Chapter XII

Since the departure of the Shaykh Sadân, the man who sank fainting to the floor of the wooden hut has moved once only. It was when he revived, dragged himself to his knees, and while his strength sufficed--lifting his clasped hands above his head--sent forth his soul in prayer.... Exhausted then, he collapsed once more, and dropped forwards, falling with outflung arms across the palm-wood bed-frame, and for how long he does not know, was lost in unconsciousness.

When sight and hearing return to him, thick darkness presses on his burning eyeballs, and the "Lights Out" of the Turkish _boruzan_ is ringing in his ears. Half kneeling by the _anghareb_, half lying across it, his face is turned towards the east wall of the hut. Through a biggish knot-hole in the planks, he has found it possible to see--given sufficient light outside--beyond the barbed wire fence a circumscribed patch of the south-going road, the tumbled hills in the distance and the dome of the Tomb of Joseph in the foreground.... These intermittently blotted out by the figure of the Turkish sentry, passing to the end of his beat at the south angle of the Enclosure, or passing back to the angle at the junction of the road that leads to the town's east gate, with the Jerusalem-Shechem Road.

Even in darkness, the edges of the knot-hole are outlined by a fitful glimmer. The flash of an electric torch, the twinkle of a firefly, the ray of a shooting-star--there are many in this month of November--find their way through the knot-hole in the wall.

But the knot-hole is no longer there. They have stopped it up from outside! he thinks, and a groan breaks from him. He has borne so much that this little thing--fresh evidence of studied malice on the part of his jailers--hurts, like the brutal tearing of a bandage from a stiffened wound.... He shudders, hearing a curious, scratching, rasping sound, mingled with low whispering:

"_Sidi, Sidi! ... Sidi, Sidi!_"

His blood freezes in his veins. What is that strange, soft voice, and where does it come from? Can this be another essay on the part of the Shaykh Sadân? He waits for the next move--setting his teeth, steeling his soul with faith in his Master. Now, now, the whispering comes again:

"_Sidi, Sidi!_ Do you hear me? O _Sidi_, are you there? ..."

It is the thin, rustling voice of the little Mother of Ugliness. He utters a stifled cry of joy, and dragging his chain with him, rolls off the _anghareb_, and in his weakness, sinks down close to the hut's east wall. Passing his thin hands over the wall in the darkness, he encounters a projection. The end of a long rubber-covered cane, from which the whispering comes:

"If the Sidi hears my voice, let him be pleased to answer! It is Ummshni! ..."

"I hear," he calls back through the improvised speaking-tube. "May God reward thee, gentle heart! How didst thou find me out? ..."

"How, is a long story meet for telling elsewhere. Has the Sidi a bowl, or other vessel? If not let him set mouth to the end of this," the speaker taps on the tube gently with a fingernail, "and I will pour milk through the canes. Tap thrice when I am to pour! ..."

He does so, and the tube is slowly tilted, and a cautious trickle of boiled goat's milk flows over his parched tongue. He sucks for life, and when he has drunk:

"Rest now," says the whispering voice. "It is ill to take overmuch at the beginning. Next time I will give thee broth, and afterwards good wine. For the Sidi must be strengthened against the hour when for the prisoner comes Rescue. Let him tap thrice on the pipe if he has heard...."

He taps on the cane-lined length of rubber tubing.... The little voice goes on:

"Listen, my lord! ... At midnight thy friends will come to deliver thee. So, when thou hast well taken the soup and wine, lie down on the bed and rest.... Sleep if thou canst, but not too sound. When there comes a scraping in the earth under the bedstead, rise up and move aside the _anghareb_. My lord has clearly heard? ..."

He signifies assent, and the voice goes on whispering, sending a reviving stream of Hope into his empty, sapless heart, that is invigorating to his drooping spirit, as the milk to his famished body.

"Lift up the _anghareb_, and thou wilt find a hole in the earth under it. Planks covered with earth hide the hole. The hole is the Gate of Hope for thee!--the Way that leads to Freedom! Does the Sidi understand?"

"I do, and thank thee from my soul! ... Who are the friends, Ummshni? I only have known of one beside thyself. But no word has reached me from that man, since the War Prisoners were shifted from camp at Beersheba to the Barracks here at Shechem!"

"Thou hast four friends here besides myself!"

He did not know he was so rich, and a thrill of joy goes through him.

"The chief of them is Edward Yaill. Thou dost recall that name? Ay! Then comes John Hazaël...."

That the prisoner has no knowledge of John Hazaël, his silence seems to testify.

"It does not matter!" The little voice is dry. "The friends to whom we owe the most are often strangers to us. Now it is time to give thee the broth!"

He sucks the life-giving stuff through the tube. With her womanly, maternal solicitude, she checks him after a little:

"Stay, now.... The Sidi feels his strength increased? ..."

He does, and says so gratefully.

"Then--lest it make the Master sleep too heavily, I will not give him the wine yet. Now let him lie down awhile on the bed that is in there. I remain outside, watching. What says my lord?"

"The sentry.... How is it he does not see thee? ..."

Something like Ummshni's little rustling laugh comes through the rubber-covered pipe-stems.

"Love hath no eyes, it is often said. Since a white flower fell on the dust in the dusk, and a light foot went past him, is Baba Ishak, the Darweesh, blind--and dumb as well, ah-hah! Now he is at the other end of his beat, his face set to Ebal, and the Tombs of the Sons of Mohammed. He is waiting Opportunity, as a dog near the butcher's shop.... When the butcher looks the other way--or goes into the house to speak to his wife, the dog sneaks round the doorpost and--his head is in the scrap-box! Sweet,--the first greedy crunch, and gulp.... But then comes the butcher's chopper--down on the dog's skull! Now lie thou down and try to sleep. I have said I will keep watch here! ..."

Holding his chain so that it may not clank, Father Julian creeps back to the verminous bed, and tries to do her bidding. But the throbbing of his anxious heart and the roaring of the blood in his ears make sleep impossible. The cheap gun-metal wrist-watch that he wears has not been taken from him, and it has been kept wound up--it is ticking companionably now. Four matches are left in his box. Sheltering the flame within the coat that serves him as a bed-covering, he strikes a match, and looks at the watch. It is twenty minutes past ten o'clock, and Deliverance comes at midnight. How wait through the long hours, for that knocking under the floor?

The Darweesh who is _imâm_ of his platoon, and can resist all the Forbidden Things except the Cup of Beauty, stands at the north angle of the Wired Place, looking towards the Tombs. In his hot thick hand is a white rose, sweet and musky-smelling, in his nostrils a whiff of sandal and some pungent Bazâr perfume. The Baba is a little man, and his inamorata a tallish woman, but she looked a strapping wench to-night, as she passed him at the other end of his beat, with a whispered word and a dropped flower, and a provocative flash of her gipsy-eyes from the folds of her white _izar_.

He wheels, smacks the butt of his Mauser rifle with the flat of his broad hand, and licks his thick lips longingly. Turning out his sandalled toes--for the second-line troops of the Redif stick to the old-fashioned _chariks_, with bandages wound round the leg from the calf down--he marches towards the sentry-box where Delilah waits for him.

There is little breeze on this muggy night of scant starshine and blotted shadows, but a south-going waft sends a withered leaf or a torn scrap of paper scurrying at Baba Ishak's heels along the dusty road.

"_Tr'rp--tr'rp--tr'rp!_" ...

A tiny sound, and yet it irks and fidgets.

"_Trrp--tr'rp ...!_"

Whatever it is, it scurries past, as the Darweesh halts before the sentry-box. Snuffing the clamorous perfume of the Bazâr with an anticipative smile on his thick lips, he stands on the threshold and peers into the darkness.

"Inaini!" he coos, amorously to the odorous obscurity. "My soul! My eyes! Thou hast come to me! Tell me that thou art there? ..."

Undoubtedly Inaini is there, he can see her white figure plainly against the shadowy background. It is late in the day for Inaini to be coy, but too early not to humour her. He stretches out a greedy, perspiring hand. It touches the folds of her _izar_. Stung to enterprise, prodded by propinquity, the Baba puts down his Mauser, carefully leaning it against the side of the sentry-box, and blunders forwards. Aha! At last he has her, the willing prisoner of his eager arms.

_Mashâllah!_ how the gipsy hugs. All the breath is squeezed out of the Baba. What is this that coils about him, binding down his arms? Not a rope? _Chok_! _chok_! He opens his jaws to expostulate--and a gag of oiled camel-hide is deftly slipped between them--and strapped uncomfortably tight at the back of his bull-neck. Swiftly his knees are bound, and then his ankles, and he is tenderly lowered to the bottom of the sentry-box.

The love affair of the Baba and the gipsy has ended with dramatic swiftness. Now the dark figure of a man steps out of the sentry-box, picks up the Mauser and resumes the beat of galloping hoofs coming along the Shechem road, and gleam glints on the bandolier taken from the victim, it shows the face of Namrûd under the khaki _enverieh_. And caught in some stray backwash of the sickly breeze that carried it, the tiny thing like a withered leaf, flits down the road again.