CHAPTER VIII--THE SWORDSMITH OF AIN AFROO

The approaching advent of the Jew had introduced a new element of danger into the enterprise. If he should reach the village before Ingleton was released, clearly the game was up. Instead of getting a good sleep, Tom lay awake, talking over the situation with Oliphant. He got Abdul to describe the kasbah, but the description was so vague--the Moor when he lived in the village having taken the stronghold for granted--that he felt incapable of making any plans without seeing the place for himself. When he made this suggestion Oliphant scouted it.

"For one thing," he said, "it's too dangerous; for another, where do I come in?"

"Of course I should have to take Abdul--or rather he would have to take me; and however dangerous it would be for two, it would be still more dangerous for three. If you'll stay and keep an eye on the airship, I'll take advantage of the moonlight and go and have a look round. Your turn will come, you may be sure of that. If I don't come back, you know how to set the machine going. Scoot back to the yacht, and get Mr. Greatorex to make straight for Tangier."

"There'll be a pretty row about this before we've done with it! All right!--if you _will_ go. But I say, they'll spot you for a foreigner if any one catches sight of you--in those clothes."

"Yes; I forgot that. I wish I'd provided myself with a rig-out in the Moorish style."

Here Abdul produced from the folds of his djellab a small bundle, which, being unrolled, proved to be a long grey garment with a pair of yellow shoes wrapped in it.

"You're a brick, Abdul!" cried Tom. "You guessed I'd want something of this sort, eh?"

"Yes, master. I could only get one."

"So you're out of it for the present, anyhow, Oliphant. Well, good-bye. If we're lucky we'll be back by the morning; if not--you know what to do."

Five minutes later Tom, swathed in the djellab, disappeared over the brow of the hill with Abdul. He carried his revolver; the Moor had only a knife. In his unfamiliar garment Tom found it by no means easy to make the descent down the rough precipitous path; but Abdul went first, picking the easiest course, and both arrived safely at the bottom.

Then they began their march to the village. It was a toilsome journey, and Tom found the Moorish slippers a very inconvenient footgear. A long tramp, and another steep climb, brought them to the wall of the village, which was built on the slope of the hill. The gates had been shut at sunset, Abdul explained: that was the Moorish fashion. Tom perceived that the wall was utterly dilapidated: in that respect Ain Afroo was typically Moorish. In many parts the parapet had fallen to pieces, and, for any protection it afforded, the wall might as well not have been there. It gave easy foothold to a climber, and Tom indulged a hope that the kasbah might prove to be in equally bad preservation.

From what Abdul had told him, Tom guessed that the stronghold lay at the upper extremity of the village, about eighty or ninety yards from the wall. The Moor's knowledge of the place enabled him to lead Tom to a spot where it would clearly be an easy matter to climb the battlements. Secure in their remoteness, and in the fact that no hostile force could come within many miles of the village without being instantly announced, the inhabitants kept only a perfunctory watch. A few men, Abdul said, were regularly on guard at the north-east and south-west corners; but no attempt was made to watch the walls in general. Knowing the state of the defences, this fact gave Tom some amusement. With walls so ruinous the gates were the last places at which unauthorized ingress or egress would be made. The whole place was still sleeping, and would sleep until the muezzin from the mosque gave the call to prayer. Abdul declared it was quite safe to enter the village so far as its human inhabitants were concerned, though there was a risk that some pariah dog might be wakeful. Taking his courage in both hands, Tom climbed up the wall after Abdul, and descended on the other side; then, keeping in the black shadows cast by the moon, the two made their way through round archways and narrow alleys to the outer wall of the kasbah.

The village was very silent. It might almost have been an abode of the dead. Only the screech of night-birds beyond the walls broke the stillness. Tom held his breath--and his nose, for sanitary authorities are unknown in Morocco, and heaps of refuse here and there spoke forcibly in the night air. The two intruders crept stealthily round the walls of the kasbah, against which small shops and outbuildings that Abdul called _inzella_ were built, except before the principal entrance--a large gateway through which two or three men could ride abreast. In front of this gateway was a wide, open square, with low shops under a colonnade on the other side.

The gateway was shut. It had massive iron doors. Stealing to the further side of it, Abdul touched Tom's arm, and pointed to a small dark window, unglazed, scarcely more than a slit in the wall, some twenty-five feet above their heads, and a yard or two back from the parapet, which, as the Moor had already explained, extended right round the kasbah, enclosing a kind of terrace. It was the window of the guest-chamber, and there, Abdul had suggested, the captured envoy was confined.

The entrance to the guest-chamber would be from the terrace within the parapet. The floor above was occupied by the sheikh and his family; the floor below was devoted to the servants and the guard. Even as Tom looked, a figure passed slowly along the terrace, and the moonlight glinted on a steel musket barrel. It was clear that the guest-chamber was carefully guarded--a proof, it seemed, that Abdul's suggestion was correct. Drawing Tom out of earshot, Abdul said that special orders must have been given, or the sentry would certainly not tramp up and down at this hour of night. Tom learnt afterwards that the Moorish soldier's idea of sentry-go is a long nap in the nearest doorway.

"Is there no entrance to the guest-chamber from within?" asked Tom.

Abdul confessed that he did not know. He had never set foot within the walls. But he had once taken refuge for the night, on one of his journeys through the country, in a ruined kasbah of somewhat similar appearance, and there a door led from the guest-chamber into a small vestibule, which gave access to the upper floor and the roof above.

Flitting silently across the square, Tom and the Moor took post under the shadow of the colonnade on the farther side, which ran at right angles to the wall of the kasbah. Within it was a row of shops, now shut and barred. There, leaning against one of the stout columns, within the black darkness of the Moorish arch, Tom scanned the kasbah, looming white in the moonlight, and meditated.

To get into communication with the prisoner seemed absolutely hopeless. No one could force an entrance into the sheikh's strong place. Was it possible to gain the assistance of some one within? Might not Hamet Ali, Abdul's friend, act as intermediary between Tom and some servant of the sheikh's? The cynical saying, "Every man has his price," was literal truth in Morocco: such was the impression Tom had gained from his reading. But he knew enough of oriental ways to be sure that the fixing of the price would be a long and tedious affair. If the Moor were asked to name it, he would suggest a sum far in excess of what he would ultimately accept; while however large a sum were offered, it would prove only the starting place for long haggling. Indeed, the larger the bribe, the more likely it would be to excite the cupidity of the agent, and to encourage him to stand out for yet higher terms.

In spite of the difficulties, Tom would have been inclined to attempt this means if it had not involved serious delay, and still more serious risk to both Abdul and himself. Hamet Ali lived on the far side of the town. Abdul would have to make his way there, waken his friend, explain the circumstances, overcome a probable reluctance to meddle, fix a price with Hamet Ali, and another for the sheikh's servant. Every move would be attended with danger. A Moor's house is a castle in miniature. Any attempt to rouse the inmates at this dead hour of night would necessitate so much noise and clatter as to disturb the neighbourhood. The night was wearing on, and before Abdul could, with reasonable regard to secrecy, obtain access to his friend's house, daylight might be upon them. The Moors are early risers, and even if all went well, and Tom and the others stole forth from the village before dawn, they would almost certainly be seen and ridden down as they crossed the wide rocky spaces that surrounded the place. But the most serious consideration of all was that of time: it would not be possible to get into treaty with any one inside the kasbah before Salathiel ben Ezra appeared on the scene. Then the enterprise was doomed to failure.

Tom was anxiously discussing with himself the pros and cons when Abdul plucked him by the arm.

"Day is near, master," he whispered. "We must go by the way we came."

Tom was reluctant to own himself beaten; but there was clearly no hope for it. Gathering his djellab about him, and pulling the hood over his head, he followed Abdul with quick, noiseless footsteps across the square.

* * * * *

Ahmed Hûk, apprentice to Hamadi ben Ibn, the swordsmith of Ain Afroo, had spent a restless night. His head throbbed; he could not sleep; he wished he had not smoked so much hashish when his work was done for the day. The air of the little shop was close and oppressive; and after hours of wakefulness, turning from side to side in the vain effort to find sleep, Ahmed got up and quietly unbarred the little wicket in the door, careful not to disturb his master, who was snoring loudly within a few feet of him. Perhaps a little fresh air from the outside would cool his heated brow.

He had not stood more than a few minutes at the wicket, and was already thinking of returning to his charpoy, when he noticed, in the moonlight on the other side of the square, two figures turn the corner by the kasbah opposite, coming from the direction of the village wall. They at once disappeared into the shadow thrown by the great wall of the building, but something in their movements aroused the curiosity of Ahmed. Why were two wayfarers abroad at so late an hour? The matter was not his concern; still, he would remain at the wicket a little longer, to see if the two night-walkers reappeared.

His view was somewhat broken by the rows of pillars supporting the colonnade in front of the shops of which his master's establishment was one; but through the interval between two of them he did at last see the two forms moving with rather suspicious quickness across the illumined square, and, what was more interesting to him, they were seemingly coming in his direction. Were they thieves, he wondered? He could hardly believe it, for the village was small; they could scarcely escape detection; and the sheikh's ingenuity in punishments was notorious even in Morocco, where torture is a fine art.

With instinctive caution Ahmed closed the wicket, leaving only a slit just wide enough for him to peep through. In a few moments he heard the slight rustle of the strangers' garments, and saw their dark forms clearly outlined against the moonlight. They had come under the colonnade and halted within two or three yards of him, behind one of the pillars. They whispered a little together, then were silent for a space, then whispered again: and now Ahmed was interested indeed, for, low as their tones were, he overheard a word or two, and they made him jump; they were certainly not in the Moorish tongue. His master's business had taken him more than once to Dár al Beida, and he had heard such words used by the N'zrani--the unbelievers who were suffered to pollute the city by their presence. How came it that here, in Ain Afroo, a village where no unbeliever ever set foot save a dog of a Jew now and then (though truly there were one or two infidel wretches now safely confined in the kasbah)--how came it that two men, good Moors and followers of the Prophet, to all appearance, were speaking in the tongue of the infidel? It was perplexing, to say the least, and undoubtedly worthy of the attention of Hamadi his master.

Leaving the wicket, Ahmed silently groped his way to the charpoy on which the swordsmith was sleeping, and gently awakened him. In a low whisper he conveyed the news of his discovery. Hamadi at once rose, and, trusting to the pitch darkness of the colonnade, opened the wicket fully, and listened with all his ears.

* * * * *

Tom and Abdul had no sooner crossed the square than the bolts of the shop door opposite which they had been standing were softly drawn back, and Hamadi, followed by his apprentice, glided barefoot after them. Each bore a sword--good weapons, as Hamadi, who had made them, well knew. Hamadi saw a vision of great prosperity and high favour with the sheikh. He would follow up the strangers, if strangers they indeed were, to the house where they harboured. There he would leave Ahmed to keep watch, while he himself sped to the kasbah and told what he had seen. Without doubt the sheikh would reward him handsomely.

By the time Hamadi and his boy had left the shelter of the colonnade, the strangers had turned the corner of the far side of the square; but the pursuers ran quickly across the open space and gained the corner while their quarry was still in sight.

Tom and his companion, picking their way with all caution through the dark, uneven, dirty passages that led from the kasbah to the outer wall, went out slowly. Every now and again they stumbled over a loose cobble or a heap of refuse; then there was a little noise that might betray their presence to any one who happened to be within a few yards of them. At such times Abdul would throw a hurried glance back; well he knew what their fate would be if they were captured.

Suddenly he edged a little closer to Tom and whispered--

"Men follow us!"

By this time they were almost within reach of the wall. Tom was alive to the danger in which the pursuit had placed them. Descending the wall, they would have to grope for foothold. Before they could get clear, the pursuers would have come up behind, and might either topple down upon them loose boulders from the wall, or, if they bore firearms, have them at their mercy. The two hurried their steps.

"They are close behind--two men!" whispered Abdul.

Tom glanced to each side along the wall. There was no convenient place in which they might take refuge with any prospect of eluding their pursuers. They were now hasting along at a half run beneath a long wall that possibly enclosed some gardens of houses backing on the ramparts. Here and there this wall was broken by a doorway; but the gates, when Tom tested them by a push, were always closed. Abdul was making for the spot at which they had entered the village; it was the nearest, indeed the only practicable, place of descent. But to descend, with the pursuers upon them, would be dangerous, perhaps fatal. To leave this place of exit, and move farther along the ramparts or back into the village, would be almost equally dangerous and would lose precious time. The only other course open to them was to tackle the problem of disposing of the pursuers. Tom nervously fingered his revolver; but a shot would rouse the whole village and multiply the pursuers perhaps fiftyfold.

While Tom was feverishly attempting to hit on some means of dealing with the two men, these, unaware that they had been seen, were already reckoning up the profits of a successful coup. As soon as Hamadi the swordsmith saw that the men in front were making for the ramparts, he guessed at once that they were intruders from the outside, and he also guessed the point at which the exit was to be made. This was not the first time that the place had been used as a means of getting in and out of the village by night. More than once it had happened that the villagers, at feud with neighbouring mountaineers, had crept out at night to settle their scores, returning safely within the walls before daybreak. The fact that the gates were closed and no one could pass during the night was prima facie evidence of their innocence. It was even said that the sheikh had settled accounts with a hostile neighbour in the same way. The swordsmith therefore was quite justified in shaping his course on the assumption that the two men in front of him would climb down the ruined part of the wall, and he would be in ample time to deal with them when they were clinging precariously to the face of the stonework.

The only fault in his calculation was that he did not reckon with the sharp eyes of Tom's companion. Thus it was that, passing incautiously one of the recessed doorways leading on to the gardens, he suddenly saw a thousand brilliant lights flash before his eyes, his sword flew from his grasp, and he reeled dizzily to the ground. Tom's muscles were hardened by much exercise in engineering workshops, and Hamadi, though a big man and strong, as befitted one of his trade, was not prepared for so surprising an attack. Before he could recover his wits Tom was upon him, pressing the cold barrel of his revolver to his ear. The man, although dizzy, had still enough intelligence left to know what this meant, and he lay quite still while Tom pondered how he could at the same time secure his vanquished foe and lend assistance to his companion, who was now hotly engaged with the apprentice. Abdul, however, needed no help. Before Tom had time to decide upon his own course, the young Moor, taking full advantage of the darkness that neutralized the effect of his enemy's longer weapon, dodged in beneath the latter's guard, and got home a shrewd thrust in the forearm. Ahmed, yelling lustily, dropped his sword, spun round, and set off down the ramparts at full speed before Abdul could repeat his stroke.

Tom breathed more freely. He had at any rate, he thought, gained a few minutes. The yells of the Moor were not likely to bring help immediately. While a shot would undoubtedly have raised the guard at the kasbah, and brought a party in hot haste to the spot, the cries of a man yelling would probably only cause a certain sleepy curiosity. A Moor never puts himself to unnecessary trouble, and it would certainly not be worth while to pay much attention to a brawl between men who had smoked too much hashish. But there was still need for haste, so with Abdul's assistance Tom trussed up the fallen swordsmith with workmanlike bonds made of his own garments, and in another minute was beginning the descent of the wall.

They were only halfway down when they heard an uproar in the village. The apprentice had lost no time in gathering a band to continue the pursuit. Yet Tom could not hurry his flight, for a false step would mean at least a broken arm, and in all probability a broken neck. With Abdul close behind he picked his way down the broken masonry, the shouts growing ever nearer and more menacing. At last they reached the bottom. Then, Abdul leading the way, they hurried along the foot of the wall. They durst not yet leave its shelter, for the moon, though now sinking in the sky, still threw sufficient light to betray them if they attempted to cross the open space towards the hillside.

Crouching low as they went, they heard the pursuers halt at the place where they had descended. But now they had reached a welcome patch of stunted bush which promised needful cover. Plunging into this, still keeping low so that their heads should not show above the scrub, they strode away at right angles to the wall. Abdul's knowledge of the country served him well. Descending the hill, they were soon out of danger. Then up and down little eminences, over brooks, through patches of wood, they pressed on, always bearing slightly to the right until they struck the true course. Almost in a bee-line, they made for the hill where Oliphant was anxiously awaiting them, and arrived there just after dawn, tired out, and not a little disappointed with the barren result of their night's work.