CHAPTER II

An hour before sunset, a group of Arab horsemen came over the scrubby hillocks, following the indistinct route worn by mules, which led, five miles to the north, to the main route to Damascus. Their horses were tired, for they had been hard pressed, and on the faces of the riders something of the panic of the early morning was still visible. They were alive, indeed, and fortunate in the fact, for hundreds had fallen in that dreadful massacre in the gorge. Picturesque they were, in an assorted fashion, but as soldiers they were not impressive, dressed in ragged gowns and dirty head-dresses, their beards untrimmed. More like a band of brigands, than a part of the routed 7th Turkish Army, they rode in disorder. The level sunlight flashed on the strange weapons stuck in their belts, ivory-handled knives, murderously long, revolvers of an obsolete fashion and pistols with heavy ebony handles. The young officer in command of them could ill-conceal his contempt of this rabble, and watched them with a cautious eye, knowing that they would as readily plunge their knives into him as into that of any luckless traveller. Accompanied by four juniors he rode behind, saddle-sore and depressed.

A cry at his side made him look up. His sergeant was pointing to something in the ravine below. Half a dozen Arabs had broken away from the column and were racing down the rocky steep to reach the plunder. The officer shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun. The stark outline of a shattered fuselage reared up on end from a twisted mass of machinery. A broken wing lay twenty yards apart, It was no unfamiliar sight, this, of a crashed aeroplane. He made no effort to recall the Arabs, for his command would be ignored. The possibility of plunder shattered all discipline. Contemptuously he reined up his horse on the hillock and waited. The transport halted behind them; even in retreat they disliked hurry.

"There's nothing left, I'm sure--it's a bad crash," said the officer, surveying the twisted frame-work through his glasses. "The engine's half buried--poor devil!"

The Arabs had soon finished their inspection, and with disappointment were riding back, all but two, who suddenly turned aside and dismounted.

"Why don't they come?" asked the young Turk, turning to his sergeant. "Go--hurry them up--I will not wait."

The sergeant detached himself, his horse carefully testing its way down the steep. The officer gave the command to march, the column jogged forward in disorderly fashion, the transport drivers behind cracked their whips and swore at the jaded mules, the cloud of dust rose again on their trail along the barren hills. They had not gone a mile ahead when the sergeant overtook the commandant again.

"It was a body--they'd stripped him, but I made them give up these papers in his pocket, and this."

He handed a pocket book, some envelopes and a thin chain to the officer. On the end of the chain a pendant swung and glinted in the sunset. The officer examined it before looking at the papers. A thin strand of hair, brown hair, was tied round the link that held the frame in which an oval moonstone was set. On one side there was a minute engraving of an eye, on the other, one word, in Turkish, "Kismet."

For a long moment, the young officer spoke no word as he held the stone in his hand. The sergeant waited. As they stood, the transport column filed past them, lorries and guns, and all the impedimenta of an army in retreat. The men were badly shod, their uniforms ragged. They were ill-fed and half rebellious, but the enemy were sweeping up behind and safety lay ahead; only the impulse for safety spurred their flagging spirits.

"Where was the body?" asked the Turk, without apparent interest.

"About twenty yards from the aeroplane, sir."

"The other--there were two?"

"Yes, sir, the pilot probably--the machine fired and there's little left."

The end of the column was in sight now. The sergeant turned his horse as if to join the line, but his officer did not move. The last lorry lumbered by in a cloud of dust.

"I will have a look at this machine, it may tell us something," said the officer, turning his horse. The sergeant followed.

"No," he said, sharply. "You go on--I will overtake you in a few minutes."

"Yes, sir." The man saluted and rode off after the cloud of dust. The lonely horseman waited. Quiet was settling down in the hills again. The next transport column would be an hour's march away yet; it would be dusk ere they arrived. Spurring his horse, he went back along the rutted road until the ravine with the crashed aeroplane at the bottom came into sight. Dismounting, he tethered his horse by the path and made his way slowly down the slope, still holding in his right hand the talisman taken from the dead Englishman. If what he feared was true it was a strange meeting after these many years. Kismet indeed!

He had reached the bottom of the slope now, dusty and shaken by his swift descent. It was dusk already in the ravine and the level rays of the sunset were gilding the ridges of the hills above. He shivered in the cool shade, and the silence grew oppressive. The call of a jackal came from a thicket near by, a horrible, blood-chilling whine. He stumbled. The light would be gone if he did not hurry.

He could see the object he sought, a small patch on the ground ahead; breaking into a run, he approached the naked body of the dead man. Those bandits had stripped him, and he lay stretched out, his set face turned to the sky. Two birds took sudden flight at the approach of the man, and rose with a whirr of large black wings, sinister and sickening to the sight in their repulsive portent.

Flinging himself to his knees, he bent over the slim body lying so inert. For a few moments he had no courage to look into the face. Beautiful, he lay in death, like a perfect figure of marble,--the whiteness only broken on the left breast, bloody and scarred. Had the miscreants murdered him in their plundering? No, for this thin stream of blood from the wound had dried long ago.

Bending forward, the living face looked on the dead, and in that moment of recognition a sharp cry of pain broke on the desert hush. Gathering him up in his arms, he pressed the lifeless body to his breast.

"Oh, John effendi! Oh, John effendi!" he sobbed, brushing back the hair from the brow of the dead man.

"See, I have our token and thou wast faithful, John effendi! Great brother of my heart, what woe is come upon us! Dost thou not hear me? 'Tis I, Ali, thy friend of boyhood's days. O thou unfortunate one! Unhappy the servant of Allah, that these eyes thus behold thee, most beloved brother of my soul, John effendi! Oh, John effendi!"

He bent over the lifeless form, peering into the unclosed eyes of the dead man as if he would read therein some words of recognition, of greeting. He had not changed, this friend of happy days by Yeshil Irmak's singing waters. The face that had faded in distance from the fountain at Amasia was this face of death found in the desert, and the years had scarcely touched it, perhaps only to make it sterner, more handsome. Great was the will of Allah to bring them together again across the ways of the world. Thus had he beheld him on the hill on that last day of parting when the night crept over the gorge at Amasia; night crept on now, night with its stillness and its stars, and he could not go hence again. Brothers in life they were, were they not brothers in death; were not their feet wedded to the same great adventure?

With his handkerchief he wiped the sand and blood from the face of the dead man, smoothed the bruised brow. Beautiful he was, in this hour of meeting.

"O John effendi," he cried, pressing his mouth to the cold brow. "Our footsteps have gone out upon the dusty way and we are met again. Allah in his greatness willed it so!"

The darkness of night gathered about the living and the dead. Above, the brazen dome held the last flush of day. In the cool east a few stars came on the flood of darkness. From hill-top to hill-top the greyness crept and the valleys filled with shadow. The moon, low on the dark horizon, brightened; the timorous stars spangled the heavenly way with bright battalions. The hill ridges, black in the sunset, softened and sank in the encroaching tide of night.

Such silence, such peace, such coolness after the noisy, parching day! Foolish man, fretful with his bewildering schemes, his fears and frenzy, his comings and goings over the face of the indifferent earth--all, all engulfed in the enduring silence. And for the end of all--this beneficent peace.

But no, even now, the hush is broken. Out of the darkness it comes, mysterious, stirring, portentous,--the sound of a thousand years, the low insistent droning of a drum. Listening, the living hears its mournful, suggestive music, even as he heard it in the khans at Amasia. It rises, it falls, undulating. And if the dead hear, then is the call familiar,--the call of a far-off night, when, under almond blossom, a little white figure, dream-impelled, stepped towards the moonlit stream.

Nearer it comes, nearer, nearer. The night winds bear it afar down the ravine; it is the music of war, the music of a thousand conquerors marching in brief glory out to the silence of death.

Gently the living man lowers the dead from his arms. He rises to his feet, solitary and minute under the inquisition of the stars. The tethered horse on the highway stirs and whinnies. The transport column comes winding along the road of retreat. Nearer now, sound the drums; soon the riderless horse will be found.

Suddenly, shattering the night, a shot rings out, doing violence to the quiet of the valley. The echo ricochets from hill-top to hill-top and faintly dies in the distance. The deep hush flows again, the eddies of sound fade out on the pool of silence. Over the grey crest of the eastern hills the moon climbs, pouring its light into the ravine. A jackal cries and slinks away among the scrub; and again, the insistent calling of a drum.

THE END