Part 26

Treading water, paddling with a wooden fruit-dish, horribly hampered by her cork panoply,--Katharine crossed the patch of sea. The thin bluish wedge of Trixie's face lay tilted upwards to the jeering sunshine, against the slab of cork outcropping at the back of her belt. Her green eyes, half-open, looked hard and glassy as enamel--the livid lips were parted, showing the set white teeth....

"Oh try to live!" begged Katharine. "See--there are ships in the distance!" She pointed to some grey shapes moving on the southern horizon under their slanting columns of grey smoke. "The boats that have left us will be picked up--they will be sent back for us! ..."

"No ship commanded by a sane man will stick her nose into the middle of a charted Turkish minefield!" came from a man who hung on to a deck-seat and a wooden hen-coop next them, and had overheard. "When the contact stove in our forward plates I sent out the S.O.S. and got through to the Commander of one of those Destroyers...." He jerked his chin angrily towards some slanting streaks of smoke to the southward. "All he could do was to send that hydro from the nearest Battle Cruiser to have a look at us; explain what kind of a mess we were in--in case we hadn't guessed it already!--and tell us to wait for the boats! ..."

And the speaker, who had been the Wireless Operator on board the _Loyalty_, whose head was swathed in a bloody towel and whose right arm hung broken by his side,--grinned a forlorn grin, and tightened with his teeth the buckle of the leather waist-strap that supported him on his improvised raft, as Trixie's head fell limply back, and a faint moan fluttered from her lips, that were getting ashen grey....

"Please, please, don't give up!" said Katharine, mustering all her forces. She splashed water on the grey, peaked face and shook the thin shoulder. "Listen to me.... Do you hear? Don't you _dare_ to die! ..."

But not Katharine's utmost efforts could have kept the dwindling life in Trixie, as the hours dragged on, and the blazing sun beat on their misery.... But that her good Angel, or Trixie's, reminded her that the little courier-bag slung about her shoulders, containing her money and papers, accommodated a tiny brandy-flask.

A sickness of sheer despair came over her as she realised that, environed by the unwieldy cork slabs of her life-belt, she could not possibly get at the bag.... Then she remembered, when there had been a moment or two of delay in readying the ship's boat--she had taken the flask out of the bag, and thrust it in the breast-pocket of her serge jacket. With a rush of thankfulness she felt for it, and found it there still.

It seemed long to Katharine before she could unscrew the flask-cap, and force a few drops of Cognac between the other's tightly-clenched teeth. When Trixie sighed, and opened her green eyes,--between her dazed vision and the marvel of a Mediterranean sunset, leaned the even greater wonder of a compassionate human face....

The glory of the sunset culminated to its utmost splendour. Floods of blazing wine of rubies poured into the sapphire bowl of the sea.... The water was calm as a mill-pond,--the air was balmy sweetness--as the evening star kindled, under the round breast of Asia's radiant moon.... And of all the innumerable ships that passed and repassed along the crowded sea-road on the southern horizon, not one altered her course for the castaway passengers of the luckless _Loyalty_....

They had been so brave, talking and cracking jokes--singing even,--asking riddles, and attempting recitations, "being British" some of them would have called it--up to the last volt of strength.... Towards morning they began to die,--the Wireless Operator leading the way, slipping off quite easily.... A baby went next, the only child on shipboard, and its desperate mother,--the English wife of a native official at Malta--shrieking--cast loose the rope that lashed her to some floating deck-fittings and, clutching the tiny body to her--leaped into the sea. And others died of exhaustion, and yet others; until quavering voices bravely raised in familiar strains of well-loved hymns, were dumb for sheer despair.... But, after all, though not until Dawn had risen over the unseen Desert of Syria--the boats that had pulled away, came back for yet another freight....

"Are we dead, you and I?" asked Lady Wastwood dreamily, waking out of an exhausted sleep, in a cabin of the trooper that had taken the rescued ones on board....

"Not yet," said Katharine Forbis gently, stooping over her. "It seems that God has yet some work in this world for you and me to do!"

"It is a lonely world," said Trixie faintly, and turned her peaked face to the bulkhead, "I had done with it! And--though it sounds horribly ungrateful, dear! I am sorry that you have brought me back!"

"But I am glad you aren't dead," said Katharine, kissing her, "because I love you, and you know that you are fond of me!"

"You saved my life.... I can never forget that," said Lady Wastwood. "My dear! there ought to have been somebody to photograph you doing it! What a success it would have made on the screens! ..." She returned Katharine's kiss with warmth. "It's quite true," she said. "I always have been fond of you,--you dear thing! That is why I was so frightfully down on poor Edward Yaill!"

"Do not--do not let us go back to that!" begged the other, wincing.

"I remember cutting him," continued Lady Wastwood reminiscently, "enough to have drawn blood. My Jerry always said--you remember how keen he was on golf? 'Mums carries too many clubs for one game, and always uses a niblick when it ought to be a putter!' But, believe me,--I really meant well!"

And that was the sealing of a compact of sisterhood between Katharine and Trixie.... For that we have striven for we love as part of us.... And Friendship forged on the anvil of Endurance is a metal that will stand strain.

II

Fresh from great triumphs in France, a Man came to Egypt in June, 1917--burly and square-jawed, clear-eyed, vigorous and outspoken; startlingly young in looks for his fifty-six years,--until he removed his cap and you saw his bald, domed brow. The successes at Romani and Magdhaba and Rafa had whiskers. Plans for the taking of Gaza, that stoutly resisting stronghold of the Turk--long since evacuated by all civilians--had fizzled out; there was a hang-up somewhere, things had to be set going again. He moved G.H.Q. from Cairo to Kelat, in Southern Palestine--a huge wire-enclosed area on the grass-covered slopes within sight of the Mediterranean--and took things in hand. Two Rolls-Royce box-cars carried him and his Staff,--three armoured Fords preceded him as Scouts--and two others followed with Wireless and life's necessaries. So he would appear unexpectedly in various quarters, causing confusion it may be, to commanding officers--and huge contentment to the rank and file.

He looked, upon a certain day in July,--on the positions of the forces attacking Gaza--from an observation-point affording room for three.... The day was misty, the Turkish 5.9 inch guns were silent; no warning drone of propellers counselled care as his binoculars swept the enemy trenches towards Beersheba, noting the railway-system for the shifting of big guns; the defence-works--enormously strong, and a tangle of barbed wire--running from Beersheba down to the sea.

He came down, and went through the trenches asking questions: sat on a gun-limber eating bully out of a tin with a jackknife and commended the Engineers and the Egyptian Labour Corps for the pace at which the railway had followed on the heels of our Advance. Then he went away--and the rations increased in quantity, and later certain trucks came up by railway--containing barrels of a malty liquor much welcome to the thirsty throats of British soldier-men....

Later in October, when the Irish Division, and the Indian Cavalry and the entire strength of the Camel Transport Corps, and the London Division which had fought with the assistance of one John Benn Hazel in France and Macedonia--had been added to the army of strange nations now mustered upon the soil of Palestine,--and the capture of Beersheba, with the well-springs of Sheria and the huge Turkish dumps that lay to the rear of them--combined with a bombardment from the hill tops round about her--from the sea to the West of her and the hot sky above her--had brought the gates of Gaza toppling down,--he swung into the camp of the battle-weary 'Fenchurch Streets,' a stalwart stranger in a battered pith helmet, sleeveless shirt, shorts and canvas shoes; and stooped under the door-fly of a tent full of dusty undersized Cockneys; unwashed, unshaven, bone-weary and just lying down to snatch an eyeful of sleep.

"How's things going, Londoners?" he asked with cheery brevity; and a gaunt brown giant of six feet four with a bristling two-inch beard, and a portentously hooked nose, Acting Company Sergeant _pro_ So and so, sick or wounded--I forget which--recognised him, and said in a big bass voice, displaying a mouthful of large white teeth:

"All the better, Sir, because you've come! We fellows said all along you'd be the man for the job!"

"And, by G--" he said in his deep strong voice, "if you go on doing as you've done at Sheria, it won't be long before we carry through.... See you're wounded.... Anything much?" He laid a finger on a naked brown left arm, knotty with muscle, and decorated above the elbow with a bandage of iodine-smeared gauze....

"Nothing, Sir, thank you, but a bit of a flesh-cut. A German officer slashed at me with his sword, as he tried to shoot me left-handed with his revolver."

"Moral," he said, with his big schoolboy's chuckle, "don't try to do two things at once! And a scratch may turn septic, in this fly-cursed country, so don't neglect it, man! ..."

And he passed on, to gladden the heart of the Battalion Commander with discriminating praise, and drop a few curt sentences;--pregnant with great issues--before he went away. Pausing beside the step of his car to ask with the smile that won the men and charmed the women:

"Who's the big tyke overtopping the little Terriers in F. Company's tent? Not an exotic in this climate, or I don't know what it is to command a Jewish Battalion."

"I think," said the C.O., "you refer to Private Hazel, Acting Sergeant to F. Company in place of Langston.... We call Hazel the 'Lightning Change Artist,' because he's always doing somebody's duty, and doing it uncommonly well too! Killed twelve Turks with the bayonet in the scrapping at Sheria.... Sings as he fights--a habit when he's butchering men...."

"Sings, does he? Curious...."

"Sings in Hebrew, the men'll swear to you. Some of them call him 'The Musical Maccabee.' We've two other Jews in the Battalion, both good men, but he's damned good! ... Peculiar in his refusal of stripes and so forth, else he'd have had his Commission long ago. Has the Distinguished Conduct Medal for something he did in France...."

"Glad to hear that. He seems a hefty kind of beggar. Have noticed that he's wounded.... Would you recommend him for the Military Medal when you're sending in the other names?"

The pleased Colonel reddened through dust and sun-tan:

"Certainly, Sir, with pleasure, if you'll permit me! ... But there are a great many names, and I was rather thinking--"

"My dear Sir, never under any circumstances think that there can be too many names!"

"Thank you, Sir. With regard to Acting Sergeant Hazel.... He has been very keen on leave for Alex., since Sheria--most unusual thing with a man of that sort to risk the loss of a scrap. Some family affair perhaps. Has big interests in Palestine--chiefly wine and olives and so forth. Kind of a millionaire, I am told, in his way...."

"I don't care a Syrian curse about the millionaire! but I'm ready to stretch a point to oblige the man who spits twelve Turks--and sings while he's doing it! He's got a knock from a German, too--and might have put in for a Red Cross bag--a ride in the White train--and a cane chair on the lawn at Montana on the strength of it! So send him down to railhead at Gamli with the wounded.... He can put in three weeks at the General Hospital at Alex, and attend to his business there...."

"Very good, Sir! But it occurs to me that an R.F.C. two-seater scouting-plane in difficulties came down in our lines about an hour ago,--Wing Major Essenian Pasha on board--an Egyptian officer from the Ismailia Air Station--"

"I know Essenian Pasha!" The tone was enigmatical. "Copt or Moslem,--nobody seems certain. Some people seem to think it's a case of being all things to all men. Though,--for my own part--if I had to place him--I'd rank him with the Advanced or Super-Jews. But the man's an incomparable scout, and flies like one of the Sons of Eblis.... Some of his reports have been damned useful! We sent for him to do some special reconnaissance over the enemy's rearguard in the hills. Have Djemal's sharpshooters potted the Pasha? Hope he'd made his observations first!"

"The Pasha's all right, Sir, but his observer was shot dead. Flying-Lieutenant Usborn--there was a regular ding-dong battle over Hebron with some Turkish fighting-planes.... And Essenian Pasha would like us to bury Lieutenant Usborn--and supply an observer to replace him for the home-flight to Ismailia!"

"Well, can you?"

"It appears, Sir, that the Pasha knows Hazel. They foregathered at Salonika a month or so ago. And there being a lot of dysentery among the men of the Pasha's Flying Squadron--and Hazel having dabbled in aviation--five-guinea flutters at Hendon, I suppose!--the Pasha took him on several reconnaissance-flights. By the way, Sir, he has brought in a bit of intelligence.... The Sherif of Mecca's tribesmen are at Diariyeh--among the hills to the N.E. with the Emir Feisal and a host of Bedwân cavalry. And they're waging guerilla warfare against the enemy's rearguards and flanks."

"Good for the Sherif Husain!" The keen blue eyes sparkled. "And news worth having. We shall be able to shift the --th Division outposts a good bit more to the N.E. Where's the Pasha? _Marhabâ_, Essenian Pasha!"

"_Marhabtain Gananâr Saiyid!_" came the quick response to the greeting, as he turned to take the report from the dark hand of the Egyptian Flying Officer, looking back a moment later to say to the Colonel, with his parting handshake: "Well, so-long, Colonel! Remember, your next objective is Huj, the terminus of the Turkish branch-rail from Deir Sineid. The Desert Mounted Corps--3 Cavalry Divisions--pushed for there yesterday to cut off the garrison retreating from Gaza. So-and-so with such-and-such another force of mounted troops is working round by sea--to engage the enemy rear-guard at Beit Hannu. Dyemal's Eighth Army Corps on our right flankguard have rolled back towards Hebron." (Fifteen miles north-east from Beersheba, among the Judæan Hills.) "The only Turks now holding their ground are those facing the 53rd Division at Muweileh. They may not have heard of the fall of Gaza--as we have the cavalry between them and the rest of their Army--and Blank smashed the Gaza Wireless installation when he bombed their big mosque! You'll find the road to Huj nicely marked out with Turkish canteens, tin gas-mask-cases, stretchers and trenching-tools, and the terrain fairly continuous in its drop,--about forty feet to the mile.... Don't contemplate much trouble for you from well-posted Austrian batteries. The Warwicks and Worcesters and Australians have accounted for 'em all!"

And as the baking Earth rolled up, blotting out the huge red-hot sun; and the short twilight heralded the sudden swoop of Night on Syria, the Rolls-Royce box-cars carrying the Chief and his Staff moved smoothly on, following the four armoured scouters, and the other Fords swung out and dashed after them.... And the dust of Philistia--watered with the blood of brave men since Wars began on this sad earth--how many times? rolled up and blotted out the moving specks, on the safety of one of which hung the hopes of Christendom.

III

To Katharine Forbis, some seven weeks subsequently to her arrival at the Red Cross Hospital of Montana, an Egyptian Red Cross orderly brought a scrap of paper bearing a pencilled scrawl:

"_Am back from the Front Palestine for ten days leave. Can you see me? Important yours faithfully John Hazel._"

No more. But enough to call back the carnation bloom to cheeks paled by the sub-tropical heats of Egypt, and self-forgetful labours in the interests of wounded men....

Morning duty, consisting in the conveyance of a motor-car packed with convalescents on an expedition to Ramleh and back,--was over. Miss Forbis had just returned, and was free for the afternoon. In her well-cut white drill uniform-skirt and coat with its shoulder-titles, Special Service badges, and scraps of medal-ribbon, her white blouse with its polo collar and natty black silk tie; her brown silk stockings and tan brogue shoes bearing the unmistakable cachet of Bond Street, setting off the workmanlike ensemble, and her handsome head crowned by a soft white Panama hat of the uniform shape, with the Society's ribbon and badge,--she made a gallant, gracious figure, bringing a mist before the eyes of the big, battered-looking, sun-blackened man,--bristlier than ever about the cheeks and chin, and arrayed in battle-soiled and much-patched khaki drill,--who got out of his cane chair in the wide white marble hall with pleased alacrity, knocking over with a bandaged, sling-suspended left arm, the soiled and dusty regulation sun-helmet he had put down on a little table of inlaid Egyptian work.

And as he saluted her in his Eastern way, now familiar to Katharine, swift strangling emotion caught her by the throat. For a moment she could not find voice. For John Hazel brought the panelled parlour at Kerr's Arbour with him; and set it like a scene between the white marble pillars where whirred the electric fans, between the gilt and friezed and painted walls, and under the fretted ceilings of the Egyptian despot's palace, built on the rocky height at the foot of which break the milk-warm surges of the Mediterranean. And once again the old pain at her heart,--dulled by long months without news; by change of scene and change of work, to an aching sense of emptiness,--woke up and cried for all that she had lost.

She said with her wide heartening smile, as his huge hand swallowed hers, still wearing its tan gauntlet:

"You look wonderfully fit, though you're wearing a sling."

"Fit's the word!" He grinned the big toothy grin so well remembered.... "A walking testimony to the nutritive qualities of Maconochie, tinned salmon, Prynn's Baked Beans, Army brickbats, sticky flycatcher dates and chlorinated Nile water.... For we've travelled a long way since the imbecilities of the Crimea," he said, with his black eyes drinking her in.

"Thank God, we have!" Katharine flushed a little under his strange scrutiny, painfully conscious of the unrelaxing grip of his huge, hard, blackened hand. For John Hazel stood, oblivious of its crushing pressure, drinking in the joy of her near presence, inhaling the rare sweetness of her fair, wholesome womanhood; the fragrance of her hair and breath, and garments, coming to him mingled with the perfume of the half-opened red rose--still dewy in the heart of it--that she had stuck in the buttonhole of her uniform jacket that morning, and forgotten to take out again.

And Katharine upon her side was conscious of a strange environing atmosphere; a virile, heady compound of exhalations from the desert, the march, the bivouac and the battlefield, emanating from the garments and the person of the man. The sun-baked blackness of his skin seemed its natural tinting. Whiffs of the wormwood of desolate places mingled with the aroma of thyme, clover and strong tobacco,--the smell of horses and tanned leather; the sharp tang of melinite, and the penetrating odour of sweating human flesh.

A moment more and he released the hand he held, giving a dismayed exclamation, and taking a long backward step.

"Hold on! What have I been thinking of!" Concern was in his voice. "I'm not fit to touch you! Do you know it's a fortnight since I washed last!" His fleshy mouth twisted in disgust, as he surveyed his martial griminess, continuing: "We've been short of water lately. Only allowed a pint _per diem_. Strictly for internal irrigation, nothing allowed for the outer man! And when Essenian Pasha dropped me at the Alex. Air Station--and thundering good of him too!--I'd only time to grab a bite of breakfast at the N.C.O.'s Mess Tent--swallow a mug of coffee--tumble into a car--borrowed from the R.F.C. men!--and just chuffle along. Why I was in such a cast-iron hurry--that's what I've got to explain to you. And when I saw you I clean forgot what a beastly sweep I am! I couldn't--" The deep, rough breath he drew added quite plainly, "I couldn't think of anything but you!"

"Don't you imagine, if you and other brave men can put up with Dirt for Duty's sake--that we women--even those of us who don't wear this uniform--can put up with you men? And you can have a hot bath here at any moment, Mr. Hazel." Katharine's full tones were tinged with laughter as she added: "And a second breakfast,--unless you don't mind waiting the half-hour, which will make it the official noonday meal. Now which will you do? Have that bath--or stay and talk to me on, the lawn or in here until the Staff lunch?--at which meal your picturesque battle-grime will make you the admired of all?"

"It's simply first-class here!--a kind of mix-up of the Alhambra at Granada and an Egypto-Grecian temple," he said to her, gratefully sensing the breezes from the whirring electric fans. "And that little fountain, splashing and gurgling--makes a man who was in the Syrian Desert east of Gaza, up to the evening of day before yesterday, marching and swotting Turks on a pint of doctored Nile water _per diem_--want to stick his blooming head in the basin and drink it all up."

"I--think I'm beginning to comprehend!" Miss Forbis's fine eyebrows relaxed their tension, and the puzzled expression left her face. "You fogged me rather, a minute back--about being in the Desert near Gaza up to the evening of the day before yesterday.... But now--"

"Now you're clear that it isn't a case of bats in the belfry. Haw--haw!" He broke out into the big noisy laugh that had once set Katharine's teeth on edge. "Of course it'd have taken three days if I'd come by the Woggler from Railhead. The Woggler, I ought to tell you, is the Desert Express. Trucks roofed with packing-cases nailed together--nail-ends up--to accommodate the troops. Pullmans,--seats faked with American cloth over a thin film of tibbin,--specially reserved for Officer Sahibs. Not that the Army ain't proud of the Woggler! In its way, it's an epoch-marking, eye-opening Thing. But I happened to be in a dithering hurry. And a chance turned up of getting here by the Air Route, do you see? ... Safe as houses, for we followed the coast and had no scraps--the Turks are very short of fliers!--and we only came down once, for petrol, at a seaplane station near the Rest Camp at El Arish."

The gesture of his blackened hand made light of fatigue, risks, perils and privations attending the long flight from Palestine.... Katharine admired the simplicity with which he spoke, as she said with a touch of reproachfulness:

"It seems very long since you came to me at Kerr's Arbour, Mr. Hazel. And all these months you have never once written--although you promised!"

"I said I would not fail to write--if I had any news for you!"