Chapter III

The voice of a German officer breaks in, giving a sharp order in Prussian-flavoured Turkish. There is a rush of _zabtiehs_ and _postas_ to the door of the building where the madman is.... As they jostle in the filthy entry, the boots of those who have got in first, thunder on its crazy stairs; and savage shouts and the tumult of a desperate struggle break out in the sordid room where Govan--bleeding from a bullet-wound in the head--but equal to a dozen men in the strength of his insanity--stands over the disfigured corpse laid out upon a dirty sack.

In the mud courtyard below, as Hamid Bey, with the German officers; his following and escort of police are retreating discreetly backwards to the vantage of the courtyard gate--a prisoner with a savage curse, dashes a handful of muddy orange-peel full in the livid face of Hamid. The Bey, smothered with filth and choking with rage, jerks his revolver from its holster, and promptly scatters the offender's brains.

Were the Bey unaccompanied, a volley from the Winchesters of his escort would silence for all time the rioters about him. But the German commander has previously informed him that on the morrow the War prisoners under his jurisdiction at Shechem will be deported for purposes of exchange....

Wild shouts, and British cheers break out.... Old War-slogans are heard again.... There is a furious rush of naked feet, but the Military Police and the _postas_ of the guard beat back the unarmed mutineers with rifle-butts, and drive them back on either side, clubbing and kicking them. But less because of this the tumult is quelled than because a tall, ragged man with long tawny hair and beard has rushed from the archway of one of the Barrack buildings; and bringing, in this desperate hour, the authority of the priest to reinforce the influence of the friend and helper, exhorts, implores, commands the maddened prisoners to submit to the brutal authority they have no power to resist.

They are not cowed, but they obey. The clenched hands drop whatever missiles they have chanced to seize on,--their owners, in a storm of kicks, curses and blows with the rifle-butt, are herded back into the Barracks by their guards.

Barney, the jester, for once at a loss for a gag, huddles on a sack half-filled with straw on one of the wooden platforms,--six feet wide and two above the floor--a couple of which, running parallel, longitudinally divide each room. Divided into sections by upright planks, each section of platform accommodates or discommodes six War Prisoners. Perhaps Barney's room, and others on the upper floors are a thought less vile in flavour than these on the lower storeys. He smokes his last remaining fag, then whistles a dreary ragtime, staring through the barred window in front of him at the unbarred window of a room that is over the courtyard gate....

It is the window of the Commandant's office: the bare, seldom-used room where, on Sundays, as a signal favour,--the priest has been allowed to celebrate Mass and hold a Bible-class, and on rare occasions an impromptu smoking-concert has been given. It is full of Turkish _postas_ in khaki, and the braided blue of the Osmanli gendarmerie. It is at first not possible to get a glimpse of what is going on inside, but in obedience to some order the window is cleared of the bodies blocking it.... Now it can be made out that the officers are Hamid Bey and the German general, seated with the secretary and _aide_ at a table, before which--with two troopers of Mounted Police behind him, stands a tall, pale, emaciated man with long red-gold hair and beard.

The man seems to be answering a series of interrogations. He asserts, he denies emphatically, he pleads, but he does not cringe. Driven to silent frenzy by the difficulty of seeing, and the doubtfulness of the trend of the events that are taking place in the room over the gateway, Barney looks at his neighbour, the Sergeant of the R.F.C.

"Sergeant!"

"Eh?"

The Flight Sergeant's broad hands are sheltering his eyes as he lies on his stomach on the platform. The little folding binoculars that magnify by 20 are solving for their owner the problem of the Commandant's Room.

"D'yer pipe wot's goin' on? In the office over the gytew'y? Where 'Amid, blarst 'im! an' the two German orficers is settin' at the table and the Father standin' up in front? ..."

"Ay. They're playin' a scene out o' the Old Testament!" says the Flight Sergeant, with a sarcastic twitch of a muscle in his thin cheek.

"Wod'jer call it? ..." Barney breathes hard....

"The Scapegoat!"

"The 'ow much? ..."

"The Scapegoat. The beast the ancient Jews burdened with the sins of the congregation--and drove into the Wilderness every year. Only--the Padre's the Scapegoat--in this case."

"'Oo? ... Not Father Forbis?"

"Father Forbis right enough! 'Left--turn. Quick--march. Party--shon!'" mimics the Sergeant, as the high fair head and stern aquiline profile of the priest, with a _zabtieh's_ fezzed head before, and another behind him,--passes across the field of vision limited by the frame of the window, and by the opening of a door an angle of light is thrown on the whitewashed office wall. "Now the _sira-châwush_ is ordering out the Prison Guard escort.... It's all over.... They're taking him away! ..."

"Dismissed after interrygation.... That's all.... Cheero! In a minnit 'e'll come back through the yard-gyte an' go to 'is quarters as gay as a bloomin' bird...."

Barney defends his opinion with desperate optimism. But his heart is sinking leadenly and a lump is in his throat.

"All serene! Have it your own way. You'll see which is right of us!" The Sergeant cautiously raises himself up. "Do you hear the escort's looted British boots trampin' down the stairs? Now they'll either turn in here or march out at the Main Entrance. And if they do that, there'll be no Mass for the Catholics on Sunday morning--and no Prayers for the rest of us when Mass is through. And no one to get us the allowance from the Consul. And a dog's death for the sick, ay! and a dog's burial. There! ... Do you hear? ... That's the outside gate shutting..."

"Yus. O my Gawd! Shall we ever see 'im agyne?"

The inner gate of the Barrack courtyard has not opened. The sentries posted right and left of it maintain their position unmoved. But the groaning of rusty bolts in stone grooves, and the sound of the ponderous outer gate of the Main Entrance opening and slamming, falls, heavy as a clod of churchyard clay, on the hearts of many men.

For their priest, their helper, their counsellor and friend has gone from his place among them, and the blank he leaves is beyond mere words to express. And even worse than the sense of loss is the cruel uncertainty. Wondering, conjecturing, they lie on their verminous benches as the long hot Palestine day creeps to the sunset hour. The prayer-call from the mosques heralds no supper. Prisoners who resent massacre and villainous usage must, in the opinion of the Bey, have been too lavishly fed. The soldiers of the guard divide the beans in oil; and Barney Mossam, tightening his belt, is more than ever certain that Virtue, outside the walls of the T.R. Drury Lane--is not a game that pays....

The breeze freshens, the great bats come out to steal fruit, and the lesser ones to hunt moths and mosquitoes. Night suddenly unfolds her wings--and down comes the Dark. The jackals howl on the confines of the town, and the pariah dogs bay hideously. The Turkish equivalent for Lights Out! is sounded by the prison _boruzan_. Silver clear, the trumpets and bugles of the German-Turkish garrison challenge the echoes of Ebal and Gerizim. The radiant Hosts of Heaven come forth, and the moon, in her last quarter, hangs over the Hills of Gilead.

Sleep has come to the prisoners. The mud walls shake with their snoring. Only a few are wakeful. The Flight Sergeant is one of these. Towards the middle of the night a 'plane goes over Shechem:

"A raiding or reconnoitring hydro from some carrier in the Mediterranean? No! There's no rattling from the floats. It is a land machine...."

The airman leaves the crowded bench, and steals to the window. In the white effulgence of the moon all objects stand out clear. The German look-out with the telescope on the minaret of the Great Mosque of el Kebir.... The hooded searchlight with its dozing and waking guardians, on the balcony lower down.... A little figure moving on the ragged shoulder of Ebal.... A child? ... No! a woman--scrambling up from limestone terrace to terrace.... He forgets her, for, with the deep, vibrating song that he remembers--into the field of his vision swims The Two-Faced Nightingale....

At about a thousand feet up, she circles smoothly above Shechem. The search-ray from the balcony of the Great Mosque slashes at her viciously. Its fellow from the flank of Gerizim, leaps out, but sinks down again. Her pilot fires an orange light--and the scimitars of radiance from the Mosque and the Mount return to their scabbards; no strings of green rockets explore for the range of her--and no shells from the anti-aircraft guns in the Square of the Khan scream up at her winged shape....

As the biplane hovers against the jewel-bright blue of the Eastern night, the little Zeiss glasses tell their owner that her pilot has a native observer. A big Arab in a striped mantle, and headcloth bound by a rope.... Now her pilot fires a second orange light, drops his weighted despatch-bag, banks and climbs, launching at a dizzy height into a descent of sweeping spirals.... Evidently he is going to land somewhere in the neighbourhood of Shechem....

There is silence as the engine is cut out.... The big 'plane dives out of sight behind the shoulder of Ebal, where the lowest tiers of greyish-yellow limestone terraces are merged in the sandy, rolling plain....

The Flight Sergeant holds his breath and waits, his eyes glued to the binoculars. In a wonderfully short space of time the aëroplane, a powerful tractor biplane of D.H.6 type, climbs into his field of vision,--rises in wide, masterly spirals, banks, turns and flies away Westwards,--leaving the Flight Sergeant wondering with his chin upon the window-sill....

For the Two-Faced Nightingale has shed her observer, the big man in the striped Arab _abâyi_ and roped _kuffiyeh_. Puzzled, the Flight Sergeant creeps noiselessly back to his place on the wooden platform, and lies awake, chewing the cud of mystery, for the rest of the long miserable night.