For Fortune and Glory Part 16

At the foot of the hill, in a rocky, barren-looking dell, not at all the place where you would expect to find it, he chanced upon a spring; and after drinking and replenishing his gourd, he sat down to try and collect his thoughts.

And as he sat there he saw a solitary figure coming towards the spot.

It was a camel, with an Arab on his back. Harry concealed himself behind a boulder and watched. The poor beast could hardly move, and, in spite of all urging, presently fell. The rider took certain articles from the saddle, and came to the spring, where he sat down, after drinking; and, pulling out a lump of bread, began to make his breakfast.

The sight made Harry feel ravenous; he was determined that he would have a share of that bread. He would probably have been justified in potting him with his pistol, which he might easily have done, for he was almost certainly a hostile Arab with despatches. But he might belong to a friendly tribe, and if he were an enemy, Harry could not murder him like that.

He had a Remington rifle, so Harry must pounce upon him, or he would not have a chance. He did it rather cleverly, and the meal of the Arab was suddenly interrupted by finding the muzzle of a revolver within a yard of his head, while, at the same time, his rifle, which rested against a rock beside him, was thrown to some distance.

"Throw away your sword and pistol, or I will shoot," said Harry. "But do that, and share your bread with me, and I will not hurt you."

"My hygeen is dead; I am weary and wounded; and the chance is yours,"

said the Arab. "What have I to do but to submit? It is fate," drawing his highly ornamented and damascened pistols from his waist-band, for he was a considerably dressed Arab, this one. These he laid aside; then he took out his sheathed scimitar, but appeared to hesitate.

"How do I know," he said, "that you will not kill me when I am completely disarmed?"

"Why should I?" replied Harry. "Could I not have shot you from behind the rock?"

"Fool you were, not to!" cried the Arab with the bound of a wild beast, springing up, flashing the blade out, and uttering the taunt, which in his own idiom was but a couple of words, simultaneously.

So quick and sudden was the movement that it might well have deceived the eye and paralysed the nerve. But the very start made Harry press the trigger with his fore-finger. Even so, and only a yard off, he was as likely to have fired over his shoulder as to have hit him. But he did not. The point of the scimitar just left the scabbard as the owner of it went down on his back motionless as a wax figure.

Harry was perfectly bewildered; he was not conscious of having fired; yet, there lay the Arab, with his face blackened with the powder, and a small hole in the forehead just between the eyes.

I hope you will not think the worse of Harry Forsyth for what he did next. War makes the feelings very callous, for the time being, at all events, with regard to certain things. Besides, Harry had had nothing but biscuits to eat for one hundred and seventy-two hours, about, and not many of them. He pounced upon the bread and devoured it. What to do next?

The conviction had now forced itself upon him that there was no hope for the Egyptian army, but that it was doomed to certain destruction. There was no possibility of surrender; it was war to the knife, for the Arabs neither took nor gave quarter. And thus his mind reverted to the object of his throwing in his lot with that body, which he had in a great measure lost sight of in the company of Howard and the excitement of a totally new life. But, after all, he had not come out to Egypt and the Soudan to fight but to discover Daireh and, if possible, gain possession of the will.

The only chance for him to accomplish this now was obviously through finding his uncle, the Sheikh Burrachee, and to do this he must follow the course he had pointed out: find a dervish or fakir, and show the ring and parchment. Of course the efficacy of these might all be the delusion of a crazy brain, but he must take his chance of that. It was certain, however, that he would never get the chance of a hearing in his present costume. The helmet, the uniform kharkee jacket, would insure his being shot or cut down by the first follower of the Mahdi who saw him. They must be discarded, and the dead Arab lying hard by would supply him with a disguise. For, instead of going nearly naked, like so many of them, this man had a smart turban and a long garment, which came a good bit below the knees, bound round his waist with a sort of shawl of gay colours.

So, after having taken his life and his breakfast, Harry now proceeded to despoil him of his clothes.

There was a fair supply of cartridges in a bag which the ill-fated Arab had worn over his shoulder, so Harry took that and the rifle, and presently he came out of the glen in complete Arab costume, his European clothes being made into a bundle and shoved under a rock. The only article of dress he had retained was a light linen waistcoat, in which were pockets containing the silver case with the parchment, his watch, and his money. The dead man's pistols, though ornamental, had flint locks and were heavy, so he left them, but the scimitar he stuck, together with his own revolver, in the waist-shawl, and the rifle he slung over his shoulder.

Then he went to the hygeen, or camel, hoping that water might revive it, but the poor beast was past that--its eyes were already glazing.

All this time the roll of musketry in the distant ravine still continued, and with a heavy heart he turned from the spot, and went out into the wilderness.

His idea was boldly to accost the first living being he met, and ask the way to El Obeid, intending to represent himself as a merchant whose caravan had been attacked and robbed by Nubian blacks. He knew that he would be recognised as a European by his speech, and probably arrested as a spy, but then would be the time to test the efficacy of his uncle's talisman. It might be inefficacious, or he might perish in the desert before he met any one, but he did not give up all hope of a better fate.

His being sent out on that scouting expedition, wounded, and so prevented from rejoining the ill-fated column, was so extraordinary that he felt that his hour was not yet come. For it almost seemed to him as if a miracle had been performed in his behalf.

He had not gone a hundred yards before he noticed several black specks in the distant sky. Nearer and larger they came, till he could distinguish two eagles and five vultures hovering lower and lower, till at length they settled down in the dell by the spring which he had just left. And he shuddered. How soon he might lie, helpless and dying, and watching these loathsome birds of prey swooping towards him!

His idea was to keep bearing to the west, which was the direction in which he knew that El Obeid lay, unless indeed he had pa.s.sed to one side of it, which he did not think probable, or he should most likely have seen it from the mountain-top. Any other high ground he came to he would ascend, so as to get as wide a view as possible. And so he tramped on towards the declining sun till it sank; then he lay down in the solitude and darkness, and fatigue gave him sleep.

When dawn awoke him he was beyond the sound of the firing, or else it had ceased. And though he knew well enough that this was no good sign, the silence was less harrowing. He resumed his weary march till the sun reached its full power. There were some stunted bushes a little out of his track, and he made for them, hoping to find water. In this he was disappointed; so taking a sparing pull at his water-bottle, he crawled under one of them, seeking its shade. There was a slight rustle, and a snake rose on its tail, and darted at him with its forked tongue, but, just missing him, glided away.

Harry then looked more carefully, but there was no other, and he rested.

Another escape! Did he, then, bear a charmed life? After about an hour, he grew restless. The sand in that part lay in high ridges or dunes, some of them at least a hundred feet high, and he hoped that on surmounting the next beyond him he would come in sight of the town, or at least of some oasis, with water and human habitations, and with each recurring disappointment he became only the more eager to reach the sand-hill beyond. But he was becoming very faint, and the wound in his head throbbed to agony. He was at last so "_beat_" that he was on the point of letting himself sink down on the sand to struggle no more, when suddenly there, straight before him, lay the object of his desires!

Surely not a mile off, but say a mile and a half, rose towers, fortifications, minarets, palm-trees, and, most grateful sight, all this was reflected in a broad clear sheet of water.

"El Obeid!" he cried aloud, forgetting everything else in the joy of the moment.

He had never heard that it was on a lake, and thus his wildest expectations were surpa.s.sed.

No need now to torture himself by refraining from his water-bottle. He seized and drained it, and then falling on his knees he thanked Heaven for this deliverance. For though, when considered calmly at a distance, he had recognised the perils which would attend his adventure in entering the place, which was now the head-quarters of the Mahdi and his fanatics, they seemed as nothing compared with the immediate prospect of perishing of want and thirst, alone, in the desert. Rising to his feet again he hurried onwards, but the place was much farther off than it had first seemed, for when he had gone on for a full twenty minutes, with speed inspired by hope, he seemed to be no whit nearer.

On again, plunging through the loose sand, reeling, staggering. A little more effort; he must be nearing it, though it did not seem so; another ten minutes, say, and he would be able to plunge into that delicious water! And so he fought on, when suddenly all vanished.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Had sudden blindness fallen upon him? No, he could see the sand-hills as plainly as possible. But the city, the fortifications, the minarets, the water, which were so distinct a minute ago, where were they? All turned to sand? That could not be. He was giddy, and must have altered his course without knowing it.

He looked all round him, bewildered. Sand, sand, sand, and nothing else. Then the truth flashed across his memory: the mirage! Towers and water were as unreal as the magician's money in the "Arabian Nights'

Entertainments," which turned to paper in the drawer where it was. For the first time Harry was stricken with utter despair; without water, without food, alone in the trackless desert, exposed to a fierce sun, he fell, and lay motionless for awhile. Then up and on blindly, in what direction he knew not. His tongue swelled; his throat seemed choked and breathing was difficult.

Soon he lost consciousness of everything but a sense of distress and pain; and after awhile even that left him, and he fell senseless.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

ABDUL ACHMET.

A body of twenty Arab warriors mounted on camels was crossing the desert, and as they rode in Indian file, and from ten to twenty paces apart, the string was a long one. Probably they did not belong to a tribe that had taken part in any of the numerous routs, a.s.saults on strong places, and ma.s.sacres, which had supplied so large a portion of the Mahdi's troops with modern arms of precision, for those of them who carried guns had those long-barrelled, short-stocked weapons, which are familiar to us in pictures, and which are so admirable from an artistic, and so worthless from the Wimbledonian, point of view. But the majority carried spears instead of guns, and they were all armed with swords and pistols.

Whatever the actual number of days and hours which elapse between the dates of an Arab's birth and death, his life seems a short one reckoned by sensations and incidents, for he spends so very large a proportion of it in sitting on the hump of a camel as it toils across a country of maddening sameness. The distances he has to travel are so vast, and his means of progression so limited!

Perhaps that is the reason why, when he does come across an occasion of excitement, he is so terribly in earnest. He is months and months without the chance of an emotion, acc.u.mulating explosive forces all the while; and when he at last goes off, he does it like dynamite.

And yet, perhaps, the child of the desert, if he visited our sh.o.r.es, might point to a ploughboy plodding up and down, with one foot in the furrow, from dawn till dusk, and ask if _his_ task were lively. Or, still more forcibly, he might take us into an office in a dingy city street where copying clerks sat at their monotonous work, and put it to us how many minutes in the week we supposed _they_ lived.

But still, though it might be difficult to deny that he had reason on his side, there is a certain dreariness about the endless sandy plains which renders it difficult to imagine it possible for a human being to spend his days in traversing them without going mad.

But these present travellers did not seem to mind it. Some of them solaced themselves with the chibouque, as they sat with the comfort which can only be acquired after years of practice on the humps of their camels; the others, though silent and quiescent, did not look bored.

Presently the one in front was attracted by an object a little out of his path, and turned to examine it more closely. Then he spoke to his hygeen, which knelt down, whereupon he dismounted, and went up to the figure of a man lying on the sand. There had been a great deal of fighting and carnage, beyond the ordinary blood-feuds between the different tribes, going on for some months in the country, and the bodies of men were as commonly found as those of camels used to be. So it may seem surprising that the Arab should have taken the trouble to dismount for such a trifle.

But this body was dressed, and had weapons--was worth despoiling, in fact. This particular child of the desert was not more greedy than others; he was a man in some authority, and rich according to his own ideas and those of his people. But still, one does not like to see articles of value unappropriated, and one might as well have them as any one else. Such sentiments might animate you or me, let alone a gentleman who had been brought up to regard all human beings who did not belong to his own particular set much as we look upon beavers, foxes, hares, grouse, pheasants, as creatures that are provided by Providence for our sport or profit.

The body lay on its breast with the arms stretched out; the head a little turned, so that the right cheek lay on the sand. And when the Arab bent over it, it did not look, he thought, quite dead. Well, if he were not, a man with such a good gun as that ought to be when a better man wants it. But still, it has been shrewdly observed that there is a deal that is human about human nature. The Arab might not improbably be in the same position some day, and would he not then require aid himself? And then the Koran enjoined true believers to succour the distressed who fell fainting in the desert; and this was an educated man, who read his Koran; and a religious man, according to his lights, who obeyed its precepts when he happened to remember them, and temptation to the contrary was not too strong. If he had known that the property before him belonged to a pig who did not believe the Prophet, it might have been different; but he could not tell that, and he turned Harry Forsyth over to give him a drink of water.

As he did so he saw the ring on his finger, and his humane intention vacillated. He had a fancy for a ring like that. Never mind; he would compromise matters, he thought--take the ring, rifle, and cartridges first, and give him a drink afterwards. But when he took the hand for the purpose of drawing the ring off it, and saw the stone close, he started back with the exclamation, "Allah is great!" and let the hand drop.

"He bears the signet!" he said to his followers; "and he lives. We must not leave him. We must take him on to El Obeid."

"The Fakir's Oasis is close at hand," said another; "let us bear him there. The holy man will know best what to do with him, and the shorter the journey the better for his life."

"You speak the words of wisdom, Meouf," said the leader; "let us lift him on to your camel; it has the easiest pace."

A cynic might imagine that Meouf knew this, and that his claims to being a good Samaritan were affected by the fact that he would have the trouble of carrying the helpless man, and his wish to do so for as short a distance as possible. But we won't be cynics, and we'll give him all the credit for his forethought which we can.