"We have left Khartoum and are now on the desert. The day had not yet
dawned when we were awakened by a tattoo of pipes and native
drums--surely the weirdest sound in the darkness that ever fell on
mortal ear, creeping into the pores and getting under the very skin.
Then came a din, a roar, a clamour--the grunting and gurgling and
braying of five thousand animals and as much shouting and bellowing of
human tongues as went to the building of the tower of Babel.
"The sun was rising, and there was a golden belt of cloud in the Eastern
sky by the time we were ready to go. They had brought a litter on a
dromedary for me, and I was almost the last to start. It was hard to
part from the child, for though her sweet innocence had given me many a
stab and I felt sometimes as if she had been created to torture me, I
had grown to love her, and I think she loved me. She stood as we rode
away, with a big tear ready to drop on to her golden cheek and looked
after me with her gazelle-like eyes. Sweet little Ayesha, creature of
the air and the desert, I shall see her no more!
"Crossing the Mahdi's open-air mosque at Omdurman, where we said morning
prayers, we set our faces northward over the wild halfa grass and clumps
of mimosa scrub, and as soon as we were out in the open desert with its
vast sky I saw how gigantic was our caravan. The great mass of men and
animals seemed to stretch for miles across the yellow sand, and looked
like an enormous tortoise creeping slowly along.
"We camped at sunset in the Wadi Bishara, the signal for the bivouac
being the blowing of a great elephant-horn which had a thrilling effect
in that lonesome place. But more thrilling still was the effect of
evening prayers, which began as soon as the camels and horses and
donkeys had been unsaddled, and their gruntings and brayings and
gurglings, as well as the various noises of humanity, had ceased.
"The afterglow was flaming along the flat sand, giving its yellow the
look of bronze, when all knelt with their faces to the East--Ishmael in
front with sixty or seventy rows of men behind him. It was really very
moving and stately to see, and made me understand what was meant by
somebody who said he could never look upon Mohammedans at prayers, and
think of the millions of hearts which at the same hour were sending
their great chorus of praise to God, without wishing to be a Moslem. I
did not wish to be that, but with the odious Arab woman always watching
me, I found myself fingering my rosary and pretending to be a good
Muslemah, though in reality I was repeating the Lord's Prayer.
"It is dark night now, the fires at which the people baked their durah
and cooked their asida are dying down, and half the camp is already
asleep in this huge wild wilderness, under its big white stars.
"I must try to sleep too, so good-night, dearest, and God bless you! I
don't know what is to be the end of all this, or where I am to dispatch
my letter, or when you are to receive it, but I am sure you are alive
and listening to me--and what should I do if I could not talk to you?
HELENA."
*CHAPTER VI*
I
"SOUDAN DESERT (_somewhere_).
"It is ten days, my dear Gordon, since I wrote my last letter, and there
has never been an hour between when I dared pretend to this abomination
of Egypt (she is now snoring on the angerib by my side, sweetheart) that
I must while away an hour by writing in my 'Journal.'
"Such a time! Boil and bubble, toil and trouble! Every morning before
daybreak the wild peal of the elephant-horn, then the whole camp at
prayers with the rising sun in our faces, then the striking of tents and
the ruckling, roaring, gurgling and grunting of camels which resembles
nothing so much as a styful of pigs _in extremis_; then twelve hours of
trudging through a forlorn and lifeless solitude with only a rest for
the midday meal; then the elephant-horn again and evening prayers, with
the savage sun behind us, and then settling down to sleep in some blank
and numb and soundless wilderness--such is our daily story.
"My goodness, Ishmael is a wonderful person! But all the same the
'divine' atmosphere that is gathering about him is positively
frightening. I suspect Black Zogal of being the author and 'only
begetter' of a good deal of this idolatry. He gallops on a horse in
front of us, crying, 'There is no god but God,' and 'The Messenger of
God is coming,' with the result that crowds of people are waiting for
Ishmael at every village, with their houses swept, their straw mats laid
down, and their carpets spread on the divans, all eager to entertain
him, to open their secret granaries to feed his followers, or at least
to kiss the hem of his caftan.
"Every day our numbers increase, and we go off from the greater towns to
the beating of copper war-drums, the blowing of antelope horns, and
sometimes to the cracking of rifles. It is all very crude in its
half-savage magnificence, but it is almost terrifying, too, and the
sight of this emotional creature, so liable to spasms of religious
ecstasy, riding on his milk-white camel through these fiercely fanatical
people like a god, makes one tremble to think of the time that will
surely come when they find out, and _he_ finds out, that after all he is
nothing but a man.
"What sights, what scenes! The other day there was a fearful
sand-storm, in which a fierce cloud came sweeping out of the horizon,
big with flame and wrath, and fell on us like a mountain of hell. As
long as it lasted the people lay flat on the sand or crouched under
their kneeling camels, and when it was over they rose in the dead
blankness with the red sand on their faces and sent up, as with one
voice, a cry of lamentation and despair. But Ishmael only smiled and
said, 'Let us thank God for this day, O my brothers,' and when the
people asked him why, he answered, 'Because we can never know anything
so bad again.'
"That simple word set every face shining, and as soon as we reached the
next village--Black Zogal as usual having gone before us--lo, we heard a
story of how Ishmael had commanded a sand-storm to pass over our heads
without touching us--and it had!
"Another day we had stifling heat, in which the glare of the sand made
our eyes to ache and the air to burn like the breath of a furnace. The
water in the water-bottles became so hot that we dared not pour it on to
the back of our hands, and even some of the camels dropped dead under
the blazing eye of the sun.
"And when at length the sun sank beneath the horizon and left us in the
cool dark night, the people could not sleep for want of water to bathe
their swelling eyelids and to moisten their cracking throats, but
Ishmael walked through their tents and comforted them, telling them it
was never intended that man should always live well and comfortably, yet
God, if He willed it, would bring them safely to their journey's end.
"After that the people lay down on the scorching sand as if their thirst
had suddenly been quenched; and next day, on coming to the first
village, we heard that in the middle of a valley of black and blistered
hills, Ishmael smote with his staff a metallic rock that was twisted
into the semblance of a knotted snake, and a well of ice-cold water
sprung out of it, and everybody drank of it and then 'shook his fist at
the sun.'
"Nearly all last week our people were in poor heart by reason of the
mirages which mocked and misled them, showing an enchanted land on the
margin of the sky, with beautiful blue lakes and rivers and green
islands and shady groves of palm, and sweet long emerald grasses that
quivered beneath a refreshing breeze; but when, from their monotonous
track on the parched and naked desert, the poor souls would go in search
of these phantoms, they would find nothing but a great lone land, in the
fulness of a still deeper desolation.
"Then they would fling themselves down in despair and ask why they had
been brought out into the wilderness to die, but Ishmael, with the same
calm smile as before, would tell them that the life of this world was
all a mirage, a troubled dream, a dream in a sleep, that the life to
come was the awakening, and that he whose dream was most disturbed was
nearest the gates of Paradise.
"Result--at the next town we came to, we were told that when we were in
the middle of the wilderness Ishmael had made an oasis to spring up
around us, with waving trees and rippling water and the air full of the
songs of birds, the humming of bees, and the perfume of flowers, and we
all fell asleep in it, and when we awoke in the morning we believed we
had been in Heaven!
"Good-night, my dear--dear! Oh, to think that all this wilderness
divides us! But ma'aleysh! In another hour I shall be asleep, and
then--then I shall be in your arms."