"The insurrection would have been suppressed of course, but think of the
bloodshed, the carnage! On the other hand----"
She saw what was coming, and with difficulty she walked steadily.
"On the other hand, if _I_ go into Cairo, as I have promised to do--as I
am expected to do--there can be no such result. The moment I arrive I
shall be arrested, and the moment I am arrested I shall be identified
and handed over to the military authorities to be tried for my offences
as a soldier. There will be no religious significance in my punishment,
therefore there will be no fanatical frenzy provoked by it, and
consequently there can be no bloodshed. Don't you see that, Helena?"
She could not answer; she felt sick and faint. After a moment he went
on in the same eager, enthusiastic voice--
"But that's not all. There is something better than that."
"Better--do you say better?"
"Something that comes closer to us at all events. Do you believe in
omens, Helena? That some mystic sense tells us things of which we have
no proof, no evidence?"
She bent her head without raising her eyes from the sand.
"Well, I have a sense of some treachery going on in Cairo that Ishmael
knows nothing about, and I believe it was just this treachery which led
to the idea of his going there at all."
She looked up into his face, and thinking he read her thought, he said
quickly--
"Oh, I know--I've heard about the letters of the Ulema--that those
suggestions of assassination and so forth were signed by the simple old
Chancellor of El Azhar. But isn't it possible that a subtler spirit
inspired them? ... Helena?"
"Yes," she faltered.
"Do you remember that one day in the Citadel I said it was not really
Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, and that there was somebody in Egypt
now who was doing what the High Priest of the Jews did in Palestine two
thousand years ago?"
"The Grand Cadi?"
"Yes! Something tells me that that subtle old scoundrel is playing a
double sword game--with the Ulema and with the Government--and that his
object is not only to destroy Ishmael, but, by awakening the ancient
religious terror, to ruin England as well--tempt her to ruin her
prestige, at all events."
They had reached the margin of the river, and he stopped.
"Well?" she faltered again.
"Well, I am a British soldier still, Helena, even though I am a
disgraced one, and I want to ... I want to save the good name of my
country."
She could not speak--she felt as if she would choke.
"I want to save the good name of the Consul-General also. He is my
father, and though he no longer thinks of me as his son, I want to save
him from ... from himself."
"I can do it too," he added eagerly. "At this moment I am perhaps the
only man who can. I am nobody now--only a runaway and a deserter--but I
can cross the line of fire and so give warning."
"But, Gordon, don't you see----"
"Oh, I know what you are going to say, Helena--I must die for it. Yes!
Nobody wants to do that, if he can help it, but I can't! Listen!"
She raised her eyes to his--they seemed to be ablaze with a kind of
frenzy.
"Death was the penalty of what I did in Cairo, and if I did not stay
there to be court-martialled and condemned, was it because I wanted to
save my life? No; I thought there was nothing left in my life that made
it worth saving. It was because I wanted to give it in some better
cause. Something told me I should, and when I came to Khartoum I didn't
know what fate was before me, or what I had to do, but I know now.
_This_ is what I have to do, Helena--to go back to Cairo instead of
Ishmael, and so save England and Egypt and my father and these poor
Moslem people, and prevent a world of bloodshed."
Then Helena, who in her nervousness had been scraping her feet on the
sand, said in a halting, trembling voice--
"Was this what you wanted to say to me, Gordon?"
"Yes, but now I want you to say something to me."
"What is that?" she asked, trembling.
"_To tell me to go._"
It was like a blow. She felt as if she would fall.
"I cannot go unless you send me, Helena--not as things stand
now--leaving you here--under these conditions--in a place like
this--alone. Therefore tell me to go, Helena."
Tears sprang to her eyes. She thought of all the hopes she had so
lately cherished, all the dreams of the day before of love and a new
life among quite different scenes--sweet scenes full of the smell of
new-cut grass, the rustling of trees, the swish of the scythe, the songs
of birds, and the ringing of church bells, instead of this empty and
arid wilderness--and then of the ruin, the utter wreck and ruin, that
everything was falling to.
"Tell me to go, Helena--tell me," he repeated.
It was crushing. She could not bear it.
"I cannot," she said. "Don't ask me to do such a thing. Just when we
were going away, too ... expecting to escape from all this miserable
tangle and to be happy at last----"
"But should we be happy, Helena? Say we escaped to Europe, America,
Australia, anywhere far enough away, and what I speak of were to come to
pass, should we be happy--should we?"
"We should be together at all events, and we should be able to love each
other----"
"But could we love each other with the memory of all that misery--the
misery we might have prevented--left here behind us?"
"At least we should be alive and safe and well."
"Should we be well if our whole life became abominable to us, Helena?
... On the other hand----"
"On the other hand, you want us to part--never to see each other again."
"It's hard--I know it's hard--but isn't that better than to become
odious in each other's eyes?"
A cruel mixture of anger and sorrow and despair took possession of her,
and, choking with emotion, she said--
"I have nobody but you now, yet you want me to tear my heart out--to
sacrifice the love that is my only happiness, my only refuge.... Oh, I
cannot do it! You are asking me to send you into the jaws of death
itself--that's it--the very jaws of death itself--and I cannot do it. I
tell you I cannot, I cannot! There is no woman in the world who could."
There was silence for a moment after this vehement cry; then in a low
tone he said--
"Every soldier's wife does as much when she sends her husband into
battle, Helena."
"Ah!"
She caught her breath as if a hand from heaven had smitten her.
"Am I not going into battle now? And aren't you a soldier's daughter?"
There was another moment of silence in which he looked out on the
sparkling waters of the Blue Nile and she gazed through clouded eyes on
the sluggish waves of the White.
Something had suddenly begun to rise in her throat. This was the real
Gordon, the hero who had won battles, the soldier who had faced death
before, and she had never known him until now!
A whirlwind of sensation and emotion seemed to race through her soul and
body. She felt hot, she felt cold, she felt ashamed, and then all at
once she felt as if she were being lifted out of herself by the spirit
of the man beside her. At length she said, trying to speak calmly--
"You are right, quite right; you are always right, Gordon. If you feel
like that about going into Cairo you must go. It is your duty. You
have received your orders."
"Helena!" he cried, in a burst of joy.
"You mustn't think about me, though. I'm sorry for what I said a while
ago, but I'm better now. I have always thought that if the time ever
came to me to see my dearest go into battle, I should not allow myself
to be afraid."
"I was sure of you, Helena, quite sure."
"This doesn't look like going into battle, perhaps, but it may be
something still better--going to save life, to prevent bloodshed."
"Yes, yes!" he said; and struggling to control herself, Helena
continued--
"You mustn't think about leaving me here, either. Whatever happens in
this place, I shall always remember that you love me, so ... so nothing
else will matter."
"Nothing--nothing!"
"And though it may be hard to think that you have gone to your death,
and that I ... that in a sense I have been the cause of it----"
"But you haven't, Helena! Your hand may have penned that letter, but a
higher Power directed it."
She looked at him with shining eyes, and answered in a firmer voice and
with a proud lift of her beautiful head--
"I don't know about that, Gordon. I only know that you want to give
your life in a great cause. And though they have degraded you and
driven you out and hunted you down like a dog, you are going to die like
a man and an Englishman."
"And you tell me to do it, Helena?"
"Yes, for I'm a soldier's daughter, and in my heart I'm a soldier's wife
as well, and I shouldn't be worthy to be either if I didn't tell you to
do your duty, whatever the consequences to me."
"My brave girl!" he cried, clutching at her hand.
Then they began to walk back.
As they walked they encouraged each other.
"We are on the right road now, Helena."
"Yes, we are on the right road now, Gordon."
"We are doing better than running away."
"Yes, we are doing better than running away."
"The train leaves Khartoum this evening, and I suppose they want to say
farewell to me in the mosque at sunset.... You'll be strong to the last
and not break down when the time comes for me to go?"
"No, I'll not break down ... when the time comes for you to go."
But for all her brave show of courage, her eyes were filling fast and
the tears were threatening to fall.
"Better leave me now," she whispered. "Let me go back alone."
He was not sorry to let her go ahead, for at sight of her emotion his
own was mastering him.
"Will she keep up to the end?" he asked himself.
*CHAPTER XXVI*
As the hours of the day passed on, Helena became painfully aware that
her courage was ebbing away.
Unconsciously Ishmael was adding to her torture. Soon after the midday
meal he called on her to write to his dictation a letter which Gordon
was to take into Cairo...
"One more letter, O Rani, only one, before our friend and brother leaves
us."
It was to the Ulema, telling them of the change in his plans and begging
them to be good to Gordon.
"Trust him and love him. Receive him as you would receive me, and
believe that all he does and says is according to my wish and word."
Helena had to write this letter. It was like writing Gordon's
death-warrant.
Later in the day, seeing her idle, nibbling the top of the reed pen
which she held in her trembling fingers, Ishmael called for the kufiah.
"Where is the kufiah, O Rani--the kufiah that was to disguise the
messenger of God from his enemies?"
And when Helena, in an effort to escape from that further torture,
protested that in Gordon's case a new kufiah was not essential, because
he wore the costume of a Bedouin already, Ishmael replied--
"But the kufiah he wears now is white, and every official in Khartoum
has seen it. Therefore another is necessary, and let it be of another
colour."
At that, with fiendish alacrity, the Arab woman ran off for a strip of
red silken wool, and Helena had to shape and stitch it.
It was like stitching Gordon's shroud.
The day seemed to fly on the wings of an eagle, the sun began to sink,
the shadows to lengthen on the desert sand, and the time to approach for
the great ceremony of the leave-taking in the mosque. Helena was for
staying at home, but Ishmael would not hear of it.
"Nay, my Rani," he said. "In the courtyard after prayers we must say
farewell to Omar, and you must clothe him in the new kufiah that is to
hide him from his foes. Did you not promise to do as much for me? And
shall it be said that you grudge the same honour to my friend and
brother?"
Half-an-hour afterwards, Ishmael having gone off hand in hand with
Gordon, and old Mahmud and Zenoba and Ayesha and the two black servants
having followed him, Helena put on a veil for the first time since
coming to Khartoum, and made her way to the mosque.
The streets of the town, as she passed through them, seemed to be
charged with an atmosphere of excitement that was little short of
frenzy; but the courtyard, when she had crossed the threshold, was like
the scene of some wild phantasmagoria.
A crowd of men and women, squatting about the walls of the open space,
were strumming on native drums, playing on native pipes, and uttering
the weird, monotonous ululation that is the expression of the Soudanese
soul in its hours of joy.
A moment later Helena was in the gallery, the people had made way for
her, and she was sitting as before by the Arab woman and the child.
Overhead was a brazen, blood-red Southern sky; below were a thousand men
on crimson carpets, some in silks, some in rags, all moving and moaning
like tumultuous waves in a cavern of the sea.
[Illustration: Helena was in the gallery]
The Reader, in the middle of the mosque, was chanting the Koran, the
muezzin in the minaret was calling to prayers, the men on the floor were
uttering their many-throated responses, and the very walls of the mosque
itself seemed to be vibrating with religious fervour.
A moment after Helena had taken her seat Ishmael entered, followed by
Gordon, and the people gathered round them to kiss their hands and
garments. Helena felt her head reel, she wanted to cry out, and it was
with difficulty she controlled herself.
Then the Reader stood up in his desk and recited an invocation, and the
people repeated it after him.
"God is Most Great!"
"God is Most Great!"
"There is no god but God! ...
"Mohammed is His Prophet! ...
"Listen to the preacher! ...
"Amen!"
"Amen!"
After that Ishmael rose from his knees before the Kibleh, took the
wooden sword at the foot of the pulpit, ascended to the topmost step,
and, after a preliminary prayer, began to preach.
Never had Helena seen him so eager and excited, and every passage of his
sermon seemed to increase both his own ecstasy and the emotion of his
hearers.
Helena hardly heard his words, so far away were her thoughts and so
steadfastly were her eyes fixed on the other figure in front of the
Kibleh, but a general sense of their import was beating on her brain as
on a drum.
All religions began in poverty and ended in corruption.
It had been so with Islam, which began with the breaking of idols and
went on to the worship of wealth, the quest of power, the lust of
conquest--Caliphs seeking to establish their claim not by election and
the choice of God but by theft and murder.
It had been so with Christianity, which began in meekness and humility
and went on to pride and persecution--Holy Fathers exchanging their
cells for palaces and their poverty for pomp, forgetting the principle
of their great Master, whose only place in their midst was in pictured
windows, on vaporous clouds, blessing with outstretched arms a Church
which favoured everything he fought against and a world which practised
everything he condemned.
"What is the result, O my brothers? War, wealth, luxury, sensuality,
slavery, robbery, injustice, and oppression!
"Listen to the word of the Holy Koran: 'And Pharaoh made proclamation
among his people, saying, Is not this Kingdom of Egypt mine and the
rivers thereof?'
"But not in Egypt only, nor alone under the Government of the King who
lives across the seas, but all the world over, wheresoever human empires
are founded, wheresoever men claim the earth and the fruits of the earth
and the treasures that lie in the bowels of the earth--impoverishing the
children of men to obtain them, or destroying their souls that they may
deck and delight their bodies--there the Pharaohs of this world are
saying, 'Is not this Kingdom of Egypt mine and the rivers thereof?'
"But the earth and the fruits of the earth and the treasures of the
earth are God's, my brothers, and He is coming to reclaim them, and to
right the wrongs of the oppressed, to raise up the downtrodden, and to
comfort the broken-hearted."
The mosque seemed to rock with the shouts which followed these words,
and as soon as the cries of the people had subsided, the voice of
Ishmael, now louder and more tremulous than before, rang through its
vaults again.
"Deep in the heart of man, my brothers, is the expectation of a day when
the Almighty will send His Messenger to purify and pacify the world and
to banish intolerance and wrong. The Jews look for the Messiah, the
Christians for the divine man of Judaea, and we that are Moslems for the
Mahdi and the Christ.
"In all climes and ages, amid all sorrows and sufferings, sunk in the
depths of ignorance, sold into slavery, the poorest of the poor, the
most miserable among the most miserable of the world, humanity has yet
cherished that great expectation. Real as life, real as death, real as
wells of water in a desert land to man on his earthly pilgrimage is the
hope of a Deliverer from oppression and injustice--and who shall say it
is vain and false? It is true, my brothers, true as the sky rolling
overhead. Our Deliverer is coming! He is coming soon! He is coming
now!"
Ishmael's tremulous voice had by this time broken into hysterical sobs,
and the responses of his hearers had risen to delirious cries.
More of the same kind followed which Helena did not hear, but suddenly
she was awakened to full consciousness of what was going on about her by
hearing Ishmael speak of Gordon and the people answering him with
rapturous shouts.
"He is not of our race, yet no doubt enters into our hearts of his
fidelity."
"El Hamdullillah!"
"He is not of our faith, yet he will be true to God and His people."
"Allah! Allah!"
"For us he has left his home, his country, and his kindred."
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"For us he is going into the place of danger."
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"What says the Lord in the Holy Koran?--'They therefore who had left
their country and suffered for My sake I will surely bring them into
gardens watered by rivers--a reward of God.'"
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"The Lord bless the white man to whom the black man is a brother! Bless
him in the morning splendour! Bless him in the still of night! Bless
him with children--the eye of the heart of man! Bless him with the love
of woman--the joy and the crown of life!"
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"And may the Lord of majesty and might who has hitherto covered his head
in battle protect and preserve him now!"
At this last word the whole company of men on the floor below--men in
silks and men in rags--rose to their feet, as if they had been one being
animated by one heart, and raising their arms to heaven, cried--
"Allah! Allah! Allah! Allah!"
Helena felt as if some one had taken her by the throat. To see these
poor, emotional Eastern children, with their brown and black faces,
streaming with tears and full of love for Gordon, shouting down God's
blessing upon him, was stifling her.
It was like singing his dirge before he was dead.
During the next few minutes Helena was vaguely aware that Ishmael had
come down from the pulpit; that the Reader was reciting prayers again;
that the men on the crimson carpets were bowing, kneeling, prostrating
themselves and putting their foreheads to the floor; and finally that
the whole congregation was rising and surging out of the mosque.
When she came to herself once more, somebody by her side--it was
Zenoba--was touching her shoulder and saying--
"The Master is in the Courtyard and he is calling for you--come!"
The scene outside was even more tumultuous. Instead of the steady
solemnity of the service within the mosque there were the tum-tumming of
the drums, the screeling of the pipes, and the lu-luing of the women.
The great enclosure was densely crowded, but a space had been cleared in
the centre of the courtyard, where the Ulema of Khartoum, in their grey
farageeyahs, were ranged in a wide half-circle. In the mouth of this
half-circle Gordon was standing in his Bedouin dress with Ishmael by his
side.
Silence was called, and then Ishmael gave Gordon his last instructions
and spoke his last words of farewell.
"Tell our brothers, the Ulema of Cairo," he said, "that we are following
close behind you, and when the time comes to enter the city we shall be
lying somewhere outside their walls. Let them therefore put a light on
their topmost height--on the minaret of the mosque of Mohammed
Ali--after the call to prayers at midnight--and we shall take that as a
sign that the Light of the World is with you, that the Expected One has
appeared, and that we may enter in peace, injuring no man, being injured
by none, without malice towards any, and with charity to all."
Then seeing Helena as she came out of the mosque, veiled and with her
head down, he called on her to come forward.
"Now do as you have always designed and intended," he said. "Cover our
friend and forerunner with the kufiah you have made for him, that until
his work is done and the time has come to reveal himself, he may, like
the angel of the Lord, be invisible to his foes."
What happened after that Helena never quite knew--only that a way had
been made for her through the throng of wild-eyed people and that she
was standing by Gordon's side.
Down to that instant she had intended to bear herself bravely for
Gordon's sake if not for her own, but now a hundred cruel memories came
in a flood to sap away her strength--memories of the beautiful moments
of their love, of the little passages of their life together that had
been so tender and so sweet. In vain she tried to recover the spirit
with which he had inspired her in the morning, to think how much better
it was that he should die gloriously than live in disgrace, to feel the
justice, the necessity, the inevitableness of what he was going to do.
It was impossible. She could think of nothing but that she was seeing
Gordon for the last time, that he was leaving her behind him, among
these Allah-intoxicated Arabs, that he was going away, not into
battle--with its chance of victory and its hope of life--but to death,
certain death, perhaps shameful death, and that, say what he would about
Fate and Destiny or the will of God, she herself was sending him to his
doom.
She felt that the tears were running down her cheeks under her thin
white veil, and that Gordon must see them, but she could not keep them
back; and though she had promised not to break down, she knew that at
that last moment, in the face of the death that was about to separate
them, the dauntless heroine of the morning was nothing better than a
poor, weak, heart-broken woman.
Meantime the drums and the pipes and the lu-luing had begun again, and
she was conscious that under the semi-savage din Gordon was speaking to
her and comforting her.
"Keep up! Be brave! Nobody knows what may happen. I'll write. You
shall hear from me again."
He had taken off the white kufiah which he had hitherto worn, and she
could see his face. It was calm--the calmest face in all that vast
assembly.
The sight of his face strengthened her, and suddenly a new element
entered into the half-barbaric scene--an element that was half human and
half divine. These poor, half-civilised people thought Gordon was going
to risk his life for them; but he was going to die--deliberately to die
for them--to save them from themselves, from the consequences of their
fanaticism, the panic of their rulers, and the fruits of the age-long
hatred that had separated the black man from the white.
Helena felt her bosom heave, her nerves twitch, her fingers dig trenches
in her palms, and her thoughts fly up to scenes of sacrifice which men
talk of with bated breath.
"If he can do it, why can't I?" she asked herself, and taking the red
kufiah, which the Arab woman was thrusting into her hands, with a great
effort she put it on Gordon--over his head and under his chin and across
his shoulders and about his waist.
It was like clothing him for the grave.
Every eye had been on her, and when her work was done, Ishmael, who was
now weeping audibly, demanded silence and called on the Ulema to recite
the first Surah--
"Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures----"
When the weird chanting had come to an end the hoarse voices of the
people broke afresh into loud shouts of "Allah! Allah! El
Hamdullillah!"
In the midst of the wild maelstrom of religious frenzy which
followed--the tum-tumming of the drums, the screeling of the pipes, and
the ululation of the women--Helena felt her hand grasped, and heard
Gordon speaking to her again.
"Don't faint! Don't be afraid! Don't break down at the last moment."
"I'm not afraid," she answered, but whether with her voice or only with
her lips she never knew.
Still the drums, the pipes, the zaghareet, and the delirious cries of
"Allah!" And to show Gordon that she felt no fear, that she was not
going to faint or to break down, Helena also, in the fierce tension of
the moment, cried--
"Allah! El Hamdullillah!"
"That's right! That's brave! God bless you!" whispered the voice by
her side. And again a moment later--
"God bless and protect you!"
After that she heard no more. She saw the broad gate of the Courtyard
thrown open--she saw a long streak of blood-red sand outside--she saw
Gordon turn away from her--she saw Ishmael embrace and kiss him--she saw
the surging mass of hot and streaming black and brown faces close about
him--and then a loud wind seemed to roar in her ears, the earth seemed
to give way under her feet, the brazen sky seemed to reel about her
head, and again she felt as if she were falling, falling, falling into a
bottomless abyss.
When she recovered consciousness the half-barbaric scene was over, and
she was being carried into the silence of her own room in the arms of
Ishmael, who with many words of tender endearment was laying her gently
on her bed.
*CHAPTER XXVII*
That day, under the two crackling flags, the Crescent and the Union
Jack, Lady Mannering had given a party in the garden of the Palace of
the Sirdar.
The physiognomy of the garden had changed since "the martyr of the
Soudan" walked in it. Where scraggy mimosa bushes and long camel
grasses had spurted up through patches of sand and blotches of baking
earth there were the pleasant lawns, the sycamores, the date-trees, and
the blue streams of running water. And where the solitary soldier, with
his daily whitening head, had paced to and fro, his face to the ground,
smoking innumerable cigarettes, there were a little group of officers of
the military administration, with their charming wives and daughters, a
Coptic priest, a Greek priest, a genial old Protestant clergyman, and a
number of European visitors, chiefly English girls, wearing the lightest
of white summer costumes, and laughing and chattering like birds.
In pith helmets and straw hats, Lady Mannering's guests strolled about
in the sunshine or drank tea at tables that were set under the cool
shadow of spreading trees, while, at a little distance, the band of a
black regiment, the Tenth Soudanese (sons and grandsons of the very men
who in the grey dawn of a memorable morning had rushed in a wild horde
into those very grounds for their orgy of British blood), played
selections from the latest comic operas of London and New York.
The talk was the same all over the gardens--of the new Mahdi and his
doings.
"Married to an Indian Princess, you say!"
"Oh yes! Quite an emancipated person, too! A sort of thirty-second
cousin of the Rani of Jhansi. It seems she was educated by an English
governess, kicked over the traces, became a sort of semi-religious
suffragette, and followed her holy man to Egypt and the Soudan."
"How very droll! It is _too_ amusing!"
The Sirdar, who had gone indoors some time before, returned to the
garden dressed for a journey.
"Going away, your Excellency?"
"Yes, for a few weeks--to the lower Nile."
His ruddy, good-natured face was less bright than usual, and his manner
was noticeably less buoyant. A few of his principal officials gathered
about him, and he questioned them one by one.
"Any fresh news, Colonel?" he said, addressing the Governor of the city.
"No, sir. A sort of sing-song to-day in honour of the Bedouin
Sheikh--that's all I hear about."
But the Financial Secretary spoke of further difficulties in the
gathering of taxes--the land tax, the animal tax, and the tax on the
date-trees not having yet come in--and then the Inspector-General
repeated an opinion he had previously expressed, that everything gave
evidence of a projected pilgrimage, presumably in a northerly direction
and almost certainly to Cairo.
The Governor of the city corroborated this, and added that his Zabit,
his police officer, had said that Ishmael Ameer, on passing to the
mosque that day, had been saluted in the streets by a screaming
multitude as the "Messenger" and the "Anointed One."
"It's just as I say," said the Inspector-General. "These holy men
develop by degrees. This one will hoist his flag as soon as he finds
himself strong enough--unless we stop him before he goes further--and
the Soudan is lost to civilisation."
"Well, we'll see what Nuneham says," said the Sirdar, and at that moment
his Secretary came to say that the launch was ready at the boat-landing
to take him across the river to the train.
The Sirdar said good-bye to his guests, to his officers, and to his
wife, and as he left the garden of the palace the Soudanese band, sons
of the Mahdi's men, played the number which goes to the words--
"They never proceed to follow that light,
But always follow me."
Half-an-hour afterwards, while the Sirdar's black body-guard were ranged
up on the platform of the railway station, and his black servant was
packing his luggage into his compartment, the Governor-General was
standing by the door of the carriage, with his Aide-de-camp, giving his
last instructions to his General Secretary.
"Telegraph to the Consul-General and say ... but please make a note of
it."
"Yes, sir," said the Secretary, taking out his pocketbook and preparing
to write.
"Think it best to go down myself to deal personally with matter of
suspected mutiny in native army. Must admit increasing gravity of
situation. Man here is undoubtedly acquiring name and influence of
Mahdi, so time has come to consider carefully what we ought to do.
Signs of intended pilgrimage, probably in northerly direction, enormous
numbers of camels, horses, and donkeys having been gathered up from
various parts of country and immense quantities of food-stuffs being
bought for desert journey. Am leaving to-night, and hope to arrive in
four days."
"Four days," repeated the Secretary, as he came to an end.
At that moment a tall man in the costume of a Bedouin walked slowly up
the platform. His head and most of his face were closely covered by the
loose woollen shawl which the sons of the desert wear, leaving only his
eyes, his nose, and part of his mouth visible. As he passed the Sirdar,
he looked sharply at him; then, pushing forward with long strides until
he came to the third-class compartments, he stepped into the first of
them, which was full of coloured people, strident with high-pitched
voices and pungent with Eastern odours.
"Who was that?" asked the Sirdar.
"I don't know, sir," replied the Secretary. "I thought at first it was
their Bedouin Sheikh, but I see I was mistaken."
Then came the whistle of the locomotive, and its slow, rhythmic,
volcanic throb. The guard saluted, and the Sirdar got into his
carriage.
"Well, good-bye, Graham! Don't forget the telegram."
"I'll send it at once.... In cypher, sir?"
"In cypher certainly."
At the next moment the Sirdar and Gordon Lord, travelling in the same
train, were on their way to Cairo.