Chapter XIII

Whether John Hazel dreamed or not, things have happened as he has seen them. Conscious thought returns to him, sitting on the box of bombs. His lungs fill with a deep breath. He yawns hugely, blinks his eyes, squares his shoulders and looks about him. The constellation Orion blazes over Gilead, the Pleiades are hidden from sight by sombre clouds. There is a strange glare in the sky over the crest of Gerizim.

In mid-song the bulbuls have fallen silent. Even the pariah-dogs and the jackals are still. There is something abroad upon the air to-night, that weighs upon the spirit of humanity, and daunts the creatures, soulless as we imagine, with the sense of evil, nameless and unseen, but dominant and powerful to harm....

And now the man who listens at his post hears the quick beat of galloping hoofs coming along the Shechem road, and thrills with expectation:

"That's them!" In moments of keen excitement John's grammar is apt to fail. "Them, for a quid! Or the Colonel hasn't pulled off the snatch, and has had--"

He breaks off as the horsemen round a curve of the road. Where a patch of the grudging moonlight whitens the ground, he makes out that there are only three of them. No! Four--! Three riders in ample, flowing Arab dress, and a fourth in the close-fitting kit of a European--who reels and sways unsteadily in his saddle, and would fall--but for the help that another gives--with a hand that is sometimes at his back, and sometimes at his bridle.

"By God!--"

With a great exultant throb, John swings himself down from the lorry upon the road, as the riders check the gallop of their eager, snorting horses.... And the hot, white limestone dust of Samaria rises in pungent clouds.

Now through the dust an immense hand finds, grips and wrings the priest's, and a deep resonant voice, not like any he has heard before, and yet not strange, says rapidly:

"Thanks be to the Most High, my lord is delivered! Now, from the servant of his house, let him take this. It comes from the Sister of my lord" (a crumpled envelope is thrust into Julian Forbis's palm), "by the hand of John Hazel!"

"A letter from my sister.... Sir, may God reward you! You must be John Hazaël, I think! Though I never heard that name until to-night, while I live I shall always bless it!"

The voice sends an electric shock volting through John. It is like the voice he loves, as a man's may resemble a woman's, deeper, stronger, and hollow with fatigue. He returns:

"My lord is right. I am the man John. Youngest and last of all Hazaëls of the line save one only.... But all the Hazaëls, from the first to the last, do battle for my lord this night in Samaria. Now let my lord ride hard for Kir Saba. Though his enemies pursue they shall not pass here! For, God so willing, I, thy servant, will keep this road barred!"

"My cousin John! ..."

He hears a timid call he knows, and turning towards the quarter whence it comes, traces it to its source in a small rebellious bundle, held on the front of an Arab's saddle.

"O John my cousin, dost thou hear me! Entreat the Most Excellent One to set me on the ground!"

"Mr. Hazel, with your good leave, I mean to take this lady to Kir Saba." It is the voice that spoke to him last in the chintz drawing-room at Kerr's Arbour. Dimly seen in the hazy moonlight, the eyes shaded by the silken _kuffiyeh_ meet John's, and although they are blazing with the fierce joy of the successful raider, he recognises the eyes of Edward Yaill.

"Nay, nay! I would remain here with John Hazaël," the little creature pleads in her distress.

"Thou wilt go with my lord and be his handmaid. When he needs thee no longer, then return to me. Hearest thou, woman?" the deep voice says, and Ummshni, bowing her veiled head, humbly answers:

"O Head of our House, I hear! ..."

"Farewell then, little Brave One!"

In the dark John reaches out, and pats her small cold hand.

"Not in this world, nor in the next will this that thou hast lone go unrewarded. What is that? ... Cavalry on the road!" His hearing, in this strange exalted mood of his, being even keener than Namrûd the Hunter's,--has warned him that a body of mounted men, coming from the direction of Shechem, are pushing along the road. He relapses into his ordinary, natural tone, as he says with a slap of his heavy hand on the flank of Fadl Anga's thoroughbred: "Ride for Kir Saba, Colonel Yaill, and all good luck to you!"

"Thanks, Mr. Hazel, and good-bye. Though I would prefer your coming with us. You could take Namrûd's horse--and he and I would ride and run by turns. Not the first time we've covered distance that way!"

There is an unalterable decision in the answer:

"Much obliged, Colonel, but I've arranged to stay."

"Good luck, then, and good-bye. You will shake hands at parting? ..."

The huge hand of the big Jew, and Yaill's leaner, slenderer, smaller hand, meet and grip hard, then John steps backwards.

"Ride like old hell, the lot of you. I stop--to carry on!"

A clatter of hoofs and they are away, in a cloud of the dust of Samaria, flavoured with the chamomile and wormwood of the desert, the acrid sweat of man and horse, tobacco, attar of roses, and leather tanned by Bedwân with bitter laurel-bark. John Hazel looks about him, fills his lungs with deep breaths and calculates his powers. How if one man were able to move the lorry across the road!

He frees himself from his Arab head-cloth and mantle, ties the ends of the long sleeves of his _kumbas_ together, slips the knot Fellah-wise over his head, and pulls up the camel-hair shirt to mid-thigh. Even as the lean, tanned Prophet girded himself for the long race from Carmel up to Samaria, before the King in his ivory chariot--and the rainstorm hurtling on the heels of the King....

Now he swings himself to the driver's seat, manipulates the steering wheel, and lifts the starting-lever. Now he gets down, spins the crank, and heaves at the near fore-wheel. The lorry shakes, the ponderous armoured wheel moves--and the sweat pours off John Hazel. He sets his teeth, and braces himself again, using the sound, uninjured leg as fulcrum of the lever. With a sound like the dumping of a load of ancient iron on the scrap-heap--the Turkish ammunition-lorry moves across the road....

Just in time, for the clink of cavalry chain-bridles and scabbards, and the clatter of hoofs come nearer with every instant.... John fills the breast of his Arab shirt with bombs, and stands up on the lorry, in the straddling but purposeful attitude attributed to the Colossus of Rhodes.

"Old Harris and the chaps of my platoon used to call me a dirty fighter," he thinks, reverting to the vernacular of his adoptive land. "Well, this is going to be the dirtiest fight I ever put up. O all you old Hazaël men, back to the very oldest, help me to keep the road that leads to Kir Saba, for to-night! ..."

Rattle and clink. The creak and wheeze of straining leather. Half a squadron of Turkish Mounted Police spur round the bend in the road.

Well armed, well mounted, big and bearded Turks, the pick of the Bey's squadrons of mounted gendarmerie. The darkness hides the crimson fez and the smart Hussar uniform of dark blue with red and orange braiding. But what light there is is caught and given back by long shiny jack-boots--and the barrels of Winchester repeating-rifles--and eyes that glitter in swarthy faces that are ablaze with the hope of a reward.

Crash! ...

A bomb falls in the middle of the road in front of the squadron-leader, and explodes with a shattering detonation that calls loud echoes from the hills. The squadron-leader's jaw is torn away. He and his horse go down, the poor brute screaming in a pool of his own innocent blood and vainly struggling to rise upon his shattered forelegs.... Two of the other riders are wounded by flying splinters. Crash!--another bomb falls and detonates in the road....

"A Forbis! A Forbis! May Forbis foes fall! A Forbis! A Forbis! ..."

With this strange foreign slogan the Hills of Samaria ring, and a volley from the Winchesters of the Bey's men rattles back in answer. Bullets flatten on the rocks--pass through the sides of the lorry, shiver the lamps, rip the front hood, and dent the engine-bonnet. A second Winchester-volley clatters amongst the rocks--when a bomb, hurled by a phenomenally long arm, falls in the midst of the squadron. And the Bey's Mounted Policemen scatter and retreat in confusion, leaving dead men and horses behind them on the road....

John draws breath. A revolver cracks behind him--a bullet sings past his right cheek--and another, whistling through his hair, burns as it scores a furrow in the scalp at the top of his head....

"Bloody close! And fired from behind!"

He looks round, and is shot at from the original quarter to intimate that the retreat was only a feint. The baffled force of gendarmerie--trained scouts for the most part--mountaineers and hunters, has split into two parties; the hardier spirits--as the breaking of branches and the fluttering of birds scared from the coverts testifies--are scrambling down the steep face of the defile, from the northern side of the road.

Again a revolver-shot cracks out behind John. He slews his head and catches a glimpse of the man who fired, crouching behind a boulder, on the Jaffa side of the lorry.

_Crash! crash!_ ...

Two bombs greet the renewal of the attack upon the Shechem side.... Three, hurled one after the other with dazzling rapidity, explode in the covert that clothes the cliff-face. Another hits the boulder by the road, and lessens its proportions. But the sharp brain behind it has foreseen that it would come.

Lying on his stomach, the Bey's man crawls to the opposite side of the highway. Crouching in the shadows, he waits unseen. The scene is handsomely illuminated now by bonfires among the brushwood. Bombs explode east and west, the arms of the giant on the lorry whirl like the sails of a windmill. It is at this juncture that John begins to sing....

Never did light of moon and stars shine on a grimmer spectacle. Foul with grime, whitened with dust, smeared and raddled with blood from his scalp-wound, the leaping fires on either hand show him black as a fiend from hell. The Bey's gendarme is a plucky child of Islam, but he shudders. What if no human, killable man, but one of the demon Sons of Iblis be he who is capering and dealing Death on the Jaffa-Shechem road to-night? Streaming with sweat, stricken with deadly fear, he gasps:

"_Mashallah_! I invoke the Protection of the Most High against Satan the Stoned! ..."

And springing up, sets a foot on the wheel, and leaps into the lorry. Next moment, locked in a wrestling-hug, two black shapes strive together, while the _zabtiehs_ hold their fire for fear of hitting their own man.

The struggle is over in less than half a minute. The Turk is strong, but in those great and ruthless hands, he is dealt with easily. His foot slips in his opponent's blood, for the giant is bleeding freely from chips in various places. He yells as he is bent back.... Then his spurred feet are lifted. He is tossed out of the lorry, landing on his head--and as John continues bomb-throwing--loses temporarily, all interest in the fight....

Now comes from the Shechem side, a charge of mounted _zabtiehs_. John sings as he pulls pins,--pitches and proves the impotence of flesh and blood, human and equine, pitted against H.E. The police are shooting freely but wildly from behind and before him. Right and left he gives them the last sigh of No. 1 box--and is diving into the other--to rise up armed, when a bomb, that has fallen in the roadway without the customary explosion--is picked up by a plucky _zabtieh_ and hurled back into the lorry....

John realises as the projectile falls amongst the boxed explosives that the fight is over. He leaps from the lorry on the Jaffa side, and knows no more. Miles away southward, as the huge detonation shakes the hills, and avalanches of _débris_ tumble from the cliffs, a Gunner Officer of a Field Battery of the 52nd Division, holding the mud village of Mughar, says to his colleague indifferently, shutting his night-glasses:

"The Huns are having the time of their lives to-night in Samaria. Regular posh firework-display to-night on the Shechem-Jaffa road. Now they've exploded an ammunition-dump, or something uncommonly like it! Hope it's wiped out a few more Turks!--there are plenty of 'em to spare!"