The Dash for Khartoum Part 34

"What is it, Amina? What do you mean?"

"I fear that he has made for Khartoum to report that you have a white slave here. He hates Muley, and I think that it is to obtain vengeance on him that he has fled."

"You are right, Amina; that is what the son of Sheitan intends to do.

Quick! bring up those camels," he roared.

Three of the men were ordered to accompany him. Then he gave orders that the rest of the camels should be loaded at once with his goods, the valuables of the village, and a portion of the crops, and that they should start without delay to the oasis of Wady El Bahr Nile, or the valley of the Dry River, two days' journey to the west, driving with them the herd of goats.

"If I do not catch him we must break up the donar," he said, "and all who do not wish to be found here by the Mahdi's men had best be in readiness to start when we return. Let half a dozen men and women go to the wady to look after the goats and guard the property. The camels must be brought back as soon as they get there."

Ten minutes later he and his three companions had disappeared from sight over the brow of the nearest sand-hill, while all in the encampment were busy in preparing for their departure. A camel was allotted to each of the ten tents of which the camp consisted; three camels were claimed by Amina for the sheik's possessions; the remaining six were to carry the food. All who were not engaged were at once set to work gathering the maize that was fit to pluck and cutting and tying up into bundles the forage for the camels.

In three hours a great change had been effected in the appearance of the little valley. The sheik's tent and three others remained standing, but the rest were levelled to the ground, their occupants preferring to start at once rather than risk being caught by the Mahdists. It was mid-day when the party started. Edgar could hardly help smiling at the appearance the camels presented, each animal being almost hidden by the pile of baggage, bundles, cooking-pots, and articles of all kinds, at the top of which were perched a woman and two or three children. The men walked, as did many of the younger women and boys and girls.

It would be a fatiguing journey, for they would travel without a halt until morning, then rest until the sun was low again, and again journey all night, when they would reach the wells soon after daybreak. As it was but a two days' journey the camels carried far heavier loads than would have been placed upon them had it been one of longer duration.

Amina took the lead in the whole matter. She gave orders to the men, scolded the women, and saw that everything was done in order.

"Do you think that the sheik has any chance of catching Hamish?" Edgar asked her as they stood together watching the retreating line of camels.

She shook her head.

"Very little," she said, "unless the camel breaks down, which is not likely, or he misses the track. When he once gains the cultivated land he will turn the camel adrift and will make his way on foot to Khartoum.

He will avoid all villages where he might be stopped and go straight to the city, where he will tell his story to the first officer of the Mahdi he meets. If the sheik does not overtake him before he gets beyond the limit of the desert he will pursue no further. It would be useless.

He would never find him in the fields, where he might lie down among the crops. It would only be waste of time to search for him."

"Does Hamish know of the other wady?"

She nodded. "It may be that the Mahdists will not follow further. It will depend upon the orders they have received. Of course we shall leave someone here to watch, and if they start for the wady he will bring us news before they get there."

"Are there any other wells?"

"None nearer than six days' journey to the south. Then there is a great cultivated country with many villages and towns, but the journey would be terrible. I do not know what we shall do. But do not be afraid, Muley; whatever we do you will not be given up until the last thing.

When my lord once sets his face one way he never turns it. He has said the Mahdi shall not have you, for you are his captive and none other's, and he will never go back from that."

"You have been very good to me," Edgar said, "and I would rather run my own risk than that suffering and perhaps death should fall upon the women and children of the douar."

"My lord will never hear of it," she said. "When he has said a thing he has said it. There is nothing to do now but to wait until we learn what force is coming against us. There is another encampment of the tribe in a wady two days' journey to the north, and we may summon help from there if the party is not too strong. The great thing will be to kill Hamish, for the Wady El Bahr Nile is known only to a few of our own tribe, and were he not with them they would not be able to find their way there.

Even this wady is known to few, for it lies altogether beyond the track of caravans. But now there is nothing to do but to wait until my lord returns. It will be, I think, on the fourteenth day. You were eight days coming across the desert. They will do it in six but will be eight on their return, for there will be no occasion for haste. Hamish will take two more days to get to Khartoum; it may be a day or two before a party is sent out from there, and they will take ten days getting here, so that it should be some days at least after my lord's return before they appear."

"I am sorry, indeed, to have been the cause of so much trouble falling upon you," Edgar said.

"It is not your fault. It was the will of Allah that you should be brought here. But anyhow we should not have stopped here much longer. We have been here six months now, and my lord was saying but a few days since that as soon as the rest of the crops were gathered he should send those who are not fit to travel to El Bahr Nile, and should leave you there and should start with the camels to Khartoum, sell our crops there, and then carry merchandise to El-Obeid or some other distant place. He has been waiting for things to settle down; we have only been stopping here so long because trade has been stopped by the siege of Khartoum, and since then he has not ventured to go there lest his camels should be seized by the Mahdi; but, as he said, he must risk something.

Of what use is it to have camels if you do not employ them. They are getting fat and lazy; never have they had so long a rest before. It matters nothing our having to leave this wady. The worst is that the Mahdi will be set against us, and that we shall have to move away far from here to get trade."

"It is possible that at the present time Khartoum is in the hands of the English," Edgar said. "We have heard no news from without since I came here three months ago now, and by this time our expedition may have arrived there and the Mahdi's power may be altogether broken."

"I hope it may be so," the woman said; "before the Mahdi came the country was peaceful and prosperous; there was employment and trade for our camels, and all went about their occupations unmolested. Now everything is changed; trade is at an end, the villages are destroyed, and the fields deserted. I know not how it will end. If the tribes would all turn together against them they would soon drive them out of the land. But there is no hope of this; we have our own quarrels, and cannot unite even when everything is at stake. The Mahdi may be the Mahdi, but what is that to us? He tells his followers that he will lead them to conquer Egypt, and to go to Jerusalem and Roum (Constantinople). But how is he to do it when a handful of white soldiers defeated thousands of his men in the desert? What would it be were he to meet a great army of them? It is one thing to fight the Egyptians as they did at El-Obeid, but another when it is your soldiers. I hear that mult.i.tudes of Osman Digma's men were slain down by the sea, and yet they say they fought well."

"They did fight well," Edgar said. "I was there and saw it; no men could have been braver; but we have terrible weapons, and it was impossible for them to stand against them. The Mahdi may say what he likes, but there is no more chance of his taking Egypt as long as we stay there than there is of his flying."

"Well, well!" the woman said, "it will be as Allah chooses. You do not believe in Allah, Muley, you are a Kaffir."

"I beg your pardon," Edgar said; "we and you worship the same G.o.d. We call him G.o.d, and you call him Allah; but it is the same. Your Prophet acknowledges Moses and Christ to be prophets. The only difference between us is that you believe that Mohammed was also a prophet, and the greatest of all, while we do not acknowledge that, but in other respects there is no great difference between us."

"My lord will talk to you, Muley; I am but a woman, and these things are not for us."

Each morning one of the boys remaining at the douar was sent up to the crest of the sand-hills, and there remained all day on watch. At the end of the thirteenth day the sheik's wife gave orders that everything should be in readiness for instant departure. The camels had returned on the previous day from El Bahr Nile, having made two journeys there and back, and were now ready for a fresh departure. There was a further cutting of the crops until as much was gathered as would, with the remaining tents and goods, make up a full load for the camels, for as the party had not arrived it was almost certain that they had not succeeded in overtaking the fugitive. On the evening of the thirteenth day a shout from the boy on the hill proclaimed that he saw figures coming.

"How many of them?" one of the men shouted to him.

"There are five camels, but only four of them are ridden."

There was a shout of satisfaction. This looked as if the party had overtaken the fugitive, in which case they would have brought the camel back and left the body of Hamish in the desert.

A shout of welcome greeted the chief as he rode up. "You have overtaken him, El Bakhat, I see; Bishmillah, G.o.d be praised, we are safe from the trouble the treacherous dog would have brought upon us!"

The sheik shook his head. "The son of Sheitan has escaped. We caught sight of him just at the edge of the desert, having ridden with scarce an hour's rest from the time we started. As soon as we did so Aboo and myself dismounted and started in pursuit; but he must have seen us as soon as we caught sight of him, for when we came up to his camel it was alone. We followed him to the edge of the cultivated lands, but the gra.s.s was long and the crops stood in some places as high as our heads, and it would have been useless searching for him, so we brought the camels on, gave them water and a night's halt to fill themselves in the fields, and then started back. Has all been well?"

"All has been well," his wife replied. "The camels made three journeys, have rested, and are ready to start afresh. We have cut down as much as they can carry, and have indeed left but little remaining."

"We will start the day after to-morrow," the sheik said. "Our camels need a rest, and time does not press. Before we leave the wady we will set fire to the dry stalks and gra.s.s. There is little that will not burn. We must destroy all that we can, so that when they arrive here in search of us they shall not be able to sit down here, but must turn and travel back with all speed, unless they decide to push on in pursuit of us to Wady El Bahr Nile."

Two days later the tents were struck and the camels loaded up; then when they had moved away, the dried gra.s.s and corn stalks were fired at the windward end of the valley and in a few minutes the flames swept along in a broad sheet, and in a quarter of an hour a coating of gray ashes covered the soil where lately the encampment with its surroundings of cultivation stood. Two of the men were left behind with fast camels.

They were to leave the animals a mile from the camp on its northern side, so that they would neither be on the line by which the enemy would come or that leading to the wady. They had forage for their camels and food for themselves for a fortnight. One was to remain by the camels, the other to keep watch concealed among the sand-hills near the well.

If an enemy was seen approaching the watcher was to return at once to the camels, take his own animal, and ride to the wady with news as to their strength; the other was to remain on watch until they either retired or set out on the track of the fugitives, when he was to push forward with all speed with the news. A messenger was also sent off to the douar to the north saying that an expedition of the Mahdi's men was on its way out to plunder and destroy the encampments of the tribe, and begging them to send to El Bahr Nile all their fighting men in order that the dervishes should have such a lesson that they would be well content to leave the tribes alone in future.

As before, the women and children were perched on the summit of their household goods on the top of the camels. Contrary to their usual custom most of the men walked, as the camels were loaded to the full extent of their powers.

Edgar had manufactured for himself, soon after his arrival at the camp, a pair of sandals from the skin of a goat that had been killed for food, and he was therefore able to keep up with the camels with comfort. As it was considered that there was no occasion for hurry, and as the camels were very heavily laden, three days instead of two were devoted to the journey, and even then it was a very fatiguing one for those on foot. On arriving at El Bahr Nile Edgar found that the oasis was much smaller than that they had quitted. The soil was rocky, and although there were two large pools of clear water there was but little ground round them in any way suitable for cultivation. Acacias and other shrubs, however, grew thickly down the valley, showing that there was a certain amount of moisture below the surface. The tents were soon erected by the side of those of the first party, and when the fires were lighted and the camels unloaded, taken to the water and then turned loose to browse among the trees, the place a.s.sumed a home-like appearance.

"You can shoot, Muley," the sheik said to Edgar. "If I give you a gun will you fight against these dervishes?"

"Certainly I will, sheik."

"Your guns carry a long way; they are wonderful weapons. At Metemmeh men were killed two miles away."

"Yes, they are good weapons, sheik, and I wish I had one of them here, for I am afraid I should not be able to do much with your guns."

The sheik turned to his wife: "Fetch out that Kaffir gun, Amina." And to Edgar's surprise she brought out from the tent a Martini rifle and a pouch filled with cartridges. This gun had been found strapped on to one of the camels that had been captured, and the sheik had appropriated it for his own use, concealing it in one of the bales, so that Edgar had not noticed it when the camels were unloaded.

"I do not understand it," the sheik said; "it is much stranger to me than our guns would be to you. I tried to put these bra.s.s things with the bullet sticking out into it, but they would not go into the barrel.

You shall show me how to use it, but if the dervishes come I will hand it to you, for you understand it and will do much better with it than I should; but show me how it works."

The sheik's astonishment was great when Edgar pushed the lever, opened the breech, inserted a cartridge, and closing the breech said that it was now loaded and could be fired at once.

"Fire at that rock," he said, "and then load again as quickly as you can."