THE TRAP
"That our friends have left is obvious," said Daoud. "The question is
how long ago and whither."
The litter of a recently disturbed encampment cumbered the ground. Rags,
the feathers of lately plucked chickens, the ashes of recently
extinguished fires abounded. But whether the camp had been struck days
or only hours before it was impossible to determine. Night as well as
day had been rainless, and the dry dust left no trail perceptible to
European eyes. Daoud, however, examined the soil carefully.
"They have gone south," he declared at last. "They have struck out of
the forest and back towards the plain. This grows interesting."
Perinaud gave a sniff.
"The reason is obvious," he said a little contemptuously. "Where did
they obtain water? From the spring which welled up at the foot of that
cactus to the left. But now it is dry and cracking mud."
Daoud nodded grudgingly.
"Possibly," he allowed. "The nearest wells are at Ain Djemma."
"Held in force by two companies of the Legion," said Perinaud. "They are
hardly likely to show themselves there. No, if they have gone south they
are seeking the Wad el Mella. They will follow the stream through the
gorge towards their own foothills from which it issues."
"This river? How far is it?" asked Aylmer.
"Eight kilometres, possibly ten," said Perinaud. "There are _duars_ and
encampments along its banks in a dozen places. We ought to get news of
our men, even if we do not overtake them."
"Our horses have come a matter of thirty kilometres already," said
Aylmer.
"Then as soon as possible they must do ten more," answered the sergeant,
energetically. "Without water we cannot camp, any more than our friends
of the Beni M'Geel. _En avance!_"
Aylmer drew his horse up beside Perinaud's as for the second time they
left the shelter of the trees and ambled out on to the plain. The
westering sun was turning it to broad belts of dun, and yellow, and
green, as the slanting beams fell upon earth, or marigold weed, or
crops. Four or five miles distant to their front the rolling uplands
culminated in a belt of squat but far-branching trees.
"There, one may suppose, are the river and the gorge," he suggested.
"The inhabitants of these _duars_, of which you speak? How will they
greet us?"
Perinaud shrugged his shoulders.
"It remains for Fate to show us, Monsieur. There were some drastic
whippings of the Moors within this district a few weeks back. How well
they have learned the lesson taught them then we shall have to prove."
Aylmer hesitated.
"It is not with the purpose of getting embroiled in skirmishes that I
have come," he said quietly. "You understand that my duty, for the
moment, is to keep myself alive until my object is achieved."
Perinaud grinned drily.
"That is a remark which a poltroon would not have dared to make,
Monsieur, and shows you to be a brave man. Be assured that my efforts
towards maintaining an unperforated skin will be as energetic as your
own. Hysterical madness, such as we were involved in in the forest,
shall not recur, if I can help it. My purpose is to camp, as soon as we
reach water, and then to allow your omniscient Monsieur Daoud to conduct
his investigations under cover of the darkness."
As the red disk of the sun sank below the seaward horizon, they topped
the gentle rise which terminated in a belt of trees. Not far below them,
belling musically through the dusk, came the song of the ripples. Half a
mile away, on the far side of the gorge, a dim light twinkled in the
growing darkness.
Perinaud pointed towards a group of palms.
"Here, Monsieur," he explained, "you will find dry earth. You have your
cloak. Your saddle is a practical pillow. I have bread, a ration or two
of preserved soup, some beans, coffee, a tin of milk, sugar. At the
_duar_, where we see that light, are--possibly--chickens. But we are
quite as likely to receive a bullet. What does Monsieur advise?"
Aylmer smiled.
"An immediate picnic. In the friendliest of _duars_ cannibal hordes
thirsting for our blood would await us, if we were reckless enough to
sleep among them. I prefer to housekeep _a la belle etoile_."
The sergeant nodded and gave his orders. Sentries slipped right and left
into the night. A tiny fire was kindled in a hollow between two
boulders. The tins of preserved soup gave up their secrets, and the
ration bread proved that the military bakers of France have discovered
the secret of making loaves which will remain fresh and eatable through
a whole week of desert marches. Coffee succeeded--coffee made in the
empty vegetable tin, and worthy of Maxim's or the Ritz.
Daoud drank his portion, shrugged his shoulders fatalistically at the
sleeping places which the Goumiers were preparing, and then, without
comment, vanished into the night.
Aylmer lay back upon his cloak, his head pillowed upon his arm, his pipe
between his teeth. He was enjoying to the full the sensations of a
pleasantly weary and well-fed horseman. The first drowsy challenge of
sleep touched his eyes and brain.
The very next instant, as it seemed to him, he was on his feet, revolver
in hand, searching the dark aisles of the forest on either side. A shout
had echoed from one of the sentries, a hoarse challenge followed almost
on the instant by a shot.
The cry was repeated, shriller this time with the insistence of anxiety.
"_Au secours!_" came the Goumier's voice. "_Au secours!_ There are a
score of them; they are all around me!"
In silence, but with a wave of the hand, Perinaud dispersed his men into
open order and doubled towards the sounds of conflict. Aylmer ran with
them, making more noise in his heavy boots than the whole of the party
made in their _souliers_. He heard Perinaud whisper an emphatic oath of
disgust as he tripped over a fallen branch and smashed heavily through a
cactus bush. The next instant both of them fell together, over a soft,
woolly obstruction, which stirred faintly under their feet. Meanwhile,
half a dozen rifles were flashing red in the night, and the woodland
echoes tossed the reports from thicket to thicket.
Perinaud swore again viciously, scrambled to his feet, and shouted.
"Imbeciles! Cease fire!" he thundered. "They are sheep, these Moors of
yours, sheep! A pretty night's work! You have killed probably a dozen,
and we have no means of transport."
Shamefacedly the Goumiers crowded round to feel the fatness of the
victim which had lain in Aylmer's path. As they felt and appraised it,
their voices resumed a note of philosophic content. It was indeed a slur
upon the collectedness of the Goumiers as a whole that Hassan el Fehmi,
the sentry, had been betrayed into this indiscretion. But the dead
sheep, look you, was of an unlooked-for plumpness, and breakfast must be
partaken of sooner or later. There would be cutlets, and room might be
found on a saddle or two for a couple of _gigots_. No, this was not all
loss, this night alarm. There were compensations.
Perinaud declined to meet these representations in the spirit in which
they were made.
"Looters! Robbers of hen roosts!" he cried. "The whole of your thoughts
are centered, as ever, on your unworthy stomachs. The compensation for
this outrage will be made to the owners from your pay, let me tell you,
from your pay! You have raised the country on us with your shootings;
within a matter of minutes we shall have the Moors here in earnest, be
assured of that!"
Wrathfully he led the way back to the bivouac and carefully extinguished
every cinder of the fire.
"And now," he ordered, "our duty is to wait--beside our horses. If it
will not inconvenience Monsieur, I should be obliged if he will defer
sleeping, for the present. If we are not molested for the next hour or
two, it will be different. The moon rises before midnight and after that
a couple of sentries will amply suffice."
It was a memory which stayed by Aylmer for many a month--that long,
silent, and very weary vigil of the next few hours. He sat, with his
back supported by a palm trunk, the haltering rein of his horse in his
hand, his eyes trying vainly to pierce the gloom which surrounded him,
and his ears strained to attention.
The forest, though in the windless calm not a leaf fluttered, was full
of disquieting noises. There were rustlings, faint, half perceptible
crackings of twigs, dull, muffled, resistant sounds from the earth which
must surely be caused by human footfall. Once his whole frame sprung
into startled alertness as a night bird shrieked in the cork branches
not twenty yards away. The faint but distinct after-echo of a chorussed
sigh told him how a dozen other pulses had leaped with his. The quick,
irregular darting run of a small animal--a jerboa or a forest
rat--produced a little less disturbing effect. But the soft, stolid
breathing of his horse, as its breath beat past his shoulder, was a
soothing, soporific sound which his nerves welcomed, yet seemed to
protest against as tending to lull him into an unalert insecurity. With
a sudden qualm of reproach he found his head dropping sideways and
smiting lightly the trunk of the palm. He drew himself up with a quick,
decisive tautening of his muscles. He would not sleep; his eyelids
almost ached with the intensity with which he held them apart.
Sleep, like fate, is a tricky jade to defy. It was Perinaud's voice,
level and stolid, but with a faint note of sarcasm, which aroused him.
"Monsieur may now sleep in comfort if he will," suggested the sergeant.
"There is little fear from surprise with such a moon."
Aylmer blinked. The round white orb was sending its rays in full flood
through the broad fans of the palm leaves overhead. It tinged the cork
trees with silver radiance; it produced an effect of grateful coolness
in the cinder-dry thickets and powdery earth. It was as if dew had
fallen, a dew of light. And the shadows of the gorge were of a velvet
blackness in contrast.
Aylmer looked carefully round. It was as Perinaud said. The forest
spaces were clear; one could trace them almost as distinctly as in the
daylight. No enemy could steal upon them unseen.
And so it was with a little sigh of content that he laid his head back
upon his saddle, pulled his cloak more disposedly about him, and
prepared to give nature freely what during the past three hours she had
stolen.
With the usual result. Sleep deserted him. He closed his eyes
resolutely; he breathed with exact precision; he even counted an
imaginary flock of sheep as they passed sedately between two
supposititious hurdles. He remained broadly awake, his eyes rebelling
against their imprisonment till at last he gave up trying to coerce
them. He searched his pocket, found tobacco and a pipe, and smoked. His
brain became suddenly active.
He reviewed the circumstances of the last few days. He debated his
position, appraised his progress. It was typical of his temperament
equability that he did this; it was part of the dogged resolution with
which he approached the vital problems of his career. He knew that for
the first time he had encountered passion, and that it had mastered him.
He had seen Claire Van Arlen perhaps half a dozen times before he
realized this, and realized it, too, with a certain ingenuous wonder at
the thing which had such power over him. But he had made no attempt to
combat it. He knew that this girl had become for him the pivot of
existence. As matters had gone, he had scarcely had the opportunity for
introspection. Passion had gripped him, and now passion's authority had
gone beyond the limits of question. He set his face unswervingly towards
his goal. The days of debating an alternative path had gone by.
He sighed. Up the path he had chosen had he made any progress? Yes, one
great step had been taken. She knew the goal he sought; he had made it
absolutely plain. He had read repulse in her eyes as she first divined
it. He had read it again, but tinged with a thrill of curiosity, at his
second allusion. The third time? There he was beaten. She had seemed to
fling him a sort of encouragement. Why? What was her intention here? She
had not softened towards him; instinct told him that. And yet--and yet.
He sighed again. There were many barriers in this road he had set out
upon--barriers which must be levelled one by one. Dislike, suspicion,
but not, thank God, apathy. No--from the first he had interested
her--from the moment of their first meeting he had been forced into
prominence in her regard.
A hand fell lightly upon his shoulder, bringing him back with a start
from the possibilities of romance to the facts of an everyday African
world. The most engrossing of these, for the moment, was Daoud's face.
There was a sense of importance in the Moor's aspect, the importance of
discovery. Aylmer realized this at once.
"You have discovered--what?" he asked sharply.
Daoud waved his hand with a magnificent and comprehensive gesture.
"All, Sidi," he answered. "The two we seek, with the child, are in an
encampment of Berber tribesmen within an hour's march."
Aylmer scrambled to his feet. He made but little noise as he did so, but
there was a corresponding movement in the half-dozen recumbent figures
beside him. Perinaud, raising himself upon his elbow, looked
thoughtfully at the scout.
"Well, my friend?" he asked amiably. "Your researches take us where?"
"Five miles further up the ravine," said Daoud. "It is more than a camp.
A village of some importance. Our friend who escaped from the broom
thicket has not arrived there. There was no alertness, no watch kept. By
the time I left snores were echoing from practically every tent and
dwelling of mud. We are not expected."
Perinaud nodded.
"_Bien._ The moment of attack then--?"
"Is now, Sidi. By the time we reach it the dawn will have come."
Aylmer fumbled for his watch. It was true. The hour was between four and
five. The wan light of the false morning was, indeed, faintly paling the
east. He looked at Perinaud.
The sergeant nodded.
"Short rest for the horses, Monsieur," he said, "but that we cannot
help. The time is short enough, as it is."
He motioned the waiting figures of the Goumiers into activity. The
sentries were recalled. A tiny fire was kindled, and coffee made with
incredible quickness while the saddles were being flung upon the horses'
backs.
Aylmer gulped his portion gratefully, for the dew-brimmed air was chill.
But within twenty minutes of Daoud's return, the half score of horsemen
were following him in single file along the river bank.
Progress was slow, the path imperceptible or devious. The light of
morning was no longer yellow, but alive with the rose red of sunrise as
they halted, at a gesture from their leader, and gazed between the
trunks of a grove of palms.
White against the green of crops a dozen houses lined the edge of an
oval space, which some winter floods of bygone years had hewn deep in
the surrounding alluvial soil. The forest thickets grew up to the fringe
of the arable land, divided from it by hedges of cactus. Between the
house and the river was an encampment of brown, dilapidated tents. The
land immediately in front of these was bare and open, as if some
ceaseless traffic had beaten all vegetation down. On an eminence stood a
lime-washed, dome-topped shrine.
"If possible, we should surround and examine each house or tent in
silence, and one by one," suggested Daoud.
"A matter of hours," said Perinaud. "No, let our men form rank where
their rifles command each doorway, and I will see to the summoning of
the inhabitants. For the moment, softly. Keep your horses off the rock,
but avoid the thickest of the jungle. Show judgment, my children, show
judgment!"
He finished with a little oath of surprise. For almost at his horse's
feet, or, at the furthest, a bare five yards from him, a man had
suddenly risen from a thicket--a man clad in a dirty _djelab_, who
viewed the sitting horsemen with every sign of amazement and sudden
panic. In another moment, and with a shrill cry, he had darted through
the palm grove and was flying across the crop lands, straight towards
the line of silent tents.
Perinaud struck spurs into his stallion.
"Take him!" he cried, and his voice had a queer note of exasperation as
he tried to make it vehement and yet hold it below the level of a shout.
He led the charge which raced across the herbage. Aylmer, carried away
by the sudden infection of repressed excitement, thundered at his side.
The dark spot of brown made by the _djelab_ of the fugitive seemed, for
the moment, to comprehend all that was vital in existence. He must not
reach the tents, he must not give the alarm. Although he was a matter of
fifty yards or more behind his quarry, owing to the start the runner had
gained by the intervening palms, Aylmer began to lean forward in the
saddle, to thrust out his arm, feel a tenseness, a twitching in his
fingers as if he already grasped the hood of the garment which rose and
fell with its owner's every stride.
A yell burst from Perinaud's lips--a yell of rage and warning!
"A trap!" he cried. "The silos! The silos! Pull wide! Pull wide!"
Aylmer heard a crash. A Goumier on his right seemed to have been
swallowed with his horse into the very earth. He gripped his own rein,
moved by a sudden and imperfectly comprehended pulse of fear, and
wrenched at his bridle. His horse fought under the strain, made a
half-hearted attempt to halt, and was carried by mere impetus another
fifty yards. There came another crash; another Goumier's horse
disappeared, while the man, spilled from the saddle, rolled over a dozen
times across the hardened flat. Perinaud's stallion, its eyes wild, its
nostrils round with terror, spread out its legs and skated forward to
the very brink of--what?
A huge round hole, beneath which was darkness only. Aylmer saw it, saw
that he himself must reach it, and comprehended as in a flash the
sergeant's cry.
The silos!
Even his narrow experience of things Moroquin had taught him what the
word meant. They were the underground grain cellars of the villagers,
sunk in the earth, unfenced, often coverless, and, as now, open traps
for the unwary. The thought and the flash of apprehension which it
kindled added force to the grip with which he tore at the reins.
Too late!
His realization of the hideous fall which was inevitable was swift as a
lightning flash, and yet at the same time the thing itself seemed to
arrive with a horrible deliberation. His thews were tense, his knees
clutched the saddle. And then, and the feeling was as if he watched for
the culmination of a well-understood and expected movement of familiar
machinery--his horse's feet slid grudgingly over the edge. The black
hole in the earth rose instantly--rose and sucked him down. There was a
shock and then night fell--a night impenetrable.