For Fortune and Glory Part 9

Under the circ.u.mstances, and considering the object of his present visit to Egypt, Harry had no hesitation in selling the amethysts given to him by his uncle Ralph, or the Sheikh Burrachee. For he fully intended to seek him, if he could not find Daireh, a matter which he felt to be extremely problematical. Without the sale of these jewels he could not attempt the rescue of the will at all. He was surprised at their value, for he got more for them than he expected, and it seemed a great risk to have left them in the secret drawer of his desk all this time. You may be sure he did not forget the signet-ring and the thin silver case, these being taken with him as before.

The trip to Cairo was uneventful, and he pa.s.sed the time in improving his Arabic, by the aid of a grammar, dictionary, and Koran. As soon as he had delivered his cargo, and called upon the member of the firm who resided out there, who was as kind and cordial as Mr Williams, he started up the Nile.

The traveller who does that, proposing to do more than visit a pyramid or two, requires a good deal of patience; and so would a reader if the ordinary routine of travel were to be recorded. Suffice it then to say that Harry voyaged up the Nile to Korosko, and there joined a caravan across the desert to Abu Hamed, from which place he got pa.s.sage again on board a diabeheeh, which carried him to Berber.

With what excitement he beheld the white houses, the minarets, the palm- trees, grow nearer and nearer! Within those walls, as he hoped, Daireh was living. If so, and he could find him, and get the will, the object of his journey would be accomplished.

For he had laid his plans. Armed with a letter he had got for the Governor, he would find no difficulty in having his man seized unexpectedly before he would have time to make away with the doc.u.ment, and there was little doubt means would be found to make him give it up.

Confidence, which had fluctuated, revived at the sight of the place, and when at length he was landed, Harry walked through the bazaars, expecting every man he met to be the one he was in search of. After many disappointments he recognised himself for an idiot, and calmed down.

How should he set to work in a methodical manner?--that was the point.

The letter to the Pasha denounced Daireh as a criminal, and therefore if he employed his officers to make search for him the fact might get about, and Daireh, hearing of it, might hide, escape, or at any rate get rid of all incriminatory doc.u.ments. It was more prudent, perhaps, to pretend to have business with him, and make inquiry in the bazaars.

The one advantage of the tedium of his journey was that Harry had acquired much more fluency by constant practice in speaking the language. The dress he had selected was not one to attract attention; he had modelled it on that of a Greek merchant who was continually trading with the interior. He wore full pantaloons, a loose sort of jacket, with a shawl bound round the waist, and his head was protected by a tarboosh, with a turban wrapped round it.

But though his clothes did not look European, the pistol stuck in his shawl belt was of the best, strongest, and most hard-hitting type. Old- fashioned, indeed, so far that it was not breech-loading; for he had considered that if he lost his cartridges, or spent them, his weapon would become a useless lump of iron, whereas percussion caps, powder, and lead, are procurable almost everywhere.

He went to the stall of a man who sold filigree work, and at his invitation squatted down and had a pipe and a cup of coffee, while he asked the price of several things. That was very well, but when he began to inquire about the object of his search, the shopkeeper lost all interest in the conversation.

He tried a money-changer with better success; he knew Daireh, but had not seen him for months. More he could not say. After many more failures Harry turned into a coffee-house, to sit down and rest, and have a gla.s.s of sherbet and enjoy a smoke.

While resting in the comparative cool portico where he was served, a barber came and offered his services, and Harry, suddenly remembering how the barber in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" always knew everybody, thought he would try his luck with him.

"I have come all the way from Cairo," he said, in reply to a bit of characteristic curiosity, "and my business is with one Daireh, who should reside here; for the last time our house transacted business with him he was here."

"He was here but six moons back. And he came from the land of the English to his cousin, who lived here. If you have dealings with Daireh, I know your business,"--and here the barber looked inexpressibly cunning--"Gordon Pasha spoilt that trade; but since he has gone there is good profit to be made. And what are the pagans fit for but slaves, sons of pigs that they are? But they tell me there will be fine times when the Mahdi rules. Not that I know, but while I shave heads the tongues wag and I listen. It is nothing to me. Mahdi or Khedive, what do I care! All want to be shaved."

"To be sure," said Harry; "the wise man has the same opinion as his customer. And where has the family moved to?"

"They moved to Khartoum when trade grew better, and you will find them there if Allah wills."

How long he would have gone on talking it is impossible to conjecture, had it not been that a customer entered his stall, which was on the opposite side of the street, and he shuffled off to attend to him, for which Harry, who had got all the information he required, was by no means sorry.

His one great desire now was to get away. To be so close, to find the form of the hare almost warm, and yet to be just too late, was very trying to his patience. It was all very well to say to himself that he had only two hundred miles farther to go; and after travelling more than a thousand from Cairo, let alone the journey out from England, what were two hundred miles? But the answer he made himself was that two hundred miles was a great distance, and there was the sixth cataract. He had forced himself to be cool--mentally, of course, bodily coolness was quite out of the question--all the way along, with looking upon Berber as the end of his voyage. And here he had to go on another two hundred miles, and up another tedious cataract. It was very disheartening.

However, there was no help for it; so he went at once down to the quay, and began inquiries about boats going up. Luck here turned in his favour, for there was one starting next day, and he engaged a pa.s.sage by it. And what was still more fortunate, the next day was Friday, and so there was not any likelihood of the delay which is so charming to the Nubian sailor mind. For Friday is their lucky day, and they would not miss the chance of commencing any undertaking upon it on any account.

Now we account Friday an unlucky day (or used to do so). So either we or the Soudanese must be utterly wrong--radically wrong. Which is it, I wonder?

The dreary business commenced again on the morrow. A fair breeze, and sailing; a foul one or a calm, and rowing; running on banks, and pushing off; getting nearly wrecked half a dozen times in the rapids, and escaping. And so they progressed until at length the mighty river divided into two streams, that to the left the Blue Nile, that to the right the White, and the real Nile, and they found at the junction the city of Khartoum, dazzling in the glare of the sunshine, with the governor's house and the mosque rising above the flat roofs.

Opposite the city, and on the west side of the Nile, there were a number of tents visible, and Harry asked the reis what place that was.

"That is Um Durma, where the camp is," he replied.

"And what is the camp for? It seems a very large one."

"Yes, O traveller, it is large! Seven thousand foot soldiers, a thousand of them that fight on horseback; many cannon, many camels to carry powder, shot, provisions, water; thousands of those who fight not themselves, but load and lead the baggage camels, sell things to the soldiers, and live upon the camp. In all a large encampment, and must cost the Khedive much money."

"Who commands the force, and what is it collected for?" asked Harry.

"Hicks Pasha commands it; he is an Englishman, and his princ.i.p.al officers are also English; the men are Egyptians and Bashi-Bazooks."

The reis paused. He was a Soudanese; and a smile played over his face as he added, "They are going to do wonderful things; to take El Obeid back again, to destroy the Soudan army, take the Mahdi, and carry him to Cairo in a cage, I believe. Oh! But they are great warriors, and the Mahdi's days are numbered."

"Is El Obeid in the Mahdi's hands, then?" asked Harry; for the last time he had heard news of that part of the country it had been still held by the Egyptians; and Mahomet Achmet, or the Mahdi, as he professed himself to be, had been repulsed with such heavy loss when he attacked it as to oblige him to sheer off, this being his first defeat. But he had returned in the January of that year, and taken the place after a fortnight's siege.

"Yes," said the sarcastic reis; "he holds it just for the present, till the warriors of Hicks Pasha find it convenient to walk across and take it from him."

After the disappointment at Berber, Harry did not feel the same confidence in finding his man that he had previously done. He began to be disheartened, and to think luck was against him; and to settle the matter quickly was a more important matter than ever it had been. If El Obeid was taken by the Mahdi, the insurrection of the Soudanese against the Egyptian yoke must be a very serious thing, and the country would be in a disturbed state for a long time, so that the Nile route would be closed against travellers, and pa.s.sage across the desert to the sea would be equally difficult. If then he caught his man and recovered the will, he would not be able to get out of the country with it.

He had little doubt that Sheikh Burrachee's signet-ring and the parchment in the silver case, would, properly used, find him safe conduct to his uncle, if living; but the getting back again he suspected would be much more difficult, for his fanatical relative would probably want to keep him when he had got him.

But as Khartoum was a so much larger and more important town than Berber, so much greater difficulty was there in tracing an individual; and perseveringly and a.s.siduously as Harry pursued his investigations, he could learn nothing. Most of those of whom he made inquiries were probably as ignorant as they professed to be; but there were some who, at the name of Daireh, looked at the inquirer with a quick suspicious glance. One of these replied with a verse out of the Koran, another with a proverb, a third said he never meddled with other people's affairs, and walked quickly away.

After three days of fruitless inquiry, Harry was obliged to have recourse to the plan which he wished to avoid as long as he could--that of applying to the authorities.

So he inquired for the house of Slatin Bey, to whom he had a letter of introduction, and went to deliver his credentials.

Experience in transacting business on his former journey up the country had taught him how to expedite his reception, and a judicious application of baksheesh caused him to be introduced to the great man without too great delay.

Slatin Bey read the letter, and received him courteously, motioning him to a seat on the divan, and ordering him a chibouque to smoke, and coffee.

Harry knew that the great man must not be bustled, so he sucked at his long pipe with apparent complacency and indifference to all external matters, and said that he was an Englishman, who had come from London to bask in the sunshine of the Bey's presence.

"England is a great country, and London is a great town--twice as large as Cairo. I am honoured," said the Bey. "And you need no interpreter?

That is pleasant."

"I speak but badly, but I can understand and reply," said Harry.

"It is well," said the Bey; "and if you have a message for the Governor it is best delivered without an interpreter."

"I have no message; neither, though a merchant, have I come to trade,"

said Harry, when after a few observations on fleets, armies, and Mr Gladstone--in which the Bey evidently tried to pump him--he thought he saw an opening. "My business is a private one. A man named Daireh, a native of Alexandria, went to England as a boy, and was brought up to be a lawyer. He has fled with doc.u.ments, for the want of which I cannot obtain property which is mine by right, and I have traced him to Khartoum; and I request your Highness's omnipotent aid to find him, and induce him to make rest.i.tution of what is valueless to him, but of great importance to me."

The Bey smoked a little while in silence, and then said--

"If these doc.u.ments are of no use to him, why has he taken them?"

"He took them to extort money for their recovery," replied Harry. "But he had committed other crimes which obliged him to fly the country in a hurry, and before he had time to make profit of the papers."

Another long pause of silent smoking, and the Bey observed--

"It is a difficult matter, and he will be hard to find."

Harry was prepared for objections, and had learned the best arguments for their removal. He placed a purse containing the sum which his friends in Cairo had estimated sufficient on the divan, and said--

"I know that legal expenses are great in all countries, and it is only just that I should bear the charge."