Chapter XX: A Post of Peril

It is now time to return to the little band of Afghan converts left in the Eagle's Nest.

Whilst Walter had been basking in the dangerous glare of prosperity, a sharp storm of trial had been sweeping over his native friends. He had not been fully aware how all-important had been the support of an Englishman's influence, talent, and courage, to the newly-baptised chief, Ali Khan. It was now as if the principal pillar supporting an edifice had been taken away, or a vessel in a gale had been reft both of its main-mast and rudder. Yet as a building may still stand, though its strongest prop be removed, and a vessel float on the waves though main-mast and rudder be lost, so the chief in the Eagle's Nest for years held his dangerous post. This was chiefly owing to the following three causes.

Ali Khan was a brave and--until his baptism--a popular leader. Though he now discouraged war and forbade plunder, no one could doubt the courage of a man who had slain a bear single-handed, and who had brought home more trophies of the chase than did any other hunter in the clan. Once finding three of his men, against his express orders, looting and beating a travelling merchant, Ali Khan had knocked down the chief offender, expelled him from the tribe, and made the two others undergo the bastinado. This vigorous execution of justice had for a time a very salutary effect on the minds of his turbulent followers. The Afghans saw that they had to deal with no child.

And Ali Khan, as the husband of Sultána, commanded a certain amount of respect. The young eaglet had from childhood been the darling of the clan, and now they were proud of her, Christian as she was, as being, in their eyes, the brightest, bravest, most beautiful woman in all their land. Sultána was no _pardah_ prisoner in her zenana; her light step, the glance of her eye, the tones of her voice were familiar to all in the fort. There were many who had received from her personal kindness not readily to be forgotten. In everything relating to the management of his troublesome people, Sultána was to her husband more than a right hand.

There was a third advantage possessed by the chief. From the manner in which Walter Gurney had been received at the English camp, it was concluded by the Afghans that he must have great influence with the powerful invaders. The British troops were sweeping through Afghanistan, and tidings of their wonderful marches and signal victories reached the Eagle's Nest. Even when our warriors vacated the land, they left their prestige behind. The Afghans of the fort had an impression that Walter would return, and should he find his friend Ali Khan defeated or deposed, would draw on them English vengeance. The iron hand of power which had twice reached Kabul itself, would easily crush a small tribe so near the British dominions. Thus, for a considerable time, his own character, his wife's influence, and the fear of Walter's anger made discontented Moslems submit to the control of a Christian chief.

But there were no more conversions. It had been Walter Gurney's habit, during the latter part of his residence in the Eagle's Nest, to give daily expositions of Scripture, followed by singing and prayer; and his parables had been so attractive, his music so fine, his descriptions so vivid, that many unconverted Afghans had gathered around to hear him. Often the nod of assent, or the appreciative "wah! wah!" had expressed approval--if not of the doctrine, yet of the illustration employed by the gifted preacher.

It was very different when Ali Khan, keeping his place on the page with his swarthy finger, read slowly, and with many mistakes, from the manuscript left for his use by Walter. His audience comprised none but the Christians, sometimes only his wife, for her venerable grandmother was slowly sinking into the grave. The seed sown by Walter had in most cases fallen on the beaten highway; as soon as he had quitted the fort, the evil one carried it away.

Nor were there wanting illustrations of the seed falling on the stony ground, and springing up only to die. Mirza, one of the baptised seven, soon grew weary of isolation from his Moslem companions, and of bearing their taunts and ill-treatment. He very easily persuaded himself that though Christianity might be good for Feringhees, it would never suit the Afghan. Mohammed Sahib had been a bold and successful chief, who had permitted his followers to loot, had encouraged them to kill, and had promised on easy terms to his followers paradise and its houris. The oriental mind is not logical; Walter's proofs of the truth of Christianity, if ever understood by Mirza, were forgotten almost as soon as heard. First the Afghan absented himself from prayers, then received reproof with sullen anger; finally he openly joined the party in the fort who scarcely attempted to conceal their dislike of their Christian chief, and their resolution to resist innovations. Mirza's wife, as a matter of course, followed the lead of her husband, and never, except from necessity, came near Sultána.

Then came death, still further to lessen the little band of Christians. Sultána's aged relative passed from earth. Her faith had been as that of a little child, and with the simple trust of a little child she obeyed the call of her Heavenly Father. Sultána, as she gazed on the placid face of the dead, felt that the venerable woman had indeed been taken from the evil to come. She was sheltered in the grave--or rather in the land of the blessed--from the trials and perils which every day were coming on thicker and faster.

The mind of Ali Khan was sorely troubled by the spreading spirit of disaffection; his patience sometimes gave way under the daily provocations to which he was now exposed. His faith might have failed altogether, had it not been sustained by the firmer piety of his young wife.

"I am weary of my life!" exclaimed the chief one day, as he entered the upper apartment or zenana, where Sultána was plying her wheel.

"Mirza is a false traitor to me as well as to his faith; he is trying to undermine my power in my own fort. Half of the men of my tribe would not care were I to share the fate of the yellow-haired stranger. There were curses muttered to-day which I did not choose to seem to hear, as a Christian must not for a personal affront knock down a fellow with the butt end of a gun, or shoot him through the head. The fellows know that, and they take their advantage. Our Feringhee friend should never have come, or never have left us!"

"He will come again," said Sultána; "he promised to return to his Afghan children, and he never will break his word."

"He hath sent us no token, and years have gone by," said the chief, gloomily, seating himself on the skin of a cheetah, spread on the bare floor. It was too true that neither Walter's letters nor gifts had reached their destination; the latter had been appropriated by their bearers, or the unscrupulous Afghans of the fort; the former, which Sultána would have prized more highly, had been destroyed or flung away.

"My men," continued the chief, "accustomed to a wild life of plunder, cannot or will not take to the means of earning their livelihood which the Feringhee friend proposed. They say that they are not Persians to weave carpets, nor Kashmiris to embroider shawls. They are accustomed not to make but to take; not to exchange goods but to seize them."

"My lord has many troubles," said Sultána; "but there is One who can and will bear him through all. We will not yield, nor fear, nor complain."

"I feel the difficulty myself," said the chief, pursuing the train of his own thoughts. "In old times when we needed aught, we belted on scimitars and loaded our guns, and made a sudden foray. We came back fewer perhaps in numbers, but anyhow laden with spoil. Now--how am I to provide for your needs and my own? I have not a silver piece left."

"My lord will never shrink from poverty endured for Christ's sake," said Sultána.

"I do not shrink," said the chief; "I know that it is better to starve as a Christian than feast as a Moslem."

"My lord will not starve," said Sultána; "have we not heard that God feeds the ravens?" She had stopped her wheel in order to converse, and now drew the anklets over her slender bare feet, took the jewels from her ears, and the ornaments from her beautiful hair. Silently she placed them beside her husband.

"How could I rob you of your jewels!" he exclaimed, knowing how precious to the women of the East are such personal adornments.

"I need them not," said the daughter of a robber chief--how changed from what she had been in her childhood! "Let me not lay up treasures on earth; mine is the pearl of great price."

And a gift better than gems was to reward the young Afghan wife. In the course of that month a little bud of beauty bloomed beside the parent rose. Sultána clasped in her arms a lovely boy, and in grateful adoration she and her husband devoted him at once to the Lord.

Few earthly joys come without some drawbacks. It caused great dissatisfaction in the fort that the birth of the chief's first-born son was not celebrated by the gluttonous revels and superstitious orgies which had never before been omitted in the Eagle's Nest on such a joyful occasion. Sheep indeed had been killed, and a banquet provided; but vice and profanity had been excluded, and to the special indignation of the old women, not a single charm against the evil eye had been tied around the neck of the babe!

Ali Khan and Sultána had long been making a brave struggle to swim against the tide of dissatisfaction, but now it appeared likely to sweep them away in its current. Mustapha was--and had been for months--plotting against his chief. The traitor tried, and succeeded but too well, in stirring up the smouldering embers of discontent into a flame. He contrived to have another key made for the large outer gate, so that it could be opened without the knowledge of Ali Khan, who, like his predecessor, always kept the key at night. Then Mustapha arranged a meeting of Afghans in a retired spot outside the fort, and to this meeting all the men except Mir Ghazan and Ali Khan himself were invited.

The gathering took place by moonlight,--by knots of twos and threes the mountaineers sought the appointed place. When Mustapha judged that the number was complete, springing on a piece of rock which raised him a little above his audience, with passionate gestures he addressed the listening throng of the fierce, long-haired Afghans.

"How long, O Pathans! will you submit to the rule of a vile renegade, who has left his faith to become the disciple of a Feringhee Kafir, who has deceived, and now deserted him! Are you, who soared like mountain eagles, ye who as eagles swooped down on your prey, to become as timorous doves? Is the bear who went crashing through the woods in his freedom, defying and destroying whoever opposed him, to be led by a silken thread? Ye are not men, ye are women, if ye longer own Ali Khan as your chief, seeing that he has disgraced his name, deserted his faith, and cast dirt on the graves of our fathers!"

"Down with him! down with him! death to the infidel!" cried some of the fiercer of the Afghans, unsheathing their knives.

The disaffection was not universal; Ali Khan had still his admirers and Sultána her friends even in that excited throng; but, as is usually the case, the louder voices and the more fiery spirits carried the day.

"Mustapha is our chief! Down with Ali Khan--hurl him from the rock!" shouted the renegade Mirza; and others took up the cry, "Mustapha! Mustapha! the true believer! Mustapha is the chief of our clan!"