A Son of the Sahara Part 3

Raoul Le Breton was about thirteen when the Sultan met with his first rebuff at the hands of France. And he had the welfare and prestige of the desert kingdom at heart, and was as anxious as the Sultan to possess this new weapon.

Far away in the south was the outpost of another European power; just a handful of white men struggling to keep a hold on a country an indifferent and short-sighted government was inclined to let slip.

Round and about the River Gambia the British had a footing. Among the men most determined to keep a hold on this strip of territory was Captain George Barclay.

He was a man of about twenty-eight, of medium height and wiry make, with a thin face and steady grey eyes where tragedy lurked. His confreres said that Barclay had no interests outside of his work. But they were wrong.

He had one thing that was more to him than his own life; a tiny, velvety-eyed, golden-haired daughter.

He had come out to North-West Africa in quest of forgetfulness.

At twenty-three, although he was only a penniless lieutenant, the beauty of the London season, the prospective heiress of millions, had thought well to marry him. It was a runaway match. For his sake Pansy Carrington had risked losing both wealth and position. She was only nineteen, and her guardian and G.o.dfather, whose acknowledged heiress she was, had disapproved of George Barclay; gossip said because he was madly in love with her himself, although he was nearly thirty years her senior.

However, whether this was so or not, Henry Langham had forgiven the girl. He had taken her back into his good graces, and, in due course, had become G.o.dfather to the second Pansy. "Grand-G.o.dfather," the child called him as soon as she could talk.

It had seemed to George Barclay that no man's life could be happier than his. Then, without any warning, tragedy came upon him after five years of bliss. For one day his girl-wife was brought back to him dead, the result of an accident in the hunting-field.

With her death all light had gone out of his life. To escape from himself he had gone out to Gambia; and his tiny daughter now lived, as her mother had lived before her, with her G.o.dfather, Henry Langham.

But it was not of his daughter Barclay was thinking at that moment; other matters occupied his mind.

He stood on the roof of a little stone fort, gazing at the landscape in a speculative manner.

The building itself consisted of four rooms, set on a platform of rock some three feet from the ground. All the windows were small, and high up and barred. One room had no communication with the others: it was a sort of guardroom entered by a heavy wooden door. To the other three rooms one solid door gave entry, and from one of them a ladder and trap-door led up to the roof which had battlements around it.

Below was a large compound, rudely stockaded, in which half a dozen native huts were built.

In that part of Gambia Captain Barclay represented the British Government. He had to administer justice and keep the peace, and in this task he was aided by a white subaltern, twenty Hausa soldiers, and a couple of maxim guns.

On three sides of the little British outpost an endless expanse of forest showed, with white mist curling like smoke about it. On the fourth was a wide shallow valley, with dwarf cliffs on either side, alive with dog-faced baboons. The valley was patched with swamps and lakes, and through it a river wended an erratic course, its banks heavily fringed with reeds and mimosa trees; a valley from which, with approaching evening, a stream of miasma rose.

Barclay's gaze, however, never strayed in the direction of the shallow valley.

He looked to the north.

A week or so ago word had come through that a notorious raider was on the move; a man whom the French Government had been endeavouring to catch for the last five years or more. What he was doing so far south as Gambia, the district officer did not know. But he knew he was there.

Only the previous day news had come that one of the villages within his, Barclay's, jurisdiction had been practically wiped out. A similar fate might easily fall to the lot of the British outpost, considering that the Arab chief's force outnumbered Barclay's ten to one.

From the roof of his quarters the Englishman saw the sun set. It seemed to sink and drown in a lake of orange that lay like a blazing furnace on the horizon; a lake that spread and scattered when the sun disappeared, drifting off in islands of clouds, gold, rose, mauve and vivid red, sailing slowly across a tense blue sky, getting ever thinner and more ragged, until night came suddenly and swallowed up their tattered remains.

A dense, purple darkness fell upon the land, soft and velvety, that reminded Barclay of his little daughter's eyes. And in a vault as darkly purple, a host of great stars flashed. Away in the forest an owl hooted. From the wide valley came the coughing roar of a leopard.

Every now and again some night bird pa.s.sed, a vague shadow in the darkness. In silver showers the fireflies danced in the thick, hot air. Down in the compound glow-worms showed, looking like a lot of smouldering cigarette ends cast carelessly aside.

Upon the roof, with gaze fixed on the misty, baffling darkness that soughed and hissed around him, Barclay stayed, until the gong took him down to dinner.

There his junior waited, a round-faced youngster of about nineteen.

The meal was a poor repast of tinned soup, hashed tinned beef, yams and coffee, all badly cooked and indifferently served.

During the course of the meal the youngster remarked:

"What a joke if we nabbed the Sultan Casim Ammeh, or whatever he calls himself, and went one better than the French johnnies."

"It would be more than a joke. It would be a jolly good riddance,"

Barclay responded.

"It's queer n.o.body knowing where he really comes from."

"You may be sure he doesn't play his tricks anywhere near his own headquarters. More likely than not, he and his cut-throat lot start out disguised as peaceful merchants, in separate bands, and join up when they reach the seat of operations. There are vast tracts of Senegal practically unexplored. They would give endless cover to one of his kidney."

"If you had the luck to bag him, what should you do?"

"Shoot him straight off, knowing the earth was well rid of a villain."

"But what's his idea in coming as far south as this? He's never been heard of on this side of the Senegal River before."

"Plunder. Guns, most likely. He's heard we're none too welcome, and hardly settled here, and thinks we shall prove an easy prey."

However, the little English force was not to prove quite the easy prey the Sultan had imagined when he came south in quest of new weapons.

The next night, without any warning, he attacked Barclay's headquarters.

He struck at an hour when all was darkest; not with his usual swoop of wild hors.e.m.e.n, but stealthily.

Unchallenged and unmolested, he and his following scaled the stockade and crept towards the tiny fort, vague shadows moving silently in the purple darkness.

But each night Barclay had laid a trap for his expected foe.

He knew the enemy force outnumbered his, and that his little handful could be starved out within a week, if the Arab chief wanted to make a siege of it.

Barclay had no intention of letting this come to pa.s.s.

He did a bold thing.

Each night, after dark, the little British garrison divided into three units. A Hausa sergeant and fifteen men were left on the roof of the fort. Barclay, two soldiers and one maxim gun, his junior, with two more soldiers and the other gun, crept out from the place, and hid in the dense undergrowth, at different points outside of the stockade; first removing a plank here and there in the enclosure to enable them to work their guns through.

Barclay's ruse succeeded.

Whilst the Sultan and his followers were busy trying to scale the fort and get at the handful of men peppering at them from its roof, without any warning there came an unexpected fusillade from, the rear. He turned and attacked in that direction, only to find a further fusillade pouring in on him from another point.

The Sultan sensed that he had fallen into a trap; that he was surrounded on all sides. Sore and furious he turned to go, more quickly than he had come. But before he had reached the stockade, the world slipped from him suddenly.

CHAPTER V