P. C. Wren - The Collected Works of P. C. Wren - Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories

But, oh, the thought of that woman struggling and shrieking in the vile hands of those inhuman lustful devils!

And, oh, my splendid, brave Dufour; simple, unswerving, inflexible devotee of Duty--who loved me. . . . Oh, my great-hearted faithful Djikki, who had done for me what few white men could or would have done; Djikki, who loved me. . . .

Oh, my beloved Achmet, strong, gentle soul, soldier, nurse, servant and friend . . . who loved me. . . .

Yes-- of course I would have taken the last camel, and with only one rider, too, to give it every chance of reaching the Great Oasis by forced marches.

And, of course , I would leave those three to die alone, to-morrow, if they survived to-day. . . .

Hard? . . .

Indeed, and indeed, ours is a hard service, a Service for hard men, but a noble Service. And--Duty is indeed a jealous God.

§ 2

And, one weary day, as we topped a long hill, we saw a sight that made me rub my eyes and say, "This is fever and madness!"

For, a few hundred yards from us, rode a Camel Corps--a drilled and disciplined unit that, even as we crossed their skyline, deployed from column to line, at a signal from their leader, as though they had been Spahis, barraked their camels, in perfect line and with perfect intervals, and sank from sight behind them, with levelled rifles.

Surely none but European officers or drill-sergeants had wrought that wonder?

I raised my hands above my head and rode toward their leader, as it was equally absurd to think of flight or of fight. . . .

Caught! . . . Trapped! . . .

The commander was a mis-shapen dwarf with huge hunched shoulders and big head.

" Aselamu, Aleikoum ," I called pleasantly and coolly. "Greeting to you."

" Salaam aleikoum wa Rahmat Allah ," growled the Bedouin gutturally, and staring fiercely from me to the bourkha -covered women. "Greeting to you, and the peace of Allah."

" Keif halak? " I went on. "How do you do?" and wondered if this were the end. . . . Would Mary shoot herself in time? . . . Did my mission end here? . . .

No--discipline like this did not go hand-in-hand with foul savagery. There was a hope. . . .

" Taiyib ," replied the dwarf. "Well"--and proceeded to ask if we were alone.

"Quite," I assured him, swiftly rejecting the idea of saying there was an army of my friends close behind, and asked in turn, with flowery compliments upon the drill and discipline of his squadron, who he was.

"Commander of a hundred in the army of my Lord the Emir el Hamel el Kebir , Leader of the Faithful, and Shadow of the Prophet of God," was the sonorous reply; and with a falsely cheerful ejaculation of surprise and joy, I announced that I was the emissary of a Great Power to the Court of the Emir. . . .

* * *

We rode on, prisoner-guests of this fierce, rough, but fairly courteous Arab, in a hollow-square of riflemen whose equipment, bearing and discipline I could not but admire. . . .

And what if this Emir had an army of such--and chose to preach a jehad , a Holy War for the establishment of a Pan-Islamic Empire and the overthrow of the power of the Infidel in Africa?

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" And all around, God's mantle of illimitable space . . . "

In a few hours we reached the Great Oasis, an astounding forest of palm-trees, roughly square in shape, with a ten-mile side.

My first glimpse of the Bedouin inhabitants of this area showed me that here was a people as different in spirit from those of Zaguig as it was possible to be.

There was nothing here of the furtively evil, lowering suspicious fanaticism that makes "holy" places so utterly damnable.

Practically no notice was taken of our passage through the tent-villages and the more permanent little qsars of sand-brick and baked mud. The clean orderliness, prevalent everywhere, made me rub my eyes and stare again.

At the "capital" we were, after a long and anxious waiting, handed over to a person of some importance, a hadji by his green turban, and, after a brief explanation of us by our captor--addressed as Marbruk ben Hassan by the hadji --we were conducted to the Guest-tents.

To my enormous relief, the girls were to be beneath the same roof as myself, and to occupy the anderun or hareem part of a great tent, which was divided from the rest by a heavy partition of felt. Presumably it was supposed that they were my wives.

This Guest-tent stood apart from the big village and near to a group of the largest and finest tents I ever saw in use by Arabs. They were not of the low black Bedouin type, spreading and squat, but rather of the pavilion type, such as the great Kaids of Morocco, or the Sultan himself, uses.

Not very far away was a neat row of the usual kind of low goatskin tent, which was evidently the "lines" of the soldiers of the body-guard.

Flags, flying from spears stuck in the ground, showed that the pavilions were those of the Emir--and a Soudanese soldier who came on sentry-go near the Guest-tent, that we were his prisoners.

The hadji (a man whom I was to know later as the Hadji Abdul Salam, a marabout or mullah and a hakim or doctor), returned from announcing our arrival to the Emir.

"Our Lord the Emir el Hamel el Kebir offers you the three days' hospitality, due by Koranic Law--and by the generosity of his heart--to all travellers. He will see you when you have rested. All that he has is yours," said he.

"Including the edge of his sword," I said to myself.

But this was really excellent. I thought of poor Rohlfs and contrasted my reception at the Great Oasis with his at Kufra, near where he was foully betrayed and evilly treated.

Not long afterwards, two black slave-women bore pots of steaming water to the anderun , and a boy brought me my share, less picturesquely, in kerosene-oil tins.

"Can I come in, Major?" called Miss Vanbrugh. "I've knocked at the felt door. . . . More felt than heard. . . . I want to dress your arm."

I told her that I was feeling happier about her than I had done since we started, for I was beginning to hope and to believe that we were in the hands of an enlightened and merciful despot, instead of those of the truculent and destructive savage I had expected to find.

"How do you like this hotel?" I inquired as she pinned the bandage.

"Nothing like it in N'York," she replied. "Maudie's sitting on cushions and feeling she's half a Sheikhess already. . . ."

"I'm going to put on my uniform," I announced. "Will you and she help a one-armed cripple?"

They did. And when the Hadji Abdul Salam, and a dear old gentleman named Dawad Fetata, came with one or two more ekhwan to conduct me to the presence of the Emir, I was a French Field-Officer again, bathed, shaven, and not looking wholly unworthy of the part I had to play.

§ 2

Seated on dyed camel-hair rugs piled on a carpet, were the Emir el Hamel el Kebir and his Vizier, the Sheikh el Habibka, stately men in fine raiment.

I saw at a glance that the Emir, whatever he might claim to be, was no member of the family of Es Sayed Yussuf Haroun es Sayed es Mahdi es Senussi, and that if he pretended to be the expected "Messiah," Sidi Sayed el Mahdi el Senussi, he was an impostor.

For he was most unmistakably of Touareg stock, and from nowhere else could he have got the grey eyes of Vandal origin, which are fairly common among the Touareg, many of whom are blue-eyed and ruddy-haired.

I liked his face immediately. This black-bearded, black-browed, hawk-faced Arab was a man of character, force and power. But I wished I could see the mouth hidden beneath the mass of moustache and beard. Dignified, calm, courteous, strong, this was no ruffianly and swash-buckling fanatic.