A Desert Drama - Arthur Conan Doyle (snow like ashes series .txt) 📗

are three very good camels among those which are near the cooking-fire. But how are we to get the women upon them?—and if we had them upon them, we know very well that they would fall off when they began to gallop. I fear that you men will fall off, for it is no easy matter to remain upon a galloping camel; but as to the women, it is impossible. No, we shall leave the women, and if you will not leave the women, then we shall leave all of you and start by ourselves.”

“Very good! Go!” said the Colonel, abruptly, and settled down as if to sleep once more. He knew that with Orientals it is the silent man who is most likely to have his way.

The negro turned and crept away for some little distance, where he was met by one of his fellaheen comrades, Mehemet Ali, who had charge of the camels. The two argued for some little time,—for those three hundred golden pieces were not to be lightly resigned. Then the negro crept back to Colonel Cochrane.

“Mehemet Ali has agreed,” said he. “He has gone to put the nose-rope upon three more of the camels. But it is foolishness, and we are all going to our death. Now come with me, and we shall awaken the women and tell them.”

The Colonel shook his companions and whispered to them what was in the wind. Belmont and Fardet were ready for any risk. Stephens, to whom the prospect of a passive death presented little terror, was seized with a convulsion of fear when he thought of any active exertion to avoid it, and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. Then he pulled out his Baedeker and began to write his will upon the fly-leaf, but his hand twitched so that he was hardly legible. By some strange gymnastic of the legal mind, a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a place in the established order of things, while a death which overtook one galloping frantically over a desert was wholly irregular and discomposing. It was not dissolution which he feared, but the humiliation and agony of a fruitless struggle against it.

Colonel Cochrane and Tippy Tilly had crept together under the shadow of the great acacia tree to the spot where the women were lying. Sadie and her aunt lay with their arms round each other, the girl's head pillowed upon the old woman's bosom. Mrs. Belmont was awake, and entered into the scheme in an instant.

“But you must leave me,” said Miss Adams, earnestly. “What does it matter at my age, anyhow?”

“No, no, Aunt Eliza; I won't move without you! Don't you think it!” cried the girl. “You've got to come straight away, or else we both stay right here where we are.”

“Come, come, ma'am, there is no time for arguing,” said the Colonel, roughly. “Our lives all depend upon your making an effort, and we cannot possibly leave you behind.”

“But I will fall off.”

“I'll tie you on with my puggaree. I wish I had the cummerbund which I lent poor Stuart. Now, Tippy, I think we might make a break for it!”

But the black soldier had been staring with a disconsolate face out over the desert, and he turned upon his heel with an oath.

“There!” said he, sullenly. “You see what comes of all your foolish talking! You have ruined our chances as well as your own!”

Half a dozen mounted camel-men had appeared suddenly over the lip of the bowl-shaped hollow, standing out hard and clear against the evening sky, where the copper basin met its great blue lid. They were travelling fast, and waved their rifles as they came. An instant later the bugle sounded an alarm, and the camp was up with a buzz like an overturned bee-hive. The Colonel ran back to his companions, and the black soldier to his camel. Stephens looked relieved, and Belmont sulky, while Monsieur Fardet raved, with his one uninjured hand in the air.

“Sacred name of a dog!” he cried. “Is there no end to it, then? Are we never to come out of the hands of these accursed Dervishes?”

“Oh, they really are Dervishes, are they?” said the Colonel, in an acid voice. “You seem to be altering your opinions. I thought they were an invention of the British Government.”

The poor fellows' tempers were getting frayed and thin. The Colonel's sneer was like a match to a magazine, and in an instant the Frenchman was dancing in front of him with a broken torrent of angry words. His hand was clutching at Cochrane's throat before Belmont and Stephens could pull him off.

“If it were not for your grey hairs——” he said.

“Damn your impudence!” cried the Colonel.

“If we have to die, let us die like gentlemen, and not like so many corner-boys,” said Belmont, with dignity.

“I only said I was glad to see that Monsieur Fardet had learned something from his adventures,” the Colonel sneered.

“Shut up, Cochrane! What do you want to aggravate him for?” cried the Irishman.

“Upon my word, Belmont, you forget yourself! I do not permit people to address me in this fashion.”

“You should look after your own manners, then.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, here are the ladies!” cried Stephens, and the angry, overstrained men relapsed into a gloomy silence, pacing up and down, and jerking viciously at their moustaches. It is a very catching thing, ill-temper, for even Stephens began to be angry at their anger, and to scowl at them as they passed him. Here they were at a crisis in their fate, with the shadow of death above them, and yet their minds were all absorbed in some personal grievance so slight that they could hardly put it into words. Misfortune brings the human spirit to a rare height, but the pendulum still swings.

But soon their attention was drawn away to more important matters. A council of war was being held beside the wells, and the two Emirs, stern and composed, were listening to a voluble report from the leader of the patrol. The prisoners noticed that, though the fierce, old man stood like a graven image, the younger Emir passed his hand over his beard once or twice with a nervous gesture, the thin, brown fingers twitching among the long, black hair.

“I believe the Gippies are after us,” said Belmont. “Not very far off either, to judge by the fuss they are making.”

“It looks like it. Something has scared them.”

“Now he's giving orders. What can it be? Here, Mansoor, what is the matter?”

The dragoman came running up with the light of hope shining upon his brown face.

“I think they have seen something to frighten them. I believe that the soldiers are behind us. They have given the order to fill the waterskins, and be ready for a start when the darkness comes. But I am ordered to gather you together, for the Moolah is coming to convert you all. I have already told him that you are all very much inclined to think the same with him.”

How far Mansoor may have gone with his assurances may never be known, but the Mussulman preacher came walking towards them at this moment with a paternal and contented smile upon his face, as one who has a pleasant and easy task before him. He was a one-eyed man, with a fringe of grizzled beard and a face which was fat, but which looked as if it had once been fatter, for it was marked with many folds and creases. He had a green turban upon his head, which marked him as a Mecca pilgrim. In one hand he carried a small brown carpet, and in the other a parchment copy of the Koran. Laying his carpet upon the ground, he motioned Mansoor to his side, and then gave a circular sweep of his arm to signify that the prisoners should gather round him, and a downward wave which meant that they should be seated. So they grouped themselves round him, sitting on the short green sward under the palm-tree, these seven forlorn representatives of an alien creed, and in the midst of them sat the fat little preacher, his one eye dancing from face to face as he expounded the principles of his newer, cruder, and more earnest faith. They listened attentively and nodded their heads as Mansoor translated the exhortation, and with each sign of their acquiescence the Moolah became more amiable in his manner and more affectionate in his speech.

“For why should you die, my sweet lambs, when all that is asked of you is that you should set aside that which will carry you to everlasting Gehenna, and accept the law of Allah as written by His prophet, which will assuredly bring you unimaginable joys, as is promised in the Book of the Camel? For what says the chosen one?”—and he broke away into one of those dogmatic texts which pass in every creed as an argument. “Besides, is it not clear that God is with us, since from the beginning, when we had but sticks against the rifles of the Turks, victory has always been with us? Have we not taken El Obeid, and taken Khartoum, and destroyed Hicks and slain Gordon, and prevailed against every one who has come against us? How, then, can it be said that the blessing of Allah does not rest upon us?”

The Colonel had been looking about him during the long exhortation of the Moolah, and he had observed that the Dervishes were cleaning their guns, counting their cartridges, and making all the preparations of men who expected that they might soon be called upon to fight. The two Emirs were conferring together with grave faces, and the leader of the patrol pointed, as he spoke to them, in the direction of Egypt. It was evident that there was at least a chance of a rescue if they could only keep things going for a few more hours. The camels were not recovered yet from their long march, and the pursuers, if they were indeed close behind, were almost certain to overtake them.

“For God's sake, Fardet, try and keep him in play,” said he. “I believe we have a chance if we can only keep the ball rolling for another hour or so.”

But a Frenchman's wounded dignity is not so easily appeased. Monsieur Fardet sat moodily with his back against the palm-tree, and his black brows drawn down. He said nothing, but he still pulled at his thick, strong moustache.

“Come on, Fardet! We depend upon you,” said Belmont.

“Let Colonel Cochrane do it,” the Frenchman answered, snappishly. “He takes too much upon himself, this Colonel Cochrane.”

“There! there!” said Belmont, soothingly, as if he were speaking to a fractious child. “I am quite sure that the Colonel will express his regret at what has happened, and will acknowledge that he was in the wrong——”

“I'll do nothing of the sort,” snapped the Colonel.

“Besides, that is merely a personal quarrel,” Belmont continued, hastily. “It is for the good of the whole party that we wish you to speak with the Moolah, because we all feel that you are the best man for the job.”

But the Frenchman only shrugged his shoulders and relapsed into a deeper gloom.

The Moolah looked from one to the other, and the kindly expression began to fade away from his large, baggy face. His mouth drew down at the corners, and became hard and severe.

“Have these infidels been playing with us, then?” said he to the dragoman. “Why is it that they talk among themselves and have nothing to say to me?”

“He is getting impatient about it,” said Cochrane. “Perhaps I had better do what I can, Belmont, since this damned fellow has left us in the lurch.”

But the ready wit of a woman saved the situation.

“I am sure, Monsieur Fardet,” said Mrs. Belmont, “that you, who are a Frenchman, and therefore a man of gallantry and honour, would not permit your own wounded feelings to interfere with