El Hassan failed to hear him.
Smythe turned and stomped off, following his impressed nurses.
In the distance, Bey-ag-Akhamouk called hoarse orders from an
over-strained throat, placing guns for a counterattack that would
never come. The Arab Legion was broken and Colonel Ibrahim a prisoner.
Large numbers of the survivors were defecting to the banner of El
Hassan.
He threw his empty Tommy-Noiseless to the side. All he wanted now was
sleep, the surcease of a few hours of oblivion.
Isobel, her face wan from the horror of the agony of the combat whose
result was everywhere visible, was picking her way through the
wreckage with Cliff Jackson.
El Hassan looked at her absently. Whatever message she bore held
little interest to him.
Cliff said, "India has recognized El Hassan as legal head of state of
all North Africa. It is expected that Australia will follow before the
week is out."
El Hassan nodded. For the time, not caring.
Isobel said, "We have other word. It came by messenger." She closed
her eyes in pain and handed him a small box.
He opened it and recognized the ring on the enclosed finger. He looked
up at them.
Cliff Jackson growled low in his throat. "Elmer Allen. He's been
captured by a leader of the Ouled Touameur clan of the Ouled Allouch
tribe. You know this Abd-el-Kader?"
El Hassan was staring down at the finger, his mind slowly clearing of
its fatigue. "He belongs to the Berazga division of the Chaambra
confederation. I had a run-in with him a few months ago and had him
jailed. He's nothing but a desert bandit on the make."
Cliff said, "He's escaped, has thrown his weight behind the Arab
Union, proclaimed himself the Mahdi and is uniting Algeria and parts
of Morocco and Tunisia like a wildfire. The marabouts and Shorfa are
backing him."
"Proclaimed himself the Mahdi?" Isobel said in question.
El Hassan turned to the girl and took a deep breath. "The original
Mahdi was the holiest prophet since Mohammed and according to the more
superstitious Moslems, he's still alive. According to Islamic
tradition, he periodically shows up again in the desert and makes
various predictions. When he does, it almost always winds up with a
jihad, a holy war. Don't you remember in history the anti-British
Mahdi at Khartoum, the killing of Chinese Gordon and so forth? That
Mahdi was the son of a Dongola carpenter and he managed to conquer two
million square miles in two years."
"But, what has this got to do with this Abd-el-Kader?"
"He's evidently proclaimed himself sort of a reincarnation of the
original Mahdi. He's out to do the same thing we are--to unite North
Africa. But in his case he doesn't exactly have the same dream and
he's working under the green ensign of the Pan-Islamic Arab Union."
"And has Elmer Allen captive."
"Yes, he has Elmer." El Hassan's tone of voice turned sharp. "Cliff,
go get Bey. Tell him we're forming a flying column and heading north."
Cliff was gone. El Hassan turned back to the girl. "You know, Isobel,"
he said softly, slowly, "in history there is no happy ending, ever.
There is no ending at all. It goes from one crisis to another, but
there is no ending."
* * * * *