ONLY HALF A CAPTURE.
I awoke suddenly with a start. People were talking. I rubbed my eyes and looked. Was I dreaming, I wondered; for, within a couple of yards of me, I saw Sedjur and George Edwards in Arab dress, sitting on their horses and talking to the sheik. I jumped up to greet them, but I grew dizzy and sank back again. Edwards dismounted and ran across to me.
"What is the matter, old man?" he asked, taking my hand.
"I am a bit done," I replied.
"You are in for a bout of fever," he said, "and no wonder, from what I have just heard from the sheik. But we will soon put you to rights. You have been lying out in the sun here for some time, I expect, judging by the blisters on your body. You had better get into your clothes again, and have another snooze."
I struggled into my dirty garments as best I could, and wished that I had something cleaner to put on, but I had hardly finished dressing before Faris and Sedjur rushed up to us in a state of excitement, telling us that they could see a party of horsemen galloping towards us from the direction of the lake.
"They have followed our tracks," said the sheik to me, "and hope to recover their horses. We must get away at once."
I looked over the sand-hill nearest to me and could just make out a small black mass some miles away. I got up and moved towards my horse, but I was too feeble to mount.
"I cannot manage it, George," I said, "I shall stop here, wait till they arrive, and give myself up. You clear off with the others—I shall be all right."
"Likely!" replied Edwards, indignantly.
Faris, seeing that something serious was the matter, came back to us, and asked why we were not hurrying.
"We are not coming," said Edwards; "he is too ill. You and Sedjur escape while you have time."
"No," replied the sheik, "we will stand here and fight."
But Edwards and I besought him to go, and at last he consented.
"We should have no chance against them," he said; "they are ten to one. But Sedjur shall take their horse, and leave you his, when they will find that you two have your own horses, and are not the thieves that they are after."
A hasty word of parting, and our two Bedouin friends were in the saddle and away. For some reason, they did not take the direct route by which Faris and I had ridden a few days before, and which Edwards and Sedjur had followed, but struck off, half right, towards a low ridge. The country was undulating, and, to our relief, in a few seconds we saw them disappear from view. Then Edwards looked over our sand-hill, and told me to prepare myself, as the band of horsemen were approaching; and in another minute we were surrounded by some forty wild-looking Arabs, armed with matchlocks and spears. I fully imagined that they would finish us off, without inquiry; but the chief of the party motioned to his men to stand back, and advanced towards us. Edwards stood up, and greeted him.
"Where are our horses?" demanded the chief.
"Horses," said Edwards, "you appear to have many."
"I speak," said the Bedouin, frowning, "of the two that you stole from us in the night."
"I have stolen no horses at any time from any man," replied Edwards, with considerable force. "I and my friend here, who is sick with fever, are Englishmen, travelling in the desert. We have only our own horses, as you can see."
The chief and his followers looked perplexed, and not a little surprised at the sight of two foreigners. A long consultation then took place, after which the chief, regarding us with evident suspicion, addressed us again.
"See, now, Ingleezee," he said, "last night two horses were stolen from our camp. We have followed their footprints up to this point; and here we find you, but with two other horses. We do not believe that even you are able to change a horse's skin and shape. Tell me, from which direction did you ride hither?"
Edwards pointed out the direction.
"I believe it," said the Arab, "for the hoof marks which brought us here are certainly not those of your horses. Answer me yet again, did you meet any Bedouins as you rode hither?"
"Not a soul," replied Edwards, equivocating perhaps, but nevertheless speaking the truth.
While this cross-examination was going on, some of the party were casting round and looking at the horses' footprints on the ground. I soon saw that they were on the right scent, and one of them shouted to the chief that he had found the marks of their two stolen horses. This caused tremendous excitement, and a dozen horsemen were sent off in pursuit, while the chief and the remainder looked after us. Then came another surprise, when someone discovered that, besides the hoof marks of our own two horses, there were also the marks of two other horses, though apparently two or three days older, but all coming from the same direction.
"What abominably cunning brutes they are," I said to Edwards.
"Yes," said he, "they will worm it all out of us before they have done. But they will have their work cut out if they mean to overtake the sheik and Sedjur, with the good half-hour's start that they had."
We could see that this new discovery had upset their calculations considerably, and presently the chief informed us that, though he did not now suspect us of being implicated in the theft of the horses, we must accompany him to the camp, in order that we should be properly examined by his lord and master, the Governor of Adiba. Ill as I was, I was compelled to mount my horse and ride with the party. As we started, we found that two or three men had taken up the tracks left by the horses which Faris and I had ridden on our journey to the seer. They had not come across them on their way from the camp, as they lay a considerable distance to one side, since Faris had taken a straight line to the margin of the swamp, and the spot from which we had stolen the horses was a mile or more to the east of it.
We appeared to have hoodwinked the party most successfully, and the chief discussed the situation with us quite affably. His views were fairly reasonable, and he was convinced that he had fathomed the mystery up to a certain point. He imagined that, two or three days before, two horsemen had passed through the gap in the sand-hills, and had proceeded to a point at the southern end of the lake. The footprints, he affirmed, were not those of our horses, and our horses had evidently never gone beyond the gap; neither had the other horses ever returned from the lake to the gap. The men who had stolen the horses might have been those whose horses' tracks were now being followed towards the lake; but what he could not understand was why they should have discarded their own horses and stolen the others.
"Of course," he said, "there may be no connection whatever between the two horsemen and the thieves, and that matter is of no real consequence. We know where the scoundrels have gone, and our men will doubtless catch them. Who they are is immaterial—so long as they suffer the penalty of their crime."
The only point of doubt seemed to be whether we were or were not in league with the robbers, and that, the Arab said, was for his master, the Governor, to decide. He himself felt certain of our innocence, and thought it probable that the thieves had passed through the gap and disappeared before we had reached it from the opposite direction.
Eventually we came within sight of the encampment, and, from the excitement that prevailed, it was apparently thought that the thieves had been caught. Bitter was the disappointment when it was learned that the stolen horses had not been recovered; and the Governor, who stood waiting for us outside his large tent, vented his wrath on his unfortunate captain before the latter could offer an explanation. When, however, he had heard what the chief of the escort had to relate, the great man changed his tone and ordered us to be taken away to a tent and looked after, until such time as the two absent parties should return and give an account of themselves. As it proved, the ride had not done me much harm; I was wretchedly weak, but the fever had passed off, and I was able to eat heartily of the supper which our friend the chief provided for us. After my diet of dried dates, the steaming dish placed before us was a positive feast, and neither before nor since have I ever partaken of a meal with greater relish.
How Edwards and I talked that night! I had to tell him all my adventures, and answer a thousand questions; but, all through, I had the feeling that he thought I was romancing, and he politely but firmly refused to believe that I had really seen the Golden Girdle.
"I am afraid, my dear boy," he said, "that was hallucination, produced by your old friend's intoxicating perfumes."
"All right," I replied, almost angrily, "you need not believe it unless you like; but if we ever meet old Faris again, we will get him to give his version."
"I wonder," said Edwards, changing the conversation, "how we shall get out of this hole. It seems to me that ever since we left Baghdad, we have been in a perpetual state of jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. However," he concluded philosophically, "they say that everything has an end, and I trust that our end may be peace."
At an early hour next morning, the captain of the escort paid us a visit, and brought us food. We discovered that he considered himself our host, and he chatted with us in a most friendly way. He told us that both parties of horsemen had returned; that those who had tracked the two horses to the lake had come in early in the night, with the information that the horses had passed through the swamp and had gone straight on, so they had given up the search as not likely to lead to any result. The other party, he said, after a fruitless pursuit of the missing horses, had just come back. They stated that they had seen the two thieves riding in the far distance, but all hope of overtaking them had gone, and, their horses being exhausted, they had been forced to abandon the chase. The Governor was very angry, because the stolen horses were his own property, and what attitude he would adopt towards ourselves was extremely doubtful. But this before long we would discover for ourselves, as he had given orders that we should be brought before him in an hour's time.
"For my own part," added our friend, "I think he will order you to proceed with him to Adiba. If you cannot satisfy him as to your innocence, he will probably take your horses from you. But he will be afraid to keep you at Adiba for any length of time; doubtless he will give you asses and tell you to depart to Baghdad."
Our interview passed off much more satisfactorily than we had anticipated. Ali Khan, the governor, asked us endless questions as to who we were, where we had been, and where we were going, and finally gave his opinion that we knew nothing about the theft of the horses. He upbraided us for our folly in wandering about the desert without an escort, and he told us that we should remain as his guests until he reached his home, when he would endeavour to send us with some caravan to a place from which we should be able to return to Baghdad in safety. We thanked him profusely, and, afraid of showing any disinclination to accompany him, we agreed to accept his offer. We were soon on very good terms with our new host, and, in the course of the conversation that followed, I told him that Edwards was a great doctor.
"If that be so," said the Governor, turning to Edwards, "when we reach Adiba, you shall try your skill on my small son, whom none of my own doctors are able to cure."
"That will I certainly," replied Edwards enthusiastically.
"Good," said the Governor, "and should you want for anything, ask for it, and it shall be yours. We shall proceed on our journey in the morning, and, if it please Allah, in about two weeks from now shall be in the town."
Edwards and I were overjoyed at our good fortune, for it seemed to us that we were going to make a most interesting expedition under the most favourable circumstances, and when we returned to our tent we solemnly shook hands and congratulated ourselves.
"We shall be back in Baghdad in no time," said Edwards. "I have already overstayed my leave, but I daresay, when I turn up safe and sound, the Consul-General will understand, and will put matters right."
"You do not mean to say," said I, "that you propose rushing back to Baghdad?"
"As straight as a die," said he, "and jolly glad I shall be to get there."
"But what about our old friends, the sheik and Sedjur?" I asked.
"Oh," said he, "I can find out what happened to them when I get back to Baghdad. You surely do not suggest that we should continue to fool about in the desert any longer?"
"My dear boy," I said, "you can think of nothing but that wretched leave of yours. Do, for goodness' sake, forget it. You are overdue now, and if you start from Adiba the day after you get there, you will be weeks late. In all probability, the authorities have killed us, buried us, and put up memorial tablets to us by now. Much better let them go on grieving a bit longer."
Edwards looked at me and laughed.
"You are the most extraordinary person that I have ever come across," said he. "Here you are, a perfect wreck, and looking as if you had seen a hundred ghosts in the last few days; yet you do not seem at all anxious to get back to an ordinary life of peace and comfort."
"You do not understand," I argued. "You have not been inspired by the sight of the glittering serpents. Think, George, what it would be to get hold of it, and ride into Baghdad with it!"
"It would be tolerably nice," he replied, "to ride into Baghdad even without it. Honestly, I do not much care which it is. I waive all claim to carrying the Golden Girdle."
"What a scoffer you are," I said. "You do not really believe in its existence. For my part, I should not be a bit surprised if at this very moment it was in the Jelas camp. Faris is as keen about it as I am, and he would not waste any time in preparing for his raid on the Shammar. I agree that we must go to Adiba now, but as soon as we leave the place, we will make straight for our old quarters, see what the sheik has been about, and find out if he has heard anything of the girdle."
"All right," said Edwards, "I will see you through the business. You shall have your way, and I will stick to you. But I beg of you not to let me in for adventures such as you and Faris have just been indulging in. My feeble brain would not stand that sort of thing."
During the journey of the succeeding fortnight or more, we made friends with all the members of the caravan, and George Edwards covered himself with glory by looking after the ailments of the party. Fortunately, no one had attempted to rifle his saddle-bags, and, when starting with Sedjur on the ride to meet me, he had taken the precaution to bring with him his travelling medicine-case and instruments. It was an uneventful ride, through a barren and ugly country, and glad were we when, at last, we came in sight of the walls of Adiba, and saw a body of horsemen issuing out to greet their Governor.