The Pursuit Part 24

"The wells of El Djebir, Monsieur," explained Sergeant Perinaud. "It is here we should find our men, if they are proceeding by the shortest route to their hills. If not--" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.

The horses were roused from their gentle amble into a gallop. The dust rose from fourscore hoofs as the Goumiers raced down in an enveloping cloud upon the cl.u.s.ter of palms and thicket of broom scrub which surrounded the watering-place. They pulled their horses upon their haunches; they shouted in hoa.r.s.e disappointment. The shadowed resting-place beneath the palms was empty. Not a living soul was in sight.

Perinaud shrugged his shoulders again.

"This is very conclusive, Monsieur. The party we seek has thought fit to leave the open road and to bury themselves in the recesses of the jungle and the northern gorges of the river. They did not do that without a reason. It remains to follow, if we can."

The native officer shouted something and Perinaud turned swiftly in the saddle to stare down the track which they had been following. A white figure bestriding a brown horse was thundering towards them, the rider's _haik_ fluttering out snowily against the dun background of the earth.

"So Monsieur thought fit to leave me--me!" expostulated Daoud, as he drew rein at Aylmer's side. "I, I who address you, am told by the chance gossip of the Sok that this expedition has set out without a word of warning, to seek bandits--where?" He threw abroad his arms in derision.

"On the broad and open road, within sound, nay, almost within sight, of the patrols of Casablanca. I ask, is it here that knaves are likely to hide their knavery? Your venture and its object are already the pivot on which the laughter of the market-place swings."

He turned and pointed vehemently towards the north.

"Has none of your trained spies had the wit or the courage to tell you that a hundred of these Beni M'Geel Berbers have encamped in the thickets of the Bou Gherba gorge this ten days back? And yet the market-place knows it, as it knows a hundred things beneath your concern."

Perinaud looked the Moor up and down. Then he turned leisurely towards Aylmer.

"He is a safe man, this?" he asked. "You guarantee him?"

Aylmer smiled, and shrugged his shoulders towards the waiting Goumiers.

"They are all for their own hand, these, are they not, Sergeant? Yes, I will guarantee that he seeks to serve me, for the moment, and in serving me, himself. It is the way with these desert folk. They cannot manage large issues, and they split into factions to follow small ones. Let us hear him and, if you see no objection, take his advice. He has been in Casablanca before."

Perinaud grunted and eyed the Moor grudgingly.

"Well, man of infinite knowledge," he said in Arabic. "You propose--what?"

"Are there two courses before us?" asked Daoud, disdainfully. "Or are we to await reinforcements? We have to surround this lair of desert cats."

"Where?" asked Perinaud, laconically.

The Moor wheeled his stallion with an elaborate caracole.

"If the Sidi had used my services from the first," he said, "he would have been saved an hour's ride. Forward, Sidi!"

The sergeant lifted his eyebrows at Aylmer with an air of comical resignation. To the native officer he gave a decisive little nod. With Daoud leading, the brown stallion arching his neck in remonstrance to a tightened rein and goading spur, the column broke formation and in single file turned northwards into the broom scrub which fringes the tilled lands of the Chawia.

The hors.e.m.e.n rode in silence. The mantle of Rattier's taciturnity, rent to rags in D'Hubert's office, seemed to have been restored to its pristine imperviousness, seemed, indeed, to hang heavy upon the spirits of the whole company. Now and again the commandant's lips moved uneasily, but the spoken word died still-born. A Goumier would address fervent maledictions to the memory of the female ancestors of a stumbling horse; curt conferences took place at long intervals between Perinaud and the native officer. But apart from this, the thud of hoofs meeting sand or earth and the dull rap of rein or stirrup leather were all the sounds which broke the stillness. The heavy noontide heat seemed to have swallowed into silence all sound. For sound denotes creative energy, and energy, when the sun is at its zenith in South Morocco, is sapped.

Their course, as Aylmer was quick to notice, led perpetually upward, but in gradients which almost eluded notice. Gray blue in the haze of distance, the rolling uplands culminated in a range of low hills, but these were a full day's march beyond their powers. Their goal, if it were to be reached within daylight, must be nearer than that. His attention, as the hours went monotonously by, was at last drawn to a gap in the far mapped expanse of vegetation.

A line of green, deeper and of more luxuriant growth than the thickets around them, divided the jungle from east to west. Daoud, turning in his saddle, waved his hand in an important gesture.

"The Gorge of the Bou Djerba, Sidi," he said. "It is my advice that I go forward to reconnoitre--alone."

Aylmer looked at Perinaud. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.

"Monsieur guarantees this fellow, I understand? Well, let him justify himself. I have no objections."

Rattier interrupted.

"It is well understood that I deal with this M. de Landon if he is there, I alone? Your man, now, if he suddenly confronts him--" He broke off with a meaning gesture. "I do not wish my interview with him antic.i.p.ated."

In spite of himself, a smile broke the imperturbability of the sergeant's face. With a suggestive jerk of the hand he dismissed Daoud, who cantered on into and was lost in the jungle of mallow. Perinaud turned sympathetic and now perfectly grave features towards the commandant.

"Monsieur may be easy in his mind," he said quietly. "The man we seek, if I have understood his talents rightly, is hardly likely to be subdued without the display of some force and intelligence."

He turned to give the order to dismount. Rattier watched him with an air of baffled exasperation. There had been a gentle emphasis on the last two words which could scarcely be misunderstood, and as the sailor ruminated over them, his taciturnity showed renewed signs of failing before the rising tide of his wrath. A sudden diversion averted an outbreak.

For a gunshot rang out among the woodland silences into which Daoud had disappeared. It was instantly replied to by the shriller snap of a revolver. And this was followed by a fusillade of five more reports as the weapon was emptied. The Moor's voice was suddenly uplifted.

"To me, Sidi!" he was shouting vehemently. "To me!"

The native officer thundered an order. In a twinkling the men were back in their saddles and, in irregular formation, threading the aisles of thicket at a canter. Aylmer and Rattier followed the sergeant, riding abreast.

There came another report. A bullet whistled between the pair, and from Rattier came a little growl of satisfaction. If there was to be a fight, he seemed to imply, his promised interview with Landon would a.s.sume proportions which were entirely pleasing to him. Perinaud increased his horse's pace, flinging alert glances each side of him rather than in front.

A couple of hundred yards at speed and the forest maze opened into a wide clearing, deeply overgrown with mallow and broom. Through the middle of this, his horse laboring against the growth which was full five feet high, rode Daoud, revolver in hand. A short distance ahead of him the green thicket was grooved in half a dozen places, as unseen bodies crashed through. Daoud's aim was poised and then withdrawn a score of times in as many seconds. The flicker of a white _haik_ would show for a brief instant here and there, and then be swallowed by the jungle.

Daoud would answer these appearances with a bullet, one which apparently invariably missed its mark, for the echo of a mocking triumph greeted them. He turned irritably in the direction of his companions.

He waved his hand significantly, motioning them to deploy right and left, to surround the thicket. Perinaud answered with a comprehending nod.

But Rattier had neither the time nor the inclination for a display of tactics. As Daoud turned his horse to emerge from the mallow, the commandant spurred his charger into the thick of it. And he shouted, he whirled up his right hand, grasping his revolver, with fierce gesticulations of encouragement.

The Goumiers saw, heard, and found little room for hesitation in their mood. Like a torrent released at the breaking of a dam, they followed.

Perinaud thundered an ineffectual protest.

It fell on deaf ears. The green brake was furrowed by a dozen lanes before their impact and then, relentlessly, as it seemed, closed behind them. The horses bucked, plunged, but made little headway. From one of them came a sudden whinnying shriek of pain.

Then it sank under its rider as the knife which had severed its tendons slipped back into the cover from which it had been so swiftly and so silently thrust.

The fallen Goumier cleared himself and scrambled to his feet. His face alone was clear in the sea of vegetation, and it was a mask of anger and bewilderment. And then it, too, was gone with a sudden panting cry.

Aylmer gave a little gasp. The head was there and then it was not. It sank into the green as the swimmer sinks into the blue in a shark-infested sea. But this shark was a human one, and its teeth a long Berber knife. The fugitives of the Beni M'Geel had chosen their battle-ground well.

Horse or man, lance or carbine--what were they against the daggers which the tussocks veiled? Mocking cries echoed in the thicket. Another horse shrieked and fell; another face showed white above the green and then was gone. The Goumiers snarled with rage as they spurred furiously forward, but the clinging mallow held them, shackled them, suffocated them with its density. There was a note of panic in their shouts; they battled no longer for victory but for escape.

The leader of the reckless charge was in slightly better case than the majority. Rattier and one or two others, by chance of circ.u.mstances, stood in wider s.p.a.ces, where the dagger men could not reach them unseen.

They sat in their saddles, alert for opportunity, quivering with rage, but useless. Their glances flashed from side to side, their eyes gleamed, but opportunity evaded them. And the cries of the unseen enemy still mocked them from the ambush.

Carried away by impulse, Aylmer would have joined the charge. Perinaud's hand fell upon his reins with a grip of iron. Aylmer made as if he would release them by force.

The sergeant made a gesture of appeal.

"No, my Captain! This is serious. A little coolness, a little restraint, and we pull them out of this! But to follow! That spells death for us all!"