Chapter VII

The stuffy interior of the prison hut swims about the priest as he speaks. He sees a look of something like irritable compassion cross the handsome face on which his eyes are fixed. Its owner regrets the oversight, and will give orders that it shall not be repeated. Even as the prisoner voices thanks, he has a fleeting glimpse of an ugly, mocking grin on the flat brown features of the brick-faced German General. He hears a little, hateful, malicious laugh from the dark, bearded, white-robed personage who stands in the background.... He sees him approach the brick-faced man, and whisper in his ear.

And his ordinary senses, wrought to preternatural acuteness by suspense, hunger and sleeplessness, and that sixth sense which belongs to some anointed Servants of Heaven, warn Julian Forbis--have warned him since the mysterious shock and thrill that accompanied the stranger's entrance--of something more than sinister--more than terrible or dangerous, in connection with this white-robed, bearded man. He feels, emanating from his personality, an aura of sheer Evil--poisonous to the soul's health, paralysing to the will....

"I--"

His voice dies away. He is dizzy with weakness. Lights flash before his eyes, the hut spins round, and the two tall German officers and the man in the red head-drapery seem to join in the giddy whirl. Now he staggers, and sinks down fainting, his head and shoulders resting against the framework of the bed:

"It is damnable!" impatiently says the wearer of the Order of the Black Eagle, pulling out a gold pocket-flask, and finding it to be empty. "The man is dying--useless! See if there be not water somewhere. Tell somebody to bring some here! ..."

"Immediately, Excellency."

The flat-faced general is going to the hut door when the wearer of the red head-drapery gracefully interposes:

"What says the Shaykh? ..."

"Excellency, that wine will be better than water!--and that if you will observe a moment's silence, I will undertake that some shall be brought...."

"Indeed. Most exceedingly interesting, my very dear friend Sadân! ..."

A meaning look is exchanged between the two German officers. Smiling, the smoke-dark, bearded man steps into the middle of the floor-space, faces to the East, and looks back at his companions, saying in a sharp, clear tone:

"_Uskut!_ ... By your Excellency's leave, I must strictly enjoin respect--and silence...."

He lifts the long, wide ends of his gold-embroidered girdle, with them covering his dark, slender, joined hands, and turns to the East again, saying: "_Dastûr!_ By Your Permission, O Ye Blessed Ones! ..." Their spurred heels aligned, their hands rigidly at the salute, the two officers standing behind him, erect, unwinking and stiff, might be mistaken for coloured statues--save that their broad chests heave slightly with their noiseless breathing, and the glittering hairs of the Commander-in-Chief's moustache bristle like the whiskers of a watchful cat. There is a sobbing gasp or two from the fainting man lying propped against the _anghareb_; from the man in the red head-drapery, whose joined, covered hands are lifted--comes a sibilant low murmuring, but in the hut there is no other sound....

Until with a sharp, hissing final utterance, that might be the close of an invocation, the covered hands of the Shaykh are lowered. He bows his red-veiled, gold-crowned head over them, and turns round with a flashing smile:

"_Kolossal! Wunderbild!_" the Germans mutter, relaxing their attitudes of stiff respect, and exchanging glances of awe and astonishment....

For whereas the dark hands beneath the girdle-flaps were empty, their slender fingers, now uncovered, are seen to be enlaced about the stem of a glittering beaker of delicate, iridescent glass or crystal, brimming with pinkish-tinted liquor that diffuses an exquisite bouquet upon the mouldy atmosphere of the hut.

"It is nothing, O my lords! The Messengers are swift-winged and duteous," he says with his glittering smile....

Both Germans hugely admire the marvellous glass vessel, but neither is over-eager to handle and examine it. Or, when pressed, to taste the fragrant wine, which the Shaykh Sadân proceeds to pour down the throat of the swooning prisoner, lifting his head and shoulders with an ease that shows the great strength latent in his own small-boned Asiatic frame and delicate extremities....

The glass is nearly empty now, and between gulps of strange, poignant, reviving sweetness, Julian Forbis is coming to the use of his wits again.... As he sits up, then staggers to his feet by the help of a hand--he knows not whose!--except that it is small and strong, and that its strength is as unexpected as its deadly, stinging coldness--the Shaykh Sadân turns away and empties the remainder of the wine upon the beaten floor. A light flame flickers unperceived upon the spot as the earth drinks the liquor.... The Shaykh, smiling, offers the empty goblet to the German Commander-in-Chief.

"Beautiful indeed. And of immense antiquity. The value of this must be great, very great! ..."

Somewhat reluctantly the Chief has taken the thing, but its strange beauty and evident rarity tickle the _connoisseur_. It is thin as a soap-bubble, and as light. It might be blown of melted jewels--so dazzling are its minglings of ruby and topaz and jacinth,--of sapphire and emerald and dusky amethyst. Flawless, it rings like a bell as he taps it with his finger-nail. Now, wearying of the inanimate toy, he looks about for a shelf or table, but finds none; the hut being innocent of furniture other than the bed, a battered metal bowl lying in a corner, and a bottomless palm-wood stool....

"Permit me, O Excellent Lord!"

Seeing the Chief's evident difficulty, the Shaykh Sadân relieves him of the fragile goblet, and with supple ease and a graceful carelessness, sets it down upon the unsubstantial air. Where it stands a moment--under the surprised observation of the Commander-in-Chief and his satellite--until, with a slight yet perceptible shrinking of its outlines, and dulling of its jewel-bright colours--such as might have been observed in the soap-bubble to which it has been likened--it delicately vanishes away....

"_Himmelkreuzbombenelement!_" sputters the brick-faced general. His dull eyes protrude with genuine alarm, and his morale having deserted him, he makes a hasty movement in the direction of the door.

"See now, you have scared Von Krafft," says the Chief with a laugh that is not quite natural. "A hundred years ago, in England or in Germany, they would have burned you for that, O Shaykh Sadân!"

"It may be, O Excellent Lord!" he answers with the smile that is so ingratiating and yet so sinister. "But not in Egypt--nor in Arabia, where--when the Lands of the North were girt with ice, and inhabited by savages, the Divine Art of Magic had for cycles of centuries been known.... Lo! the good Shiraz wine hath worked its own witchcraft. Speak to the priest now--and he will hear and understand...."

"Prisoner, listen to me and prove yourself worthy of the consideration I have shown you. Admit frankly, that as a Catholic ecclesiastic, you have so far forgotten your cloth, and misconceived your duty, as to egg on the Allied War Prisoners of Germany and Turkey to insult their conquerors.... Append your signature to a confession of your offence, and in return take my assurance that what mercy it is possible to show you shall be extended forthwith...."

The priest's thin face is suffused with crimson as he listens. He is bewildered; that wine was strangely potent in its effects. But his candid eyes rest quietly on the Chief's angry face and he answers without passion:

"Sir, you have already heard me declare most solemnly, that I am guiltless of inciting the prisoners to rebel. Against their torture, and outrage at the hands of the Bey, I have protested strenuously, and will continue to do so as long as I have voice."

"You persist in accusing the Bey of crime and violence?"

"Most certainly and most truthfully I do!"

"Das ist nicht wahr! Have I not already the testimony of my Staff Officer? Added to that of Hamid Bey, who is an honourable man. Consider, if you exhaust my intolerance, what fate awaits you! Admit your guilt, sign the paper, and you shall immediately be released from this vile place, and admitted to parole."

"Sir, as a priest I refuse to accept your offered conditions! My body is your prisoner--my soul is not in your hands. Beware what you do! ... I refer my case to my Bishop--to the Latin Patriarch, and the other high Catholic dignitaries in Jerusalem...."

"Were you in Jerusalem at this moment, my good sir!--they would be equally impotent to assist you." As the priest does not know that these ecclesiastics to whom he refers have been forcibly deported from the Holy City, the barbed point of the jest is lost on his ignorance. "For even if your protest reached them--which is unlikely!--after what fashion would these persons enforce their authority? ..."

"I do not know! ..." The voice breaks upon a note of anguish, and the priest's head droops for a moment on his breast. He lifts it, and his hoarse, faint voice gathers power and rings out bravely. "But one thing I do know, that He Whom I serve and trust in, will not desert His poor servant in this extremity."

"Your faith is more admirable than your wisdom, sir. But I will waste no more words upon your obstinacy. Understand, that if when I leave you," for he has lent his ear to a soft whisper on the part of the dark man in the red _kuffiyeh_, "the Shaykh Sadân will, of his goodness, endeavour to bring you to reason. If he does not succeed--I wash my hands of you! The Prison Commandant Hamid Bey,--whom you have so vilely slandered,--may deal with you as he will! ..."

A terrible shudder convulses the priest's thin frame. As the heavy tread of the spurred boots shakes the crazy floor, words rush to his lips that--were they uttered--would be a cry of surrender. The footsteps reach the door, the door opens, but still his teeth are clenched and his lips firmly shut. His soul, beaten upon by gusts of terror, striving in blackness jagged with infernal lightnings, is like a ship in the fury of a cyclone. Of all the great and noble things--that are jewels in the crown of classic Literature, of all the texts of Holy Writ--of all the liturgies of the Mother Church, with which he has stored and enriched his memory--only six words come to him in his dire necessity:

"_Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine!_"

The door opens. Red sunset dyes the floor. The long shadows of the two German officers appear to stretch across a pool of blood. Now the door is shut, and Julian Forbis is alone with him from whom his spirit and flesh shrink in an agony of terror and loathing--all the more that his person is superbly handsome, that his smooth, cultured voice is exquisitely melodious--that from him radiates a power that allures, and persuades and charms.... He does not mock or gibe now. He is all delicate sympathy. But the priest traces the outline of the sneer through the smile of the Shaykh Sadân, and the mockery that grins behind the compassionate mask.

"O Darweesh of the Inglizi, listen to the words of the Shaykh Sadân of the Beni Abba, a poor recluse of the Desert of Igidi! For believe me--I speak as a friend, and not as an enemy!" murmurs the smooth caressing voice,

"Unhappy man, be not bigoted! ... This obduracy works to your own undoing. The great pity I--Sadân the Shaykh--feel for you--compels me to speak thus! Surely the garment of a priest is cut of the cloth of _tasalidn_--the rendering of obedience to superiors--and _tahammul_, endurance of injury.... And is not the heritage of the Prophets, Wisdom? And to prefer life to Death--is not that wise? ... And who gains Wisdom but at the cost of Sacrifice--ever since in the Spring-tide of the World, Isis--the Sister-Queen of King Osiris of Egypt, yielded her beauty to the Angel Amnaël, one of the Fallen Sons of Radiance,--in return for the secrets of Magic and Chemistry.... Consider, also, that by this great Chief, on whose breath hangs thy life, but little is required of thee? Nothing injurious to thine honour, or inimical to British interests in the East. Yield, as under the death-threat!--for verily the mercies of a furious elephant--or a hungry lion--were preferable to those of Hamid Bey.... Bear thy share! ... Do as thou art bidden--and solace thy soul by saying: '_This would I not have borne!--that would I not have done.... But He Who ruleth all things willed--and it was so? ..._'"

Smiling, the speaker ceases, receiving answer:

"Sir, I have no need for sugared sophisms, nor specious consolations.... I know too well the source from which they come. Set my hand to a lie will I never!--nor shield the crimes that a tyrant has committed--to save my body at the cost of my soul!"

"'Your soul!...'"

The last two words are re-echoed by the Shaykh with delicate contemptuousness.

"Who barters in souls in these days, O priest?" he asks with terrible contempt, shrugging his supple shoulders. "For verily in the market they are as a worthless drug! ... Come! ... Decide, for I waste my kindness on you. What is your answer? Yes, or No? Here are paper, pen and ink." He draws an Arab writing-case from the folds of his girdle. "Write now, and sign...."

"No!"

Julian Forbis adds in a hoarse whisper--for the strength of the strange liquor he has drunk is ebbing out of him, as his numbing hand gropes blindly for something in his breast: "Tempt as you may, I shall not yield!--He Whom I serve being my helper! 'VADE RETRO SATANA! RECEDE A ME, MALEDICTE DIABOLI! IN NOMINE PATRIS, ET FILII, ET SPIRITUS SANCTI. AMEN....'"

In faith and courage he rises above his bodily weakness. He plucks from its concealment the hidden Symbol, and lifts it high as he utters the terrible words. And as they vibrate upon the sultry atmosphere, there goes forth a terrible, ear-splitting cry upon it, and a gust of air icy as the breath of the Polar frost, and dry as the wind of the Sahara--moans through the darkling place. He is alone, the Enemy has left him, and as Night falls, he sinks down senseless on the crazy floor of the hut.