Yussuf the Guide Part 34

So he did laugh, and the professor too, while the old lawyer gave an angry stamp.

"Look here," said the professor; "shall I wear the fez, and you can take my hat?"

"Stuff, sir! you know your head's twice as big as mine," cried Mr Burne.

"Have mine, Mr Burne," said Lawrence.

"Bah! do you think I've got a stupid little head like you have. No, I shall wear the fez, and I hope we shall meet some English people. It will be a warning to them not to come out into such wild spots as this."

The fact was that the old gentleman looked thoroughly picturesque, while Yussuf looked scarcely less so, as he rapidly turned the roll of muslin which he had taken from his fez into a comfortable white head-dress and put it on.

Then, taking the stick and the straw hat, he climbed up to the top of the ridge, where they saw him shoulder the stick and walk to and fro as if on guard, before rapidly arranging the hat upon the top of a little cypress-tree, and placing the stick through the branches at a slope.

So cleverly was this done, that even from where the travellers stood just below, the ruse was effective. Seen from a quarter of a mile away it must have been just like Mr Burne on sentry.

"There," said the old lawyer with comic anger, "worse and worse. I am being set up in effigy for these barbarians to laugh at."

"No," said the professor, "we are having the laugh at them."

Yussuf came down smiling after finishing his task, and then, a final glance round having been given, and a look at the arms, they prepared to mount.

One of the baggage-horses bore the grain used for their supply, and as a good feed for six horses night and morning had somewhat reduced his load, he was chosen to bear Hamed.

For the driver, in spite of the bold face he put upon the matter, was quite unfit to walk. The rough treatment he had received when his legs were tied together had completely crippled him, and in addition his head was injured by a kick from his horse when he fell.

The man was brave, though, as soon as he found that he was not to be left behind, and all being now ready, Yussuf climbed the ridge once more to see whether the enemy was approaching, and after peering just over the edge, he descended, and they went on down the defile as fast as their horses could walk.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

THE PROFESSOR IS STARTLED.

It was an exciting flight, the more so from the fact that they were obliged to keep on at a foot-pace because of the baggage-horses, when at any moment they knew that the enemy might appear behind in full chase.

Certainly the road was bad, and it was only here and there that they could have ventured upon a trot or canter; but this did not lessen the anxiety that was felt.

A dozen times over the professor would have been glad to pause and investigate some wonderful chasm or rift, but Yussuf was inexorable. He pointed out that it would be madness to stop, for at any time the enemy might appear in sight, so Mr Preston had to resign himself to his fate.

It was the same when, during the heat of the afternoon, they came to the ruins of a tower placed upon an angle in the defile quite a thousand feet above the rough track, so as to command a good view in every direction. From where they stood it looked ancient enough to have been erected far back in the days when the armies of a.s.syria or Egypt pa.s.sed through these gates of the country; certainly it was not later than the Roman times.

"One might find inscriptions, perhaps, or something else to explain when it was made," said the professor. "Come, Yussuf, don't you think we might stop and ascend here?"

"No, effendi," replied Yussuf sternly. "Those dogs may be close upon our track, and I cannot let you run risks. We are not all men."

"Yussuf is perfectly right," said Mr Burne, who had become quite reconciled to his fez with its gaudy roll of yellow silk; in fact, two or three times over he had taken it off and held it up to examine it as it rested on his fist. "He is perfectly right," he repeated, "we do not want to fight, unless driven to extremities, and discretion is the better part of valour."

"Yes," said the professor, looking up longingly at the watch-tower, "but--"

"Now, my dear Preston, you really must not run risks for the sake of a few stones," cried the old lawyer. "Come."

There was no help for it, so the professor sighed, and they rode slowly on, with the heat growing more and more intense, till toward sundown, when, about a hundred and fifty feet above the path, there was a cl.u.s.ter of ruins, evidently of quite modern date, and among them a few old fruit-trees, one of which, a plum, showed a good many purple fruit here and there.

The lawyer made a peculiar noise with his mouth as he drew rein, the others following his example.

"Now, there are some ruins that you might very well examine," he said, pointing upwards with the barrel of his gun. "Shall we dismount and climb up?"

"To see these?" said the professor quietly; and then a change came over his countenance, and he laughed softly as he turned round to look his travelling companion in the face. "Which stones do you want to look at?" he said.

"Those, sir, those," cried Mr Burne fiercely. "Can't you see?"

"No," said the professor smiling; "I do not know which you mean, whether it is the building stones or the plum stones."

"Tchah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old gentleman, with his face puckering up into a comical grin. "There, come along."

Yussuf smiled too as he rode on, and at the end of a few moments he said gravely:

"The plums would not have been worth gathering, effendi. They are a bitter, sour kind."

"Grapes are too, when the fox cannot reach them--eh, Lawrence?"

No more was said, for every one was exhausted with the long slow ride.

The little wind there was came from behind, and they were wandering in and out to such an extent that the soft mountain-breeze was completely shut off, and the horses were beginning to suffer terribly now from want of water to quench their burning thirst.

At last, in front, that for which they had been hoping to see appeared to be at hand, for a patch of broad green bushes at the foot of a rock told plainly that their fresh growth must be the result of abundant watering at the roots, and, pressing onward, to their delight the horses proved the correctness of their belief by breaking into a canter, and soon carrying them to where the defile ended in one of larger extent, at whose junction a spring of clear water gushed from the foot of a rock, and Lawrence cried eagerly:

"Why, this is the old place where we left Hamed!"

And so it proved to be.

Here, pursued or not, it was absolutely necessary to stop and recruit the horses, even if they had been prepared to suffer themselves; so a halt was made, one of the party took it in turn to be sentry, and the package containing provision was undone, the horses finding plenty of herbage to satisfy their wants.

Yussuf took the first watch, while Lawrence and his friends were enjoying their repast with the hunger and appet.i.te produced by such a long fast; and then Lawrence took his place, while Yussuf seated himself upon a stone by the spring, and began eating his simple meal of hard bread and a few dates.

The night was coming on fast; and, enticed by the beauty of the shadows that were deepening in the gorge through which they had gone in pursuit of the robbers the day before, the professor walked on and on till he was nearly abreast of the rock-dwellings.

They were just visible, but where he stood the gorge was in profound darkness, and he remained watching the ruins fade away as it were in the evening gloom, till, feeling that it was time to return, he was in the act of going back, when a peculiar click struck his ear, and he knew as well as if he had seen the act that a horse had struck its armed hoof against a stone.

Had he felt any doubt it was set aside by a low snort, and, feeling that one of their steeds had strayed after him, and then gone on toward the end of the gorge, he was about to hurry forward and seize it, when a second click startled him, and in an instant he realised that the enemy had evidently been duped by the sham sentry, and given up the attempt to attack them. What was more, he grasped that the enemy had started a ruse of their own, and were coming along the larger gorge, to turn back during the night by the spring, so as to take them in the rear, while they were expecting an attack in front.

The professor realised all this as he stood there in the darkness leaning upon his gun, and afraid to stir, for he knew that to do so was to betray his whereabouts to a set of men who would perhaps take his life, and even if they spared this, carry him off to hold him to ransom.

Worse still; they would then go on and surprise the party by the spring, his presence betraying their whereabouts, for there was only one spot likely in that stony wilderness for people to halt, and that was of course by the water side.

What was he to do?

It was a hard question, and the professor felt himself at his wits' end.

He had stepped a dozen yards out of the track, and was standing amongst some rough stones which helped the darkness to conceal his presence, though the valley was in such a deep shadow that, as he strained eyes and ears to make out and count the enemy, he could do neither, though he knew now that they had halted just opposite to him, and he could hear them whispering evidently in consultation before they took another step in advance.