected goad and hurled itself on the track of the
greyhound, which tore like the wind to where the girl stood.
The half-caste just glanced at Yussuf and “His Eyes” as their dromedary
suddenly left the path and sped away across the desert. He knew the
dromedary was being driven along a circuitous route by which it would
ultimately join up with the white people; he knew that Yussuf felt sure
of his revenge and had left the end to the will of Allah; he felt no
hatred in his heart as he looked after them, fleeing to the safety which
was their birthright; he felt no anger as he raised his spear above his
head, so that it glittered in the risen sun, and shouted the battle-cry
as he drove the stallion to the rescue of the girl who stood alone, so
far away, facing him and the greyhound who had never failed to kill.
He turned for an instant to look at the men who followed hard upon his
track, magnificent in his desperate need, his face alight with the glow
of battle. He raised his spear in answer to the Patriarch, who raised his
in salutation, and raised it again in greeting to the men, his friends.
* * * * *
“_A day which is not thine do not reckon it as of thy
life._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
With the fatalism of the Arab, Zarah stood watching the race between the
greyhound and the man who loved her.
She had glanced at the black dromedary carrying Blind Yussuf and “His
Eyes” to freedom; she had looked at the magnificent sight of the men she
had ruled so tyrannically as they deployed so that they should encircle
her when they reached her; she did not turn to look in the direction
taken by the girl she hated and the man she had loved passionately and
for so brief a time.
Yet did hate outweigh the danger of the hour.
“By Allah,” she cried, lifting her spear, “if I live I will lead my men
upon them and trample them and those who help them under foot. Yea, by
the honour of the Arab I swear, if I throw the spear so that it pierces
the heart of yon cursed dog, that not one of them shall be left alive
within the hour.”
She dropped her white cloak from her shoulders and stepped clear,
weighing the slender spear as she measured the lessening distance between
the stallion and the greyhound. Her heart quickened not one beat, nor did
the slightest shadow of fear show in the tawny eyes. She did not despair
as the bitch seemed to gain upon the stallion; she did not hope as the
thunder of the stallion’s hoofs sounded clearer and clearer every moment.
She was alone in her hour of desperate need, and only upon the strength
and skill of her right hand and the judgment of her eye could she depend
for life if the Nubian failed to reach her in time.
Yet even when that life trembled in the balance she could not refrain
from tormenting the man who had been her willing, humble slave from the
moment his eyes had first met hers, and who alone raced to help her in
her peril.
She held out her arms towards him and called his name and smiled, even
though she could almost see the red gleam of hate in the greyhound’s
eyes, so near was the revengeful beast.
“Al-Asad!” she called. “Al-Asad!”
Her voice sounded like a peal of bells in the desert stillness, her
beauty flamed like the sky above, her courage was superb as she measured
the distance between herself and the maddened greyhound.
Then she leant forward and screamed, screamed till the echo of the
terrible sound carried to Yussuf’s ears, so that he turned and looked
back in the direction of the girl he could not see.
Death was upon her; death with a crown of red above its snow-white face;
the death Yussuf had prophesied when she had struck him blind.
She ran back so that the white cloak stretched between; she looked round
and up, up to the sun which was her birthright, forward to the closing
of her day. She flung out her arms, her hands, fingers widespread as
though to clutch the last moments of the life she loved so well. Life was
nigh spent; she stood within the shadows of Eternity; but, true to her
father’s race, true to the relentless desert to which she belonged, she
would die fighting.
She shouted the battle-cry as she raised her spear.
“_Ista ’jil! Ista ’jil! Ista ’jil!_”
The desperate, defiant words were carried across the sands as she flung
the spear, flung it as Rādi the bitch, increasing her speed in a last
desperate effort to revenge her pup, changed her course by a few inches,
so that the spear barely grazed the shoulder as it flew past and buried
itself in the sands.
Then fear came to Zarah the Cruel, not the fear of death, but fear of an
ignominious end in the eyes of her men.
“Kill me, Al-Asad! Kill me!”
She called desperately to the Nubian as she caught the bitch by the
throat as she leapt upon her.
“Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!”
The terrible cry rang in the Nubian’s ears as, misjudging his strength,
he hurled the spear even as the greyhound leapt.
He shouted with triumph as the greyhound fell back dead, then flung
himself from the stallion as he swept past at full speed and threw
himself upon the girl he loved as she lay still.
The point of the spear which had killed the greyhound had buried itself
in Zarah’s heart.
He did not hear the shouting of the men as they swept down upon him from
every side; he did not seem to see the sun in the heavens as he knelt and
drew the weapon free; he did not hear the call of life as he lifted the
girl and held her against his heart.
“Zarah,” he whispered softly, holding her gently on his arm. “I love
thee! No kiss have I wrested from thee awake. Behold, is it for me to
snatch one from thee in sleep?” He turned her face to his shoulder and
touched her hair gently, winding one curl about his slender fingers. “I
love thee, mate of mine. I hunger for thee, I thirst for thee. Yea, by
the wind of dawn I cannot live without thee. Behold, is there a smile
lurking in the corner of thy mouth, and thine eyes, like unto clear water
winding across the sands, laugh at me between thy lashes. Thou art gone
but a space before me across Life’s desert, and I hold the hem of thy
garment in my hands so that thou canst not escape me. I hear thee calling
me in the wind, I see thee beckoning me ’neath the sun.” He bent and
kissed her hair, then looked up to the sun, to the heavens, to that which
awaited him.
He raised his spear above his head and smiled.
The men, racing towards him in a great circle, raised their spears
and shouted a salutation as they pulled their horses back upon their
haunches. He shifted the girl a little upon his left arm, then threw back
his head and shouted the battle-cry, shouted until the desert rang with
the triumphant cry, as the men, divining his intention, charged down upon
him.
He shook the spear above his head and laughed.
“Zarah! My woman! Zarah, I follow thee!”
He shouted the words, shouted with joy, then drove the spear deep down
into his faithful heart.
EPILOGUE
The Holy Man, motionless, gaunt, his eyes filled with the peace of Allah,
the one and only God, stood afar off, outlined against the blazing sky.
He looked to the north, where had passed a party of Bedouins with a white
man and a white woman in their midst—a white woman with eyes like stars
of happiness and hair like unto a golden flower.
He looked to the east, where passed a body of men, driving their horses
at greatest speed as they rode silently, swiftly, into the unknown, with
the lance at rest.
Leaderless they rode, a black line across the limitless, relentless
desert, their spear points glittering in the sun.
They faded into the distance, they were gone.
To the south lay the Holy Man’s path, the south where the wind blows
hottest, where the sands burn the sandal from off even holy feet, which
search salvation in distress throughout the years.
“_And deliver them from evil._”
He leant upon his staff, older by some score years than when he stood to
watch two horsemen fleeing for their lives across the desert. The beads
of Mecca slipped between his fingers as he bent to read the inscription
from the Korān which the Patriarch had roughly scratched with spear point
upon the sand.
He lifted up his voice in the wilderness above the spot where Zarah the
Arabian, wrapped in her great white cloak, lay upon Al-Asad’s heart,
asleep beneath the sands of the desert to which they both belonged:
“_For whomsoever thou shalt deliver from evil on that day on
him wilt thou have mercy; and this will be great salvation._”
The wind from the south carried the sonorous word from the Korān up to
heaven as the Holy Man passed on the one solitary figure moving in the
relentless desert, the forcing-ground of hate and fear and revenge, the
burial place of love and hope and peace, above which the birds of prey
wheeled and called as they drifted to the north and the south, the east
and the west, as they have drifted since the day every grain of sand was
numbered.