Part 44

Ummshni is at her business now. John feels certain. He nods to himself, solemnly, and sitting on the lid of one of the broken bomb-boxes, folds his great arms, narrows his eyelids and sends his Thought ranging abroad in search of her.

Perhaps he sleeps and dreams, sitting there. Who knows whether he does or does not. But after some moments of silent concentration, he sees his messenger go forth. A tiny thing--human in form, light as a puff of thistledown, no bigger than a locust--it leaps down to the big Jew's knees, and thence to the bottom of the lorry; drops from it into the dust and scours down the road. Swift as the wind, it passes over the highway--reaches the west gate of Shechem and slips through a crevice in the ponderous iron-studded timbers, lodging between the sandalled feet of the Mustahfiz infantry guard.... Now it goes by the Khan of the Fox, darts through the square where the archway is (under which the Orderly Staff Sergeant Major of the German Intelligence Department waited for the dropping of the despatch-bag from the Two Faced Nightingale), traverses the town, thronged to-night with variously attired strangers of many nations, and--lightly as a withered leaf, and inconspicuous as a dust-swirl--traverses the main thoroughfare of the ancient town.

Shechem is packed to the walls to-night with the exiles from Jerusalem. And in addition to these, with strangers in foreign clothing, diverse in type, sinister-faced and stern-eyed, speaking unknown languages.... There are many Turkish officers, young and old, in uniform and out of it, and German officers of many ranks and decorations, accompanied by women, painted and overdressed.

So many strange feet, bringing strange dust from strange lands. Yet the little thing no bigger than a leaf finds a way between them all. Now it spins out at the east gate and rolls down the rutted road towards the Wired Enclosure.... Here storm-lamps hang outside the guard-tent and on either side of the entrance. The officer's tent is lighted within, but unlike the tent of the _postas_, it is furnished with a door-flap. From inside comes the sound of laughter, the clinking of glasses, and unmistakably, the rattle of shaken dice. Near the gate, in conversation with the _bash-châwush_ of the guard, stands a tall, thin, elderly Bedawi, known to the reader as the Shaykh Gôhar.

"Nay, nay! Do not trouble the _Yuzbashi_." He waves a hand in the direction of the tent whence comes the convivial clink. "The affairs of the humble must wait upon the leisure of the great ones. Yet if thy dignity were not lowered by the mention of a hundred piastres--one _lira_ Osmanli--" Gôhar carelessly displays the coin.

"O my friend! O my soul!" hiccups the _bash-châwush_, who at this early stage of the evening is only amiably drunk. "I will do thine errand with gladness for friendship's sake only!" Having duly received and pouched the coin, he adds: "Now tell thy business to me."

"Briefly, it was but to ask thy _Yuzbashi_ to accord me the watchword, the Emir Fadl Anga having cause to pass the gates to-night. In thine ear, O friend! he hath a pigeon to fly at dawn for Mecca, and he is minded to loose the bird from the Mount."

The _bash-châwush_ nods and disappears into the tent, whence, sung in a high nasal tenor voice to lute-accompaniment, issue the unblushing erotics of an Arab love-song. The Shaykh turns to one of the _postas_ lounging near the guard-tent, and smilingly offers him a handful of thick Arab cigarettes.

"Dost thou use the Consoler? ... Take, then!"

"May Allah make it 'take' upon thee, O generous hearted one! ..."

As the handful changes owners, and other soldiers look out of the corners of their eyes and sidle nearer, the Shaykh plunges both hands into deep pockets beneath his mantle, and draws them forth generously filled with the thick, strong cigarettes.

Upon the return of the _bash-châwush_ with the information--willingly placed at the service of the Emir--that the pass-word of the night is "Baal Zebub," he, too, accepts a handful of the cigarettes that are so heavily drugged with opium. And then the Shaykh Gôhar, with ceremonious farewells, stalks away from the Wired Enclosure, knowing his work begun.

XII

Since the departure of the Shaykh Sadân, the man who sank fainting to the floor of the wooden hut has moved once only. It was when he revived, dragged himself to his knees, and while his strength sufficed--lifting his clasped hands above his head--sent forth his soul in prayer.... Exhausted then, he collapsed once more, and dropped forwards, falling with outflung arms across the palm-wood bed-frame, and for how long he does not know, was lost in unconsciousness.

When sight and hearing return to him, thick darkness presses on his burning eyeballs, and the "Lights Out" of the Turkish _boruzan_ is ringing in his ears. Half kneeling by the _anghareb_, half lying across it, his face is turned towards the east wall of the hut. Through a biggish knot-hole in the planks, he has found it possible to see--given sufficient light outside--beyond the barbed wire fence a circumscribed patch of the south-going road, the tumbled hills in the distance and the dome of the Tomb of Joseph in the foreground.... These intermittently blotted out by the figure of the Turkish sentry, passing to the end of his beat at the south angle of the Enclosure, or passing back to the angle at the junction of the road that leads to the town's east gate, with the Jerusalem-Shechem Road.

Even in darkness, the edges of the knot-hole are outlined by a fitful glimmer. The flash of an electric torch, the twinkle of a firefly, the ray of a shooting-star--there are many in this month of November--find their way through the knot-hole in the wall.

But the knot-hole is no longer there. They have stopped it up from outside! he thinks, and a groan breaks from him. He has borne so much that this little thing--fresh evidence of studied malice on the part of his jailers--hurts, like the brutal tearing of a bandage from a stiffened wound.... He shudders, hearing a curious, scratching, rasping sound, mingled with low whispering:

"_Sidi, Sidi! ... Sidi, Sidi!_"

His blood freezes in his veins. What is that strange, soft voice, and where does it come from? Can this be another essay on the part of the Shaykh Sadân? He waits for the next move--setting his teeth, steeling his soul with faith in his Master. Now, now, the whispering comes again:

"_Sidi, Sidi!_ Do you hear me? O _Sidi_, are you there? ..."

It is the thin, rustling voice of the little Mother of Ugliness. He utters a stifled cry of joy, and dragging his chain with him, rolls off the _anghareb_, and in his weakness, sinks down close to the hut's east wall. Passing his thin hands over the wall in the darkness, he encounters a projection. The end of a long rubber-covered cane, from which the whispering comes:

"If the Sidi hears my voice, let him be pleased to answer! It is Ummshni! ..."

"I hear," he calls back through the improvised speaking-tube. "May God reward thee, gentle heart! How didst thou find me out? ..."

"How, is a long story meet for telling elsewhere. Has the Sidi a bowl, or other vessel? If not let him set mouth to the end of this," the speaker taps on the tube gently with a fingernail, "and I will pour milk through the canes. Tap thrice when I am to pour! ..."

He does so, and the tube is slowly tilted, and a cautious trickle of boiled goat's milk flows over his parched tongue. He sucks for life, and when he has drunk:

"Rest now," says the whispering voice. "It is ill to take overmuch at the beginning. Next time I will give thee broth, and afterwards good wine. For the Sidi must be strengthened against the hour when for the prisoner comes Rescue. Let him tap thrice on the pipe if he has heard...."

He taps on the cane-lined length of rubber tubing.... The little voice goes on:

"Listen, my lord! ... At midnight thy friends will come to deliver thee. So, when thou hast well taken the soup and wine, lie down on the bed and rest.... Sleep if thou canst, but not too sound. When there comes a scraping in the earth under the bedstead, rise up and move aside the _anghareb_. My lord has clearly heard? ..."

He signifies assent, and the voice goes on whispering, sending a reviving stream of Hope into his empty, sapless heart, that is invigorating to his drooping spirit, as the milk to his famished body.

"Lift up the _anghareb_, and thou wilt find a hole in the earth under it. Planks covered with earth hide the hole. The hole is the Gate of Hope for thee!--the Way that leads to Freedom! Does the Sidi understand?"

"I do, and thank thee from my soul! ... Who are the friends, Ummshni? I only have known of one beside thyself. But no word has reached me from that man, since the War Prisoners were shifted from camp at Beersheba to the Barracks here at Shechem!"

"Thou hast four friends here besides myself!"

He did not know he was so rich, and a thrill of joy goes through him.

"The chief of them is Edward Yaill. Thou dost recall that name? Ay! Then comes John Hazaël...."

That the prisoner has no knowledge of John Hazaël, his silence seems to testify.

"It does not matter!" The little voice is dry. "The friends to whom we owe the most are often strangers to us. Now it is time to give thee the broth!"

He sucks the life-giving stuff through the tube. With her womanly, maternal solicitude, she checks him after a little:

"Stay, now.... The Sidi feels his strength increased? ..."

He does, and says so gratefully.

"Then--lest it make the Master sleep too heavily, I will not give him the wine yet. Now let him lie down awhile on the bed that is in there. I remain outside, watching. What says my lord?"

"The sentry.... How is it he does not see thee? ..."

Something like Ummshni's little rustling laugh comes through the rubber-covered pipe-stems.

"Love hath no eyes, it is often said. Since a white flower fell on the dust in the dusk, and a light foot went past him, is Baba Ishak, the Darweesh, blind--and dumb as well, ah-hah! Now he is at the other end of his beat, his face set to Ebal, and the Tombs of the Sons of Mohammed. He is waiting Opportunity, as a dog near the butcher's shop.... When the butcher looks the other way--or goes into the house to speak to his wife, the dog sneaks round the doorpost and--his head is in the scrap-box! Sweet,--the first greedy crunch, and gulp.... But then comes the butcher's chopper--down on the dog's skull! Now lie thou down and try to sleep. I have said I will keep watch here! ..."

Holding his chain so that it may not clank, Father Julian creeps back to the verminous bed, and tries to do her bidding. But the throbbing of his anxious heart and the roaring of the blood in his ears make sleep impossible. The cheap gun-metal wrist-watch that he wears has not been taken from him, and it has been kept wound up--it is ticking companionably now. Four matches are left in his box. Sheltering the flame within the coat that serves him as a bed-covering, he strikes a match, and looks at the watch. It is twenty minutes past ten o'clock, and Deliverance comes at midnight. How wait through the long hours, for that knocking under the floor?

The Darweesh who is _imâm_ of his platoon, and can resist all the Forbidden Things except the Cup of Beauty, stands at the north angle of the Wired Place, looking towards the Tombs. In his hot thick hand is a white rose, sweet and musky-smelling, in his nostrils a whiff of sandal and some pungent Bazâr perfume. The Baba is a little man, and his inamorata a tallish woman, but she looked a strapping wench to-night, as she passed him at the other end of his beat, with a whispered word and a dropped flower, and a provocative flash of her gipsy-eyes from the folds of her white _izar_.

He wheels, smacks the butt of his Mauser rifle with the flat of his broad hand, and licks his thick lips longingly. Turning out his sandalled toes--for the second-line troops of the Redif stick to the old-fashioned _chariks_, with bandages wound round the leg from the calf down--he marches towards the sentry-box where Delilah waits for him.

There is little breeze on this muggy night of scant starshine and blotted shadows, but a south-going waft sends a withered leaf or a torn scrap of paper scurrying at Baba Ishak's heels along the dusty road.

"_Tr'rp--tr'rp--tr'rp!_" ...

A tiny sound, and yet it irks and fidgets.

"_Trrp--tr'rp ...!_"

Whatever it is, it scurries past, as the Darweesh halts before the sentry-box. Snuffing the clamorous perfume of the Bazâr with an anticipative smile on his thick lips, he stands on the threshold and peers into the darkness.

"Inaini!" he coos, amorously to the odorous obscurity. "My soul! My eyes! Thou hast come to me! Tell me that thou art there? ..."

Undoubtedly Inaini is there, he can see her white figure plainly against the shadowy background. It is late in the day for Inaini to be coy, but too early not to humour her. He stretches out a greedy, perspiring hand. It touches the folds of her _izar_. Stung to enterprise, prodded by propinquity, the Baba puts down his Mauser, carefully leaning it against the side of the sentry-box, and blunders forwards. Aha! At last he has her, the willing prisoner of his eager arms.

_Mashâllah!_ how the gipsy hugs. All the breath is squeezed out of the Baba. What is this that coils about him, binding down his arms? Not a rope? _Chok_! _chok_! He opens his jaws to expostulate--and a gag of oiled camel-hide is deftly slipped between them--and strapped uncomfortably tight at the back of his bull-neck. Swiftly his knees are bound, and then his ankles, and he is tenderly lowered to the bottom of the sentry-box.

The love affair of the Baba and the gipsy has ended with dramatic swiftness. Now the dark figure of a man steps out of the sentry-box, picks up the Mauser and resumes the beat of galloping hoofs coming along the Shechem road, and gleam glints on the bandolier taken from the victim, it shows the face of Namrûd under the khaki _enverieh_. And caught in some stray backwash of the sickly breeze that carried it, the tiny thing like a withered leaf, flits down the road again.

XIII

Whether John Hazel dreamed or not, things have happened as he has seen them. Conscious thought returns to him, sitting on the box of bombs. His lungs fill with a deep breath. He yawns hugely, blinks his eyes, squares his shoulders and looks about him. The constellation Orion blazes over Gilead, the Pleiades are hidden from sight by sombre clouds. There is a strange glare in the sky over the crest of Gerizim.

In mid-song the bulbuls have fallen silent. Even the pariah-dogs and the jackals are still. There is something abroad upon the air to-night, that weighs upon the spirit of humanity, and daunts the creatures, soulless as we imagine, with the sense of evil, nameless and unseen, but dominant and powerful to harm....

And now the man who listens at his post hears the quick beat of galloping hoofs coming along the Shechem road, and thrills with expectation:

"That's them!" In moments of keen excitement John's grammar is apt to fail. "Them, for a quid! Or the Colonel hasn't pulled off the snatch, and has had--"

He breaks off as the horsemen round a curve of the road. Where a patch of the grudging moonlight whitens the ground, he makes out that there are only three of them. No! Four--! Three riders in ample, flowing Arab dress, and a fourth in the close-fitting kit of a European--who reels and sways unsteadily in his saddle, and would fall--but for the help that another gives--with a hand that is sometimes at his back, and sometimes at his bridle.

"By God!--"

With a great exultant throb, John swings himself down from the lorry upon the road, as the riders check the gallop of their eager, snorting horses.... And the hot, white limestone dust of Samaria rises in pungent clouds.

Now through the dust an immense hand finds, grips and wrings the priest's, and a deep resonant voice, not like any he has heard before, and yet not strange, says rapidly:

"Thanks be to the Most High, my lord is delivered! Now, from the servant of his house, let him take this. It comes from the Sister of my lord" (a crumpled envelope is thrust into Julian Forbis's palm), "by the hand of John Hazel!"

"A letter from my sister.... Sir, may God reward you! You must be John Hazaël, I think! Though I never heard that name until to-night, while I live I shall always bless it!"

The voice sends an electric shock volting through John. It is like the voice he loves, as a man's may resemble a woman's, deeper, stronger, and hollow with fatigue. He returns:

"My lord is right. I am the man John. Youngest and last of all Hazaëls of the line save one only.... But all the Hazaëls, from the first to the last, do battle for my lord this night in Samaria. Now let my lord ride hard for Kir Saba. Though his enemies pursue they shall not pass here! For, God so willing, I, thy servant, will keep this road barred!"

"My cousin John! ..."

He hears a timid call he knows, and turning towards the quarter whence it comes, traces it to its source in a small rebellious bundle, held on the front of an Arab's saddle.

"O John my cousin, dost thou hear me! Entreat the Most Excellent One to set me on the ground!"

"Mr. Hazel, with your good leave, I mean to take this lady to Kir Saba." It is the voice that spoke to him last in the chintz drawing-room at Kerr's Arbour. Dimly seen in the hazy moonlight, the eyes shaded by the silken _kuffiyeh_ meet John's, and although they are blazing with the fierce joy of the successful raider, he recognises the eyes of Edward Yaill.

"Nay, nay! I would remain here with John Hazaël," the little creature pleads in her distress.

"Thou wilt go with my lord and be his handmaid. When he needs thee no longer, then return to me. Hearest thou, woman?" the deep voice says, and Ummshni, bowing her veiled head, humbly answers:

"O Head of our House, I hear! ..."

"Farewell then, little Brave One!"

In the dark John reaches out, and pats her small cold hand.

"Not in this world, nor in the next will this that thou hast lone go unrewarded. What is that? ... Cavalry on the road!" His hearing, in this strange exalted mood of his, being even keener than Namrûd the Hunter's,--has warned him that a body of mounted men, coming from the direction of Shechem, are pushing along the road. He relapses into his ordinary, natural tone, as he says with a slap of his heavy hand on the flank of Fadl Anga's thoroughbred: "Ride for Kir Saba, Colonel Yaill, and all good luck to you!"

"Thanks, Mr. Hazel, and good-bye. Though I would prefer your coming with us. You could take Namrûd's horse--and he and I would ride and run by turns. Not the first time we've covered distance that way!"

There is an unalterable decision in the answer:

"Much obliged, Colonel, but I've arranged to stay."

"Good luck, then, and good-bye. You will shake hands at parting? ..."

The huge hand of the big Jew, and Yaill's leaner, slenderer, smaller hand, meet and grip hard, then John steps backwards.

"Ride like old hell, the lot of you. I stop--to carry on!"

A clatter of hoofs and they are away, in a cloud of the dust of Samaria, flavoured with the chamomile and wormwood of the desert, the acrid sweat of man and horse, tobacco, attar of roses, and leather tanned by Bedwân with bitter laurel-bark. John Hazel looks about him, fills his lungs with deep breaths and calculates his powers. How if one man were able to move the lorry across the road!

He frees himself from his Arab head-cloth and mantle, ties the ends of the long sleeves of his _kumbas_ together, slips the knot Fellah-wise over his head, and pulls up the camel-hair shirt to mid-thigh. Even as the lean, tanned Prophet girded himself for the long race from Carmel up to Samaria, before the King in his ivory chariot--and the rainstorm hurtling on the heels of the King....

Now he swings himself to the driver's seat, manipulates the steering wheel, and lifts the starting-lever. Now he gets down, spins the crank, and heaves at the near fore-wheel. The lorry shakes, the ponderous armoured wheel moves--and the sweat pours off John Hazel. He sets his teeth, and braces himself again, using the sound, uninjured leg as fulcrum of the lever. With a sound like the dumping of a load of ancient iron on the scrap-heap--the Turkish ammunition-lorry moves across the road....

Just in time, for the clink of cavalry chain-bridles and scabbards, and the clatter of hoofs come nearer with every instant.... John fills the breast of his Arab shirt with bombs, and stands up on the lorry, in the straddling but purposeful attitude attributed to the Colossus of Rhodes.

"Old Harris and the chaps of my platoon used to call me a dirty fighter," he thinks, reverting to the vernacular of his adoptive land. "Well, this is going to be the dirtiest fight I ever put up. O all you old Hazaël men, back to the very oldest, help me to keep the road that leads to Kir Saba, for to-night! ..."

Rattle and clink. The creak and wheeze of straining leather. Half a squadron of Turkish Mounted Police spur round the bend in the road.

Well armed, well mounted, big and bearded Turks, the pick of the Bey's squadrons of mounted gendarmerie. The darkness hides the crimson fez and the smart Hussar uniform of dark blue with red and orange braiding. But what light there is is caught and given back by long shiny jack-boots--and the barrels of Winchester repeating-rifles--and eyes that glitter in swarthy faces that are ablaze with the hope of a reward.

Crash! ...

A bomb falls in the middle of the road in front of the squadron-leader, and explodes with a shattering detonation that calls loud echoes from the hills. The squadron-leader's jaw is torn away. He and his horse go down, the poor brute screaming in a pool of his own innocent blood and vainly struggling to rise upon his shattered forelegs.... Two of the other riders are wounded by flying splinters. Crash!--another bomb falls and detonates in the road....

"A Forbis! A Forbis! May Forbis foes fall! A Forbis! A Forbis! ..."

With this strange foreign slogan the Hills of Samaria ring, and a volley from the Winchesters of the Bey's men rattles back in answer. Bullets flatten on the rocks--pass through the sides of the lorry, shiver the lamps, rip the front hood, and dent the engine-bonnet. A second Winchester-volley clatters amongst the rocks--when a bomb, hurled by a phenomenally long arm, falls in the midst of the squadron. And the Bey's Mounted Policemen scatter and retreat in confusion, leaving dead men and horses behind them on the road....

John draws breath. A revolver cracks behind him--a bullet sings past his right cheek--and another, whistling through his hair, burns as it scores a furrow in the scalp at the top of his head....

"Bloody close! And fired from behind!"

He looks round, and is shot at from the original quarter to intimate that the retreat was only a feint. The baffled force of gendarmerie--trained scouts for the most part--mountaineers and hunters, has split into two parties; the hardier spirits--as the breaking of branches and the fluttering of birds scared from the coverts testifies--are scrambling down the steep face of the defile, from the northern side of the road.

Again a revolver-shot cracks out behind John. He slews his head and catches a glimpse of the man who fired, crouching behind a boulder, on the Jaffa side of the lorry.

_Crash! crash!_ ...