Part 8

Instantly a beam of intensely white light shot across the dark apartment from the "cage" and fell upon the white wall at the other end. The "Saint" stepped quickly out of the radiance. On the white surface there suddenly appeared a lifesize portrait of His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II--_gowned in long robes and coiffed with a turban_. A gasp of astonishment broke from the peering spectators in the dark room. Once more the "Saint" clapped his hands. The Imperial figure walked in stately fashion straight towards the audience--seeming that in another moment it would be walking out in the air over its heads--stopped, stretched out its right hand, smiled. The muscles of its face moved, the mouth opened--in a speech that none heard. "_Aie! Aie!_" broke from the spellbound tribesmen.

"Alas! that he is so far away that ye cannot hear his words!" lamented the "Saint." "But I can hear them. He tells you to believe in me, who am his messenger, by the grace of Allah and the Prophet. O Allah, vouchsafe that these Thy followers may witness with their own eyes the conversion of the vizirs to the true faith!" Again a clap of the hands, and the picture on the wall changed.

The tribesmen gazed at what to a Western eye would have been an obviously cardboard imitation of an Oriental room with a dais on one side of it. On that dais stood the figure in Moslem robes. Filling the remainder of the room was a throng of men in German uniforms, _pickelhaube_ on their heads. They advanced one by one to the figure on the dais, knelt, offered up their spiked helmets, and received in exchange a turban from their graciously smiling lord.

"See, O people, and believe!" cried the "Saint."

"_Aie! Aie!_" came the response. "We see and we believe! God is great! There is none great but God, and unto Him be all the praise!"

"Listen! O true believers! The Holy Prophet laid a command on the great Sultan Willem that he should immediately convert all the Frankish nations to the true faith. And the Sultan Willem gave glory to Allah that this command was laid upon him. He sent forth his armies in the great Jehad. The Sultan's armies are the most numerous and bravest in the whole world--not Timur nor Rustum might have stood against them--and none may count the number of their victories in the great war against the infidel Franks. Their triumphs are as the rocks on the hill-sides, beyond reckoning and eternal. All the nations of the Franks fled before them, and were slain like dogs as they ran. And most of all fled before them and were slain the insolent English dogs that, thinking themselves far away from the power of the Sultan Willem, are puffed up with a vain pride and tread upon the neck of the true believer in the land beyond the Indus--nay, who invade your hills and lay waste your crops, seeking to destroy the one true faith. Is it not so?"

"Allah knoweth! He speaketh through thy lips, O holy one!" was the chorused reply from the darkened room. There could be no denial of any statement from a source of such sanctity.

"Look then upon the battle and the destruction of the English dogs!" cried Abd-ul-Islam, giving the signal once more.

Immediately another picture appeared upon the wall--a picture of pseudo-British troops, uniformed so as to be familiar to the tribesmen, taking up a position for battle.

"Watch! O children of the Prophet!" cried the wonder-worker. "Behold the djinns which the Sultan Willem has under his command--for to him has the Prophet given the power of Solomon--behold the djinns that go before the Sultan's army destroying the English infidels!"

Great founts of black smoke leaped up among the soldiers on the wall--debris was flung high into the air--bodies lay upon the ground, visible where the smoke cleared. The soldiers fired quickly from behind cover, dodged, flung up their arms, and fell smitten by an invisible foe. The picture, though a "fake," was cleverly done and would have deceived more sophisticated spectators. The tribesmen did not suppress their exclamations of awe and wonder.

"Behold!" cried the showman. "The soldiers of the Sultan advance!" A serried line of German infantry swept across the picture, bayonets levelled, and the survivors of the defending troops fled before them. The line changed direction and marched straight towards the spectators, an irresistibly advancing menace, swelling larger and larger, uncannily silent.

Shrill cries of alarm broke out from the darkened room. "_Aie! Aie!_ Allah protect us! We are God's and unto God shall we return!"

The line of infantry swelled to a superhuman immensity, seemed on the point of reaching the spectators--and then there was darkness.

From the gloom came the voice of the German emissary.

"You have beheld, O children of the true Faith, the infidel English ran like dogs!"

"Like dogs they ran! With our own eyes we have seen it, praise be to Allah! Death to the infidel!"

"Now see the soldiers of the Prophet, the victorious army of the Sultan, destroying the Christian mosques in the conquered country!" announced the showman, in a voice of triumph.

On the wall was thrown the picture of a Belgian village church. German soldiers were busy about it. Then volumes of smoke began to issue from the windows, tongues of flame. The roof fell in. The church was reduced to a ruin.

"Behold! Ye see with your own eyes!"

"We see, we see! God is great! Unto Him be the praise!" came the reply from the spectators.

"Now see others!" cried the German. "This is the work of the Sultan's armies--will ye now doubt that he has set his face against the Christian infidels?"

Picture after picture of ruined and desolated churches followed upon the wall. The German authorities had evidently prepared a special film of them. Cries of wild approbation broke from the fanatical tribesmen, the mullahs loudest.

"Once more, O people, look upon the English prisoners, whose lives have been spared because they have embraced the true faith, being led through the Sultan's capital!"

A film of a few British prisoners from Gallipoli being marched through the streets of Constantinople was then shown, amid shouts of applause.

The picture was taken off, but the beam of light still blazed across the room. The German placed himself full in it.

"Ye have seen with your own eyes, O warriors of the hills! Praise be to Allah for His mercies! Ye will no longer doubt. In the name of the Prophet, the Sultan Willem, the protector of Islam, commands that ye rise up and sweep beyond the Indus. Everywhere the power of the English is broken. With your own eyes ye have seen it. Only on your borders do they still keep up a vain show. Rise up, O children of the Prophet, and sweep these dogs of infidels into the sea! The rich lands of India and much loot will be the reward of your valour. Paradise awaits those who fall in the sacred fight! The green banner of Islam shall wave over the entire earth, for there is no God but God, Mohammed is His Prophet, and the Sultan Willem is His chosen instrument!"

Karl Schultz felt an inward glow of triumph at his own histrionic power as, his words ringing sonorously through the stone apartment, he stood in the full blaze of light and raised his arm. It evoked loud shouts of fanatic frenzy from the excited assembly. They clamoured to be led against the infidel there and now. He kept his arm outstretched as though to still the tumult, as though his discourse were yet unfinished.

But the cries would not cease. "Great is Allah! Death to the infidel! Death! Allah! Allah! There is no God but God! Allah! Allah! Allah! Death to the infidel--death!"

Suddenly there was a new element in the vociferation, a movement among the assembly far back in the dark room. "Make way for the holy man with great tidings from India! Make way for the _Haj_! In the name of the Prophet--make way, dogs that ye are!"

Schultz looked towards the venerable figure of Muhammed Din pressing through the throng. A sudden doubt leaped up in him, was extinguished in self-confidence. The strange fakir approached. The wild clamour of the tribesmen was stilled in curiosity. They fell back in a sudden awe.

Schultz watched the venerable stranger advance solemnly, silently, into the blaze of light in which he himself stood. Again he was conscious of an instinctive tremor. "The peace of Allah be with thee, O _Haj_!" he said, and he found that he had deliberately to control his own voice. There was something uncannily impressive in the advance of this silent, dignified old man.

"And with all the faithful!" came the sonorous reply, enigmatic to the German's ears.

He found himself looking into a pair of strangely disturbing eyes; heard, with a wild reeling shock of the spirit, his own tongue spoken in a low, level Oriental voice.

"Move not a finger and make not a sound, Schultz Sahib, or you are a dead man!" Schultz Sahib's eyes glimpsed the muzzle of a pistol not six inches from his chest. "_Smile, Sahib!_ or your friends may interrupt us."

Having once ceded to the menace of the pistol, the German's brain could not resist the command of the imperative eyes that seemed to be boring deep into him. He _smiled_--a deathly smile.

"You have forgotten me, Schultz Sahib? It is not so long since we worked together on the railway. One of us at least learned a great deal about the other in those days, _Sahib_. _Smile!_--keep smiling!"

A wild revolt surged up in the German, subsided, without exterior evidence, under the glare of the dominating eyes which held his fascinated. He tried to turn away his gaze, was checked by the level, purposeful voice of the fakir.

"Keep your eyes on mine, _Sahib_! Look elsewhere and you are dead before you have looked!"

He heard the words reverberating through him, endlessly re-echoing in chambers of his soul magically open to them. He felt himself fixed, immobile, in a strange paralysis of the faculties. The terrible eyes looked into his that he could not close--he felt, as it were, waves of immeasurable strange force flowing from them, rolling over him, submerging him. And yet still he looked into the eyes of the fakir, his own eyes an open port to their influence.

A subtle, pervading odour ascended his nostrils, filled his lungs, mounted to his head. His brain grew dizzy with it. And still the compelling eyes held him, prevented him from turning his own eyes to the source of the odour. He lost the sense of his environment, was oblivious to the awed tribesmen staring silently at the pair in the blaze of light. He saw nothing but the eyes--lost consciousness of his own body. He stared--and lost consciousness even of the eyes at which he stared.

There was vacuity, oblivion, an annihilation of time--and then out of that vacuity a voice commenced to speak. He heard it with a shock of the nerves--it crashed through darkness with a mighty power. He seemed suspended like a lost spirit in everlasting night, fumbling around the vague yet massive foundations of the world--indefinitely remote from all that he had ever known. He could not detach himself from those foundations. They quivered under the booming voice, communicated an unpleasant thrill to the core of him. An awful unimaginable disaster seemed to envelop him. The tiny germ of consciousness that was still his fought for extension, strove to see. All was blackness--blackness. And still the voice went on relentlessly, driving through darkness, like a ploughshare thrust forward by the firm grip of a mighty and inexorable hand. Immeasurable results seemed dependent on its progress. He listened to it--and as he focused himself on the listening, a dim perception of his environment came to him. He was vaguely conscious of a sea of faces, upturned, listening--as he himself listened. Those faces--they were in some relation to him, there was a link between them and him--he could not determine it. He listened. The words rang like sounding brass, the vowels roaringly sonorous, the consonants clashing. He concentrated himself on their meaning--penetrated to it suddenly as through veils smitten asunder.

"_Lies and again lies, O children of the Prophet! A mockery of lies! The Sultan Willem is a servant of Shaitan who feigneth religion that he may lure true believers to their damnation while they unwittingly serve the Evil One!_" His perception leaped up, clawing at danger, and then was dragged down again, engulfed. He felt himself like a man drowning in black waters at night--down--down--and then, fighting obscurely, he shot up again, heard the inexorable voice continuing: "_This magic you have looked upon is a false magic--the magic of unbelievers in league with Eblis!_" He heard the re-echoing denunciation in a spasm of full consciousness--was suddenly cognizant of the sea of faces, of fierce passions exhaling from it--was completely aware of the menace of utter ruin. A great revulsion surged in him. This must be stopped--stopped! The necessity for instant protest was an anguish in him. All of himself that he could summon from the darkness as his own shrieked the negative, and yet he did not utter a sound--knew that he did not. "_Climb up into that box some of you, and ye shall find no magic but a Frank there!_" He strained with all his soul towards the faculty of speech--felt his powers vanquishing the spell of dumbness--on the verge of utterance shaped his words of denial. "_Lo! have I not spoken the truth? Yea, I cannot speak other than the truth, for I am the runaway servant of Muhammed Din, and his sanctity hath broken the compact between me and the Evil One!_" In staggering horror he realized--_the voice was his own_!

He stood fixed, incapable of movement, and saw--like a man that has dreamed and cannot yet distinguish dream from reality--the mob of tribesmen surging obscurely in the long stone room, saw the blinding white eye of the lantern still shining steadfastly upon him--saw it waver, swing from side to side, and then, with one last blinding flash, disappear. In the utter darkness he heard shouts and shrieks and fierce derisive laughter. He heard crash upon crash as heavy objects were flung from a height at the other end of the room. He heard a piercing yell, an agonized, appealing utterance of his own name. For a brief second it shocked him into complete consciousness--_his operator_! Then, ere he could break his invisible bonds, he felt a pair of cool hands pressed tightly against his brow, over his eyes, and he relapsed totally--with a last little gasp--into nothingness.

He awoke again to see the tribesmen surging round him, fiercely shouting. The room re-echoed with reiterated cries of "_Sharm! Sharm!_"[1] and a howl that was so unmistakably for blood that it chilled him to the heart. The room was lighter now--the rags had been pulled down from the high loopholes in the wall. He saw Muhammed Din standing before him, fending off his adversaries. He was still incapable of voluntary movement. A great faintness swept over him. He reeled back; found himself supported by the angle of the wall. He had been thrust back there all unconscious of the movement.

Dazed and sick, he heard Muhammed Din speaking.

"O children of the Hills, Allah and His holy Prophet sent me to you to rescue you from the snare of the Evil One. On me is laid the charge of vengeance upon this wretch, who was my slave ere he became the possessed of Shaitan. But this much of vengeance will I grant ye, for this much is just. He made a mock of you. Make ye a mock of him. Let him be driven out of the village, face tailwards upon an ass. The women and children shall cry derision upon the runaway servant who came to deceive you as a saint with the false magic of Shaitan!"

Staring speechlessly before him, the exposed charlatan heard the howls of approval of the mob. His faintly working intellect wondered how the mullah was taking this deception--perhaps even yet---- He saw Muhammed Din hold up a large bag of money. He recognized it with a last hopelessness.

"This gold"--Muhammed Din emptied some of it upon his hand--"this gold hath my servant surely received from Shaitan. It is accursed unless some holy man receive it. Therefore to you, O Mullah, do I give it."

The mullah snatched at it.

"Great is Allah and for the meanest of His creatures doth He provide!" he said. "Thou speakest truth, O holy fakir. Praise be to Allah that I am here to protect the faithful from the accursed magic of this gold. As to this wretch, accursed of Allah, let him be driven quickly forth as thou sayest, O holy one! It is meet that thy vengeance should not have to linger."

There was a rush at the fallen magician. He swooned into their arms.

* * * * *

Some little time later, when the last stone had been flung and the last epithet of mocking insult had ceased to echo from the hills, Schultz Sahib, his hands bound behind his back, his feet tied under the belly of his mount, raised his eyes from the ass's tail that he had been contemplating.

"Thou hast won, O Muhammed Din--but even yet I do not understand. What happened?"

The fakir smiled.

"Thou hast thy magics, Schultz Sahib--what thinkest thou of the magic of Muhammed Din? Hurry, O Willem, hurry!" he cried, as his stick descended with a resounding thwack upon the hind-quarters of the ass. "Thou art laggard in thy invasion of the territories of the English!"

* * * * *

The Political Officer listened to the story, and, embracing hypnotism in the studies of his exile, made a note of it.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Sharm_, a stain of dishonour that can only be obliterated in blood. The conception that underlies the blood-feud.]

THE OTHER SIDE

A deep silence brooded over No. 3 Ward, Officers. It was late afternoon in October, but the room was as yet unillumined from within. The two long lines of windows that confronted one another--the ward was a temporary hut-building--did so in a contrast of lights, the eastern windows, backed by grey obscurity, reflecting broken beams of the glory of gold and purple and fiery red that streamed in from the west. The two lines of beds, the indistinct greys and whites of the ward, were delicately touched by the warm glow where they rose into its radiance. It picked out the short curves of the turned-back sheet, humped with the recumbent form beneath, in an imponderable caress upon the broken humanity that lay, desperately finite, under the splendour that knows no final setting. A mingled odour of disinfectant and anæsthetic hung in the air, explanatory of the dead quiet, of the heavy breathing that was part of the silence. This was a ward of the severely wounded, recently arrived. From the utmost climax of human effort, thunderous to the ear, dreadful to the eye, maddening to the soul whether it exulted triumphant over the menace of instant extinction or shrank appalled and paralysed in the horror of brutal death, from the fierce superiority of the unscathed killer, from the sudden shock, these men had come, many of them unconsciously, by train and ship and train and car to the white and green hospital on the empty moorland, to the hushed screened peace of the bed-ranked ward.

At the further end of the ward a Medical Officer stood in murmured conversation with a Sister. He was outlined black against the radiance of the sunset, but on her the glow fell fully illuminant, rosy upon the starched whiteness of the coif and apron, touching the pale face into faint colour. Her large, serious eyes rested upon him, attentive to his instructions, glanced away to the patient in the end bed as he spoke.

"Number Ten must be very carefully watched, Sister," he said, the little smile upon his face indicative only of his confidence in the quiet young woman before him, in no way minimising the gravity of his words. "I am afraid we are going to have a very hard fight for him. But we mustn't let him slip through our fingers. We'll keep him on this side if we can."

She assented with a nod of the head, and a long deep breath that was clearly a sigh. He scrutinised her sharply.

"You have something on your mind, Sister. No bad news, I hope?" His voice was very kind. "Captain Hershaw is all right?"

The Sister's engagement was generally known in the hospital.

The large eyes opened, revealing a mute, long-suffered anxiety.

"It is more than a week since I heard from him, Doctor. I am afraid--horribly afraid," she said in a low voice. "This terrible fighting----!"

"The post is sometimes held up during active operations, Sister. You must not be prematurely anxious. A week is not very long. You must believe in his luck. He has had a charmed life so far," the M.O.'s kindly smile emphasised his reassuring tone.

"He has--he has. And life always seems so--so vivid in him. I cannot imagine him"--her voice sank almost to inaudibility--"dead."

"Don't!" He smiled, full of sympathy. "Believe in his star." His tone changed to the professional. "Would you like to go off duty, Sister? I will speak to the Matron. A car is going into town. Go and look at the shops."

"No--no, Doctor, thank you very much. I won't leave my dear boys here. Poor lads! it does me good to fight for them--almost as if----" she stopped, turned away.

"Very well, Sister. Send for me if any change occurs in Number Ten."

The M.O. walked down the ward, throwing little glances at the silent patients, and departed.

For some little time the Sister busied herself noiselessly about the ward. Then Number Ten stirred uneasily in his bed.

"Sister!" he called in a faint voice.

She was by his side in an instant.

"A drink, please!"

She gave it him, looked down on the young, strongly masculine features as he drank, with an interest that was subtly, unconsciously more than professional. From the moment of his arrival in the ward--even in his silences--Number Ten had been a personality. Though powerless in bed there was a curious hint of brute force in him.

"Now you must go to sleep again, Captain Lavering," she said, smoothing his pillow.

"I can't, Sister." His eyes closed and opened again in a spasm of pain. "I--I want to feel someone near me," his voice was very weak, "to get hold of life again. Sister, sit beside me--for a moment, please."

She glanced at him irresolutely, smoothed the hair from his hot forehead with a cool hand, and then acceded to his request, seated herself on the chair by the bed.

"But you mustn't talk!" she warned him.

"I won't, Sister!" He was quiet for a moment. "Sister! I'm very bad, I know--but I'm not going to die! I won't die--I won't let myself die!" Despite his weakness, there was intense will-power in his tone.

"Hush, hush! Of course you are not going to die." Involuntarily, she laid her hand upon the bed as if to transfuse some of her own life-force into him.

He reached out a hand, grasped hers, resisted her attempt at withdrawal.

"Please!--please!" he murmured. "I want to hold on to life--there's so much----" His eyes closed sleepily. "I feel life flowing into me," he said. The grip on her hand was tight.

For a long time she sat thus, her hand clasped in his. Number Ten slept, with heavy breathing. It seemed to her that his fever diminished. She feared to withdraw herself lest she should awaken him. The long ward was deathly still.

Presently there was a noise of footsteps. An orderly approached, changing his gait to a clumsy tip-toe in obedience to her gesture.

"A telegram for you, Sister," he said.

She glanced at the patient, essayed to release her hand. It was firmly held in the sleeper's grasp.

"Open the telegram, Thomson," she said in a whisper.

The orderly obeyed, handed her the drab piece of paper.

She took it, glanced at it, nodded a speechless dismissal to the orderly.

"_The War Office reports that Ronald is missing believed killed Hershaw._"