Part 42
"Thus, as I made pretence to bargain with him for a silver cigarette-roller he had, that I said had caught my fancy, he stoutly maintaining that he did not wish to sell--the English officer said to me secretly at Nakr: 'The furrow watered with our sweat shall yield us no harvest--yet are we not losers but gainers thereby. Since, refusing to give our parole to the Turks, they shut us up in the barbed-wire enclosure without the eastern gate of Shechem, we have taken it by turns to scrape out a tunnel--working in shifts throughout the nights, and taking it in turns to keep watch. From the wooden hut on the east side of the enclosure to the wire-fence is seven paces of a man. Inside the hut we began our tunnel, covering the hole with planks nailed together--scattering earth upon these, and setting the _anghareb_ over the top, the better to hide the place. Two days ago we tunnelled under the wire. Now we are well under the road that runs by the Tomb of Yûsuf to the Well of Yakub, and so passes into the Shechem-Jerusalem Road. We are three paces south from the Turkish sentry-box that is outside the wire there. We should have broken through to-night!"
"That would be the night of yesterday," Fadl Anga murmurs, loosening his lips from the long amber mouthpiece.
"_Masha'llah_! 'But,' saith the English officer, 'that we heard we were going to Aleppo for Exchange. Now, finding thee a friend in disguise, we would have thee know of the tunnel, lest haply other War-prisoners--British or of the Allies--be put in the Wired Place. _Remember, the hole begins under the earth-strewn planks that are beneath the _anghareb_ in the wooden hut that used to be the Mess, The tunnel passes three paces south of the Turkish sentry-box that stands outside the wire. Four paces from the wire, where the broken-down Turkish grain-cart stands upon the road_--it hath stood there ever since the Taking of Beersheba and no man sets hand to it!--under the grain-cart is where we should have broken through.' _Wallah_! And they would have thrown the _salaam_ to the Turks and departed, but for the news of the Exchange."
"Praise be to God for men of good wit! Did the officer say no more to thee?"
"This, O Emir! that they had scratched the story with a nail on the inside of a metal bowl and left it lying in the hut for the next British prisoner. In the bowl are written the times when the Turks go the rounds by day and night; and the hours for relieving-guard, and divers other things time served him not to tell."
"But which," interrupts the younger man, proudly, "I, thy son Namrûd have since found out...."
"Hence, to thee we owe it that we can make the essay to-night, O Namrûd, rightly named 'The Hunter'! Is the coffee ready, thou cleverest of spies?"
"O Haji," Namrûd answers, tingling with the praises of his hero, "the coffee is ready even now!"
The Emir wears a flowing _kuffiyeh_ of vivid green silk secured by the octagonal gold and silver head-rope, over his black felt _tarbûsh_, so the title bestowed by the Shaykh's son is no empty compliment. The long Arab _jubba_ under his loose, open _jelabia_ is of white silk, delicately stitched, the _jelabia_ is of heavy black brocaded silk, tagged with gold at the seams, his red Arab slippers are gold-embroidered, there are diamonds in the hilt of the curved, gold-sheathed dagger his girdle supports. It must pay uncommonly well to breed carrier-pigeons for the nephew of the ex-Sherif of Mecca, now by the right of descent from the Prophet; by the strength of the sword (and the brilliant brains of an Oxford graduate) Commander of the Armies of Arabia and of the Hedjaz, King....
Now Fadl Anga lifts his slender, muscular frame, tense and wiry even in repose, higher against the saddle-bags and takes from the dark hand of Namrûd the little half-filled cup. The young man serves the Shaykh, his father; then, but not until formally invited, fills his own cup, and they drink ceremonially. Twice the cups are replenished; then Fadl Anga says, as Namrûd refills the clay bowl of the _argili_ and puts, with his tough-skinned fingers, a bit of glowing charcoal on the top:
"Didst thou go to the _mashásheh_ in the Bazâr, as I bade thee, O Namrûd?"
"_Wallah_! As thou didst bid me, I went to the _mashásheh_ in the Bazâr."
"And didst thou buy the drug--the sweet conserve of hashish? And of the tobacco-seller, giving him the discreet wink, the cigarettes that are drugged with opium?"
"Verily, O Fadl Anga, these things I got, after the _magúngi_ and the tobacco-seller had denied for a long time that they had any. And--_Wallah!_--the cost of both was as though I had bought jewels."
"It may well be, O Namrûd, yet I grudge not the money."
The Emir puts by the mouthpiece of his water-pipe, and takes from the young Arab chief a stout package of thick, rank-smelling cigarettes, with a Turkish label on it, and a little sticky cardboard box of square, dull greenish jujubes, saying with the smile that curves his finely-cut mouth under the short henna-dyed beard, but never reaches his grey eyes:
"For, to a man who would pump a spy, or stupefy a sharp-witted jailer, either of these were worth a handful of jewels."
"_Masha'llah!_" grunted the Shaykh, sending out a volume of cigarette-smoke. "Have I not proved that true?"
"Many times, O Shaykh Gôhar, and I also. Now, son of my friend and ally, go thou to the bath, which as thou hast found out, the Turkish _Yuzbashi_ (Captain) who will be in command of the guard at the Wired Enclosure to-night, uses to-day,--his duty commencing after the hour of sunset,--and challenge him to a bout of wine and tobacco and salt stories to-night in his tent. His tent is on the left-hand side of the Enclosure and serves by day as his office. He smokes opium, and his sergeant, who is his crony, is a drunkard, and they leave the _onbashi_ (corporal) to take roll-call and go the rounds, whenever the two are minded for a fuddle"--
"All Turks are dogs and sots!" the Shaykh says succinctly. "Thou dost not forget the number of the guard at the Enclosure, and the places where they are posted, O Emir?"
"They are inscribed in the register wherein I set down such things." Smiling, the Emir lightly touches his forehead. "But if thou wilt hear--"
"_Masha'llah_! Let it not be said that I doubted thee." The Shaykh holds up a lean, protesting hand. "I, who am as a suckling compared to thee in wit-craft, and the science of hiving knowledge in the brain."
"Yet will I rehearse to thee here in the room, what Namrûd learned, and thou didst tell me last night on the housetop. Listen. On guard at the Wired Enclosure, all told, thirty-four men. By daylight at any hour, eight Turkish _postas_ on sentry."
"By Allah! Plenty to guard one Englishman."
"As follows: One outside the Wired Enclosure at each corner. One in the middle of each long side, north and south, and two at the entrance.... The guard-tent is opposite that of the Yusbashi.... Roll-call is in English time, 7.30 a.m. and 8 p.m. The rounds of inspection are 9 p.m., 12 midnight, 5 a.m.... Three times between sunset and sunrise. The _châwush_ (sergeant) makes them, if he is sober. At other times the _onbashi_ (corporal) is left to carry-on. The guard is relieved every seventh hour, counting from sunset to sunset."
"Good! But there was no need to repeat it all. I am humiliated by thy grace and courtesy. Now, boy, thy lesson!"
"Hear then, O my father!"
Smiling, the dark-skinned Namrûd begins:
"There are eight _postas_ continually on guard-duty at the Wired Enclosure. One at each corner outside, and one in the middle of each long side, where there are sentry-boxes." His dazzling teeth flash, and his black eyes twinkle as he adds demurely: "I have not heard the Emir tell that! There are two more _postas_ on duty at the entrance. Of the eight men all told--who will be on sentry from sunset to daybreak--seven smoke tobacco and drink wine, but one does neither. He is the priest of his platoon, and a Darweesh of the sect of El-Hoseyn, the Prophet's grandson, and neither eats, drinks, chews nor smokes, any of the Forbidden Things."
The Shaykh rolls his eyes cynically and spits:
"Wallah! By the life of thy head! A Darweesh and an abstainer! ..."
Fadl Anga asks, narrowing his eyes to a grey, glittering line:
"Thou art sure? ..."
"I have the testimony of the seven who are his comrades. Not all of them love him, but notwithstanding, not one can pick a hole in his coat."
"It needs a woman's little fingers for work like that!" suggests the Shaykh, hopefully. He pitches his last cigarette-stump backwards over his shoulder, muttering: "_Dastûr_. By your permission, Ye Blessed!" in case of offending some Afrit of the house, and rises from his carpet saying: "O Namrûd! it is time for sleep. Leave we the Excellent One to rest. Fresh talk will come after. And there are yet two hours to pass before thou goest to the bath...."
And so, with formal exchange of courtesies, and high protests against the Emir's uprising, the Shaykh Gôhar and his son assume their slippers and depart; leaving behind them the perfume of sandal and musk and myrrh, mingled with the wild chamomile and wormwood of the Desert, and the odour of dressed gazelle-leather. And Edward Yaill is free--for an hour--to sleep and dream of Katharine....
It is grilling hot in the upper room of the Khan of the Fox, and the mingled stenches of the courtyard intensify as it approaches high noon. The fleas hop, the flies buzz over the unremoved _débris_ of the midday breakfast.... Sleep still delays, though Yaill has trained himself to summon the Healer at will. In his brain the memory of a familiar refrain thrums in insistent, maddening repetition. He must yield, or sleep will never come. So under his breath he hums "Loch Lomond" so softly that the hairs of his henna-dyed moustache scarcely flutter to the measure. And then, for a few moments, he appears to doze. Until wakening, he stretches out a slim sun-browned hand, as one who wistfully beckons, and whispers, yielding to the craving of body and soul:
"Katharine, Katharine, where are you hiding? ... All night and all day I have felt you near me. Come out and show yourself, my Sweet, my Sweet! ..."
But Katharine delays to reveal her bodily presence, though that strange haunting sense of her nearness does not abate.
Yielding to the divine spell, Yaill holds out his hand, palm upwards. A pause, and he feels the light pressure of fine, smooth fingers. Hers! ... He shuts his eyes, and her breath is cool upon the quivering eyelids. Now she bends over him, and for one rapturous instant, her mouth is upon his. Now the illusion passes, but it leaves his heart hungering. He cannot thrust the thought of Katharine from him. He abandons the idea of the noonday siesta. He will write to his lost love.
And so Fadl Anga, otherwise Edward Yaill--takes from his girdle his Arab pen-case, feels in a pocket within his _kaftan_ for a roll of coarse yellowish paper, tears off a suitable square, and begins to write, using in correct if uncomfortable Oriental fashion the palm of his hand for a desk.
"DEAREST OF WOMEN,
Here in this Samaritan Khan of The Fox at Shechem, I write to you--my two Arabs--Namrûd, the Hunter, and his father the Shaykh Gôhar, of the Beni Asir, having gone about their business, and left their supposed Chief in the state of '_kef_!' _Kef_ proper, meaning a full stomach, a divan, coffee and tobacco--incidentally everything else that affords gratification, notably wine--and the Daughters of Eve. I have eaten a greasy Syrian midday breakfast, I lie on a divan apparently stuffed with radishes, and evidently populous! I smoke excellent tobacco, and Namrûd's coffee corresponds in quality, but there is no wine, and the One Woman earth carries for me, her lonely lover, is some three hundred miles away.
"Beloved, these scrawled lines may never reach you! But there is news and I must write.... Yesterday, the War Prisoners in this place, with the exception of some few too sick to be moved, have been deported _via_ Aleppo to Smyrna, for purposes of Exchange. Your brother's name has again been excluded from the list. Hamid Bey accuses him--I heard last night--of instigating certain of the rank-and-file to mutiny, and the slander is supported by witnesses suborned by him.
"Julian has been secretly removed from the Barracks prison, where up to the present he has been confined. We could not trace his whereabouts at first, but lighting on the fact that 34 Turkish rank-and-file were still assiduously guarding a wooden hut at the eastern end of the rectangle of wired-in ground outside the east gate of the city where War Prisoner officers are no longer--we came to the conclusion, now proved correct--that our man would be found there! Pressure so monstrous has been brought to bear, to compel him to sign a paper, exonerating Hamid Bey from certain charges at the expense of his own integrity, that our attempt at rescue will be carried out to-night....
"Shall we succeed or fail? What has Fate in store for us? The answer to the question lies upon the knees of the gods. You would scold me well if you were here, for so Pagan an utterance--"
The moving pen is arrested. The keen ears of Fadl Anga have heard the soft padding of naked feet upon the balcony. The paper on which he writes vanishes, and with magic celerity a half-written Arabic poem takes its place upon the palm of the Emir's slender hand. The pen moves from right to left, as a shadow falls upon the paper. The voice of a Fellah servant breaks in upon the poet's reverie:
"O Saiyid! O Emir, this slave craves permission to remove the dishes! Also there is a woman below in the court-yard...."
The flies rise with a roar from the rinds of the melons and the greasy remains of the dishes, as the blue-shirted Fellah waiter deftly lifts the tray, and poises it upon his head.
"A presumptuous one, who knowing that at this hour thou wouldst be in the state of _Kef_, or under the influence of the Healer, yet clamours to be brought before the Presence. Wilt thou that I bid her begone?"
"A woman, sayest thou? Who is the woman, and what is her business with me?"
The question is put with low-voiced indifference, the Emir's half-closed eyes surveying the ceiling, now blackened with a moving pattern of flies.
"O Emir, it is the Mother of Ugliness! ..."
"'Ummshni,' sayest thou? ... And who is Ummshni? ..."
"O Prince, Ummshni is known to every one. Ummshni is--Ummshni. Touching her message, which greatly presuming, she dared to send thee--"
"Out with thy message, O father of fools unborn!"
"O Master and lord, the message was this, thy slave kissing the dust beneath thy feet for the sender's presumption: '_Tell the Emir Fadl Anga that his greatness takes the high-road and my humbleness treads the low. But, in the matter of the lost carrier-pigeon of whose whereabouts my lord deigned to question Yuhanna Nakli, the Samaritan divineress in the Bazâr_--"
"I remember. Bid the messenger of the Samaritan divineress come hither!" The long lashes veil the Emir's grey eyes, and as he speaks with languid pauses between the words, he hears the measure of that well-known refrain in the throbbing of his arteries and the beating of his heart: "Take away the dishes and send her up here. Or--" There is a whiff of myrrh and sandal as the tall slight figure in, its rustling silken garments rises from the divan: "Here, from the window, point her out to me!"
"O Prince, behold the daughter of Sheitan! dancing and singing to the camel-men and horse-boys in the _haush_ below."
The tall figure of the Emir steps out on the balcony as a guffaw of coarse merriment comes up from the courtyard borne on a stronger wave of stinks.
X
A circle of Fellah grooms and Arab camel-men, coarse-mouthed, evil-eyed, old in the ways of vice--are gathered about a little creature in the dingy blue print robe, yellow-white outer-robe of sheeting and coarse double veil of the Fellaha. To the majority of these Ummshni is known, not so to the others; who crowd round, eager to taste the joy of baiting the veiled woman who has ventured alone into the crowded court of the Khan.
"Hail, O Beauty, in search of a lover!" jests a squint-eyed Arab. "Couldst thou not pay an old woman to tout for thy customers? Has business been so bad that thou art driven forth under the eye of daylight? Nay then, show thy face for a foretaste of pleasure. _Insh'allah!_--unless thou art ugly as a daughter of the Jinniyeh, here is Abu Mulâd the Tuareg camel-man, ready and willing to take thee on!"
"The Daughters of the Jinniyeh have legs shaggy with hair, and not seldom one eye in the middle of the forehead," squeals a scullion, as Abu Mulâd, a huge and hideous Tuareg from Central Sahara, whose face, arms and legs are dyed with indigo, whose back hair is plaited in tails with straw, and whose top locks are hogged like a cob's mane under the black tribal head-cloth, is thrust into the forefront of the circle by a dozen officious hands. "While this moon's husband fell down dead for sheer joy when his bride was first unveiled to him. Is it not the sheer truth, O Bestower of Delights?"
"Verily thou dost not lie, for once, O Kasib the scullion!" says a thin but audible voice from behind the close-drawn veil. "Wilt thou risk the same fate, O Abu Mulâd the Tuareg? Then--then put forth thine hand! ... Or--shall I save thee the trouble? See then the face that killed a man upon his wedding-night!"
With a thin, shrill cackle of derisive laughter, she draws the screen of coarse towelling. Abu Mulâd stares, grimaces behind the strip of black cloth covering his mouth, curses and spits copiously.... While the little active figure, galvanised into sudden activity, revolves before him in an impish dance, chanting to a weird, unholy tune, words in a strange, unknown tongue:--
"_O, you rode the Desert and he flew the Air!-- And now he has sent me to find you; A message from him, and a letter I bear-- From the bonny bonny Maid of Kerr's Arbour!_"
There is something so gnome-like about the little capering figure, revolving lightly as a withered leaf, or an eddy of Desert sand, upon the unclean litter of the courtyard of the Khan, that--and there is not one man of all the throng who does not believe in witchcraft--even those who know Ummshni best, quail at the possibility of falling under some evil spell, blasting in its effect upon the body as upon the soul.
Kasib the scullion claps his hand before his mouth, as do a dozen others, invoking the Protection. But Abu Mulâd is of the type of man that, ordinarily slow, dilatory and lumpish as a buffalo, is rendered tigerish by fear. He shakes in his hide sandals and bleaches under his indigo mask as he splutters through the V-shaped gap between his filed front teeth:
"Be thou accursed, thou one-eyed sorceress! abominable ghoul, conceiver by the seed of devils! _Insha'llah!_ this good blade of mine shall purge thee of thine evil blood!"
Not a man puts out his hand to save the woman, as the Tuareg leaps upon her, grasps her frail shoulder, and the curved iron knife flashes out, when a sharp clear voice, with the unmistakable ring of authority in it, arrests the lifted hand.
"_Shwai!_"
The whites of eager eyes roll, as the dark, excited faces are lifted to the balcony where stands the Emir Fadl Anga. Now his sharp, authoritative voice rings out again:
"Release the woman and bid her come up hither. Who shows her violence will reckon with me!"
The Tuareg's heavy blue fingers fall from the slender, bruised shoulder. Ummshni mutely salaams to the imperious Presence above, and moves with her customary, artificial limp to the outer staircase leading to the balcony, as the crowd of idlers, frustrated of the pleasant thrill that is born of the sight of bloodshed, disperse to their various quarters.
Imperiously beckoning the woman to make haste, the Emir moves back into the room, and presently the shadow of the little feminine figure is cast across the balcony and the three-inch high window-sill, that is grooved to receive the heavy shutter that closes the room at night....
With a strange premonitory thrill, Yaill speaks to the little creature:
"Enter without fear, O Mother of Ugliness!" He goes on as her fragile, dusky arms curve out, the hands touch the veiled brow in the Eastern salutation from an inferior, and noiselessly as a moth she flits into the room: "And without fear--for here we are in privacy--tell me who taught thee that song?"
"O Saiyid!" How faint and whispering a voice is hers.... "I learned the song from a big man---a soldier of the Army of Ingiltarra--who sat on a sack of biscuits after Sheria, and hummed while the Sons of the Desert made the Prayer of Afternoon."
"Where is the man to be found?"
"Saiyid, he lies in hiding in a tomb upon Mount Ebal, having been lamed in leaping from a landing aëroplane. His liver is charred with anger at so untoward an accident. Strong is his brain to help thee plan, and strong as iron are his hands--that could choke the life out of an enemy's throat--even as a child twists a rotten cucumber. But he is lame!" Yaill marks the falling note of anguished pity in the voice. "He can but limp upon a stick, he cannot leap or run...."
"Tell him from me.... Stay! ... Tell me first how thou didst encounter him?"
"Sir," Ah, the woman knows too much, she is actually speaking English, "Sir, to me, a woman of many sorrows, secretly dwelling in that desolate place of which I speak, he came as a stranger seeking succour. Then, by the Will of the Most High, was discovered between us kinship: the bond of religion, the call of race, and the unbreakable tie of blood."
"Madam--"
"Give me not that title. I am no man's wife!"
"Then, Miss Hazel--"
"_Chut_! Call me only Ummshni." A black eye sparkles at Yaill from between her veils and a little finger, slender and supple as a lizard's tail, signs to him to beware. "I heard a footstep overhead, but now!" the thin voice whispers, reverting to Arabic, "And it did not pass on, and see there--that hole!"
With an upward gesture of her supple hand she barely indicates the whitewashed ceiling, in which there is certainly a hole, rat-gnawed, or made by human hands for spying purposes--and reaching to the surface of the flat mud roof above.