Chapter XV: In the Desert

Allan had heard of Private Thomas Keith, of the 72nd Highlanders, who, after being taken prisoner in Egypt in 1807, rose to the rank of Aga of the Mamelukes and Governor of Medina; but the prospects of promotion in the desert, held out to him by Zeid, did not prove very attractive; and here we may mention that the name of Zeid is of great antiquity, for it was that of the adopted son of Mohammed, whom he placed on the Black Stone of the Caaba, and to whom he gave a wife named Zinab.

Zeid's wife had already suggested that Allan should have his head shaved, and that a turban or tarboosh should be substituted for his tropical helmet, with its red 42nd hackle; so he began to think that something must be done to put an end to this life of idleness and annoyance.

At times he thought he would affect to fall into the views of Zeid-el-Ourdeh; get the blood mare and put a burnous over his regimental jacket and kilt, and--leaving the 'Bedouin girl' out of the category--take an opportunity of trying the speed of the said mare, and escaping.

But the time for departing further into the desert drew near, and no mare was given him; he had, however, the offer of a camel, but that would not do at all.

He thought of the distress his disappearance must cause his family--if deemed dead, their sorrow; and ere long the deletion of his name from the army list, and from his position in what he deemed a family regiment, and the whole complication of the situation maddened him.

In that Bedouin band were hundreds of dusky robbers with whom he had not eaten the mystic bread and salt of the East, and who owed him neither favour nor protection; and thus the grotesque views and oppressive friendship of Zeid might fail to secure his life at their hands.

He knew that they would think no more of killing him than of killing a kid, and he recalled with sufficient disgust the swift catastrophe of the wretched Holcroft.

When rambling on the skirts of the black tented camp, under close surveillance, however, Allan observed that the tomb of the Santon had a remarkably broad and peculiar cornice round its dome, that it was curved upward like the rim of a billycock hat, and that a vine tendril of considerable strength had ascended, in the lapse of years, from the base to the summit of the dome; and thus he conceived, if he could ascend thereinto unseen, he might lie _en perdue_, till the tribe departed, and then he should be safe.

The day before the tents were to be struck, Zeid ordered some food to be procured by his huntsmen, who--though the food of the tribe was generally farinaceous--succeeded in capturing some of these gazelles that live in the open plain, where they browse upon the saline and pungent herbage.

Fully experienced in the haunts and habits of these animals, Abdallah and others concealed themselves in a hollow dug out of the sand and carefully covered over with brambles, and there they captured their prey by means of a rude network attached to stakes--the former being slightly concealed in the sand, and raised by means of a rope pulled when a number of the herd has ventured within its precincts. Thus twenty or thirty of these beautiful creatures, with their bright hazel eyes, spiral horns, and slender limbs were taken at a time.

The gun was used only when other means failed, as ammunition is too costly for ordinary occasions in obtaining the supplies of food. Allan, while hovering about the huntsmen, effected a final reconnaisance of the Santon's tomb, and resolved to make the attempt that very night.

When sudden darkness fell as usual, instantly after sunset, and no moon as yet had risen, while Zeid and his family were busy with their final ablutions and prayers, Allan--his bold heart beating wildly the while--crept softly out of the tent, under the uplifted canvas wall thereof, and crawling flatly on his hands and knees, with the blade of his drawn sword in his teeth, began to leave the hated encampment behind him.

It was a time of keen and poignant excitement. Every moment he expected to hear an outcry announcing that he was missed from his place, or seen even amid the gloom and obscurity, by the keen eye of some practised son of the desert.

Fortunately all were at their prayers or engaged in preparations for departure on the morrow, and, as the distance increased between himself and the dark camp, his spirit began to rise, and he thought to himself, why had he not made this attempt before? But, sooth to say, it would have been impossible, as he was less watched latterly than he had been at first.

Even at the distance of half-a-mile he did not assume an erect attitude, lest his figure might be seen between the sky and horizon, but continued to creep steadily on, till at last he ventured to rise from the ground, and strode swiftly towards the tomb of the Santon, which was about two miles from the camp.

The stars were coming out now, and a sigh of relief escaped him as he reached it--a sigh that ended in an exclamation of dismay as a tall Bedouin, who seemed to spring from the ground, so sudden was his appearance, stood face to face with him, and in a moment he recognised Abdallah, the second in command under Zeid!

He perceived Allan's sword in his hand, and, knowing that he was escaping, drew a pistol from his girdle--a pistol the explosion of which would have proved most disastrous, but by one trenchant stroke Allan hewed the Arab's left hand off by the wrist, and hand and pistol fell on the sand together.

Muttering a terrible malediction, the Bedouin, wrapping the bleeding stump in the folds of his burnous, furiously assailed Allan with his formidable sabre, shouting, as he did so, something to this purpose:--

'Unbelieving wretch, you shall go from hence to hell, where your hands will be chained to your neck, and you will be compelled to oppose your face to the flames.'

'Oho!' thought Allan, 'the Koran again!'

If he had time or means to give an alarm, all would be over.

It was a life for a life now, and both men fought desperately; both were expert swordsmen, and both were filled with blackest fury--the Bedouin by the agony of his wound, and Allan by the peril which menaced him.

After pausing to draw breath for a moment, Abdallah came rushing on with blind rage; Allan warded a cut, and, closing in, caught his sword-hand by the wrist and held it with an iron grasp; then, adroitly dropping the basket hilt of the claymore from his right hand, he caught the shortened blade and plunged it, dagger fashion, into the breast of the Arab, who fell at his feet and expired.

Inspired by an instant thought, he dragged the dead body away, and the hand and pistol also, to some distance from the vicinity of the tomb, and, returning, proceeded stealthily and speedily, if worn, breathless, and feeling rather sick by his recent work, to climb by the branches of the vine up the wall of the circular edifice, and over its heavily curved cornice, behind which he crouched down flat, and there he lay for hours, exposed to a shower of rain, the fall of which he hailed with thankfulness, as it would obliterate any traces of blood in his vicinity, and also his footmarks from the bruised branches of the vine which he had used as a ladder.

He knew that, if retaken now, the discovery of Abdallah's fate would seal his own; so, if found, nothing was left him but to die sword in hand.

Each respiration came heavily, as he lay there listening for every passing sound, and wondering how he had achieved the first chapter of his escape, and all the bloody and necessary work so well.

Strange it was that his hand should avenge the miserable Holcroft; but he did not think of that till afterwards; nor did he think of the too baleful effect the wet and damp of the Egyptian night might have upon his own health.

At length the rain ceased, and the blue dome of heaven appeared in all its wondrous beauty--for wondrous indeed it is by the shores of the Nile, though this was in the first season of the Egyptian year, when the weather is generally moist.

But the sky is so cloudless, and the brightness of the moon so intense, that the natives, when sleeping in the open air, as they often do, cover their eyes, as the effect of the moon's rays upon the sight is more dangerous and violent than that of the sun.

No sleep, however, visited the eyes of Allan that night; he remained without desire to close them, preternaturally, acutely, and painfully awake, and watchful as a lynx.

It was all as Allan anticipated. Day had scarcely dawned, and the striking of the tents begun, ere he was conscious that his absence was discovered, and more than a hundred swiftly-mounted horsemen, with cries and shouts, darted from the camp in every direction around it in search, and, if afoot, he must inevitably have been overtaken; but, concealed where he was, he lay in safety, though his heart throbbed so violently that he seemed to hear its pulsations, as he heard the Bedouins, at full speed, pass and repass the Santon's tomb, with guns and rifles unslung, intent on his recapture and destruction.

He clenched the hilt of his claymore. If traced to where he lay--if discovered--he could but sell his life, and dearly did he resolve to do so!

He heard their voices, their surmises, their suggestions, and their threats; and lucky it was for him that the rain and subsequently the heavy dew, of the past night had obliterated the traces of his footsteps near the tomb and on the tendrils of the vine, also the traces of the blood of Abdallah, the discovery of whose body was greeted by yells of rage that pierced the air; but the rain and the dew were ere long to have a baleful effect on Allan in the time to come.

At last the riders seemed to give up the search as hopeless, and by twos and threes came slowly back to camp, with horses weary and bridles loose. After mid-day, the tents were finally struck, stowed away, with all household utensils, on the backs of camels and horses, and the whole tribe of Zeid-el-Ourdeh took its departure in a north-easterly direction, towards the great desert, through which lies the route taken by Bonaparte in 1799, and, before evening fell, the last of them, like black specks, were alone visible, and ere long they quite disappeared from view.

Now Allan, worn and weary, after a day without food or drink, slept for a time, and the moon, clear, bright, and refulgent, was high in the heavens when he prepared to descend from his lurking place.

He looked keenly, anxiously, and carefully round him, as it was possible that some of the Bedouins might return to their late camping-ground for some object of their own; and, moreover, others were to be avoided quite as much as they.

No living thing was visible, and the most awful silence seemed to reign around him.

Allan descended from his perch, stiff, benumbed, and well-nigh powerless, to begin his lonely and perilous journey; but whither?

Ignorant of the country and of the way to pursue, he knew not that the canal which leads from Belbeis to Grand Cairo lay on his left; and after toiling on without adventure for a few days and nights, subsisting on dates, wild-beans, and lotus-roots, with a little water from an occasional spring, he found himself, weary, worn, and faint, with pains in his head and loins, and shivering in his limbs--the forerunners of a deadly illness--crossing what is the camel-route to Suez, as he penetrated into another portion of the desert.

He saw occasionally vultures, storks, and pelicans; and now and then a herd of beautiful antelopes swept past him; but--as he thanked heaven--no Bedouins. More than once he came upon nitre springing up in the sandy waste, like crystallised fruit. At times these spots seemed as if overgrown by moss and coated with hoar frost--hoar frost under a fervid Egyptian sun; and according to the quantity of the nitre, their fantastic shapes were either a dazzling white, or more or less tinted by the yellow hue of the sand.

More than once in his fitful slumbers by night under the baleful dew, there came before him in a dream the agony of his lurking on the summit of the tomb in momentary dread of discovery, and then he was again closing in combat hand-in-hand with Abdallah, the aspect of whose dark face, with gleaming eyes and glistening teeth, curiously blended with an idea of Holcroft, came vividly before him; and then, when just in the act of plunging in his shortened sword-blade, he would awake with a nervous start to find himself still in solitude with quiet stars looking down upon him.

At last when about to sink he saw before him the well-known fringes of greenery and foliage that indicate the line of a canal, and it proved to be a portion of that of Moses, and a cry of joy escaped him when he heard the whistle of a locomotive and saw the welcome smoke of a train running westward.

How much the sound and sight we deem alike so hideous spoke to his heart of home, of ease, of peace, safety, and civilisation. In short, he soon discovered that he was midway between Kassassin and Mahsameh and by a liberal promise of backsheesh to an Egyptian labourer whom he met, and whose assistance he solicited, he reached a railway station and obtained all the succour he needed from the European officials there.

By them he was placed in a train for Ismailia, and ere long he saw once more those places which were familiar to him as having passed them with the troops--Ramses, Tel-el-Mahuta, and El-Magfar, where the Black Watch had encamped, and where he had befriended Zeid-el-Ourdeh; and ere long he could recognise, when he had left the sea of sand behind him, the white-walled houses of Ismailia against the deep blue of the sky, and the tall forest of masts, those of our transports and warships in the adjoining lake of Timsah.

He had no recollection of more, or even of reaching the railway station. His heart beat wildly, his head swam round him, and a darkness seemed to envelop him. He had fainted.

On partially recovering he found himself in bed, but he knew not where, and dimly seen, as in a glass, he thought he saw Evan Cameron bending over him--Evan looking pale and wan as when he buried him in the sand.

'Oh, God,' sighed Allan, as he closed his eyes to shut the vision out, 'is this madness or delirium that has come upon me?'