Carry On! A Story of the Fight for Bagdad

by Herbert Strang

CHAPTER II

THE GAPING JAWS

Burnet ascended to the highest point of the tell, and, unstrapping a pair of field glasses, made a careful survey of his surroundings. The country between himself and the river consisted mainly of swamp and marsh, dotted with islands of various sizes. There were no dwellings within view, but Burnet knew that the region was inhabited, though sparsely, and the flight of the aeroplane, its descent near the tell, its subsequent departure, must have been noticed by a certain number of Arabs. Curiosity, if no other motive, would impel any who were near to hasten to the spot; but he saw no movement on all the wide expanse around except among the birds of the marsh; and reflecting that those Arabs who had witnessed the return flight of the aeroplane would not guess that it had left a passenger behind, he restored the glasses to their case, and prepared to complete the errand that had brought him to the spot.

Descending to the foot of the tell, he made his way to a wady that bordered it on one side. A sluggish current of muddy water flowed through the channel, whose banks were thickly overgrown with reeds. A number of these he cut with his pocket-knife, binding the stalks with tendrils of a trailing plant. With this faggot of reeds in one hand and the bundle he had taken from the aeroplane in the other, he returned to the ruins on the tell. There he stuck the former in the grinning mouth of one of the grotesque animals at the porch; then he passed inside, and once more descended into the underground room, this time, however, letting the stone slab drop into its place above.

A few seconds later the bundle of reeds hanging out of the monster's mouth disappeared. The animal, so far from being a solid block, as it appeared, was hollow, and Burnet had climbed into it by means of notches in the wall at one corner of the cellar. He withdrew the reeds: next moment they reappeared at a similar orifice on the other side of the figure, which, like Janus, was double-faced, and with this roughly extemporised broom he swept a quantity of sand over the slab, until it was hidden sufficiently to pass unnoticed except by a careful observer acquainted with its position. This done, he drew the broom back and took it down with him to the dark and airless chamber below.

If any watching Arab had seen the young British officer disappear into the earth, he would have been somewhat startled, some twenty minutes later, when the slab was lifted again and an Arab lad cautiously emerged. His head was swathed in a strip of parti-coloured cloth held in position by two thick rings of camel's hair; a dirty, shapeless, yellowish robe descended to his knees; his legs, remarkably brown, were bare; his feet were encased in leather-thonged sandals. He carried a small bundle; across his shoulder was slung a British regulation water-bottle—the only article by which he could have been distinguished from the boatmen who might be seen any day on the Tigris. He lowered the slab, swept sand over it, obliterated the footprints around, and having thrust his reed-broom into the mouth of the stone animal, picked his way through the ruins to the north-west corner of the tell, where an uninterrupted view of the country could be obtained.

He was just turning the corner of a rugged wall when, beneath him at a distance of barely twenty yards, he saw a young Arab rushing up the slope, stumbling, recovering himself, his eyes directed always to his feet. Burnet edged backwards round the corner, and was out of sight when the Arab gained the top. But there was now only a few yards between them; in a second or two the Arab would himself turn the corner, and Burnet saw that if he made a dash for the nearest cover in his rear he must inevitably be observed by the stranger before he could reach it. Whipping out a pistol as a precaution—for he knew not whether the Arab was friend or foe—he stood back. The Arab darted round the corner at racing speed, saw the pistol pointed at him, and swerving slightly grabbed at Burnet's wrist. The sudden wrench jerked the pistol out of his hands and at the same time caused both men to lose their balance. Burnet, the first to recover himself, freed his arm with a dexterous twist, and the two men closed, stumbling and swaying over the broken surface of the tell.

THE STRUGGLE ON THE TELL

As soon, however, as Burnet got a firm hold the issue was not long in doubt. The Arab wriggled like an eel, but he was no match for the Englishman either in physical strength or in athletic skill. Moreover he was already winded by his impetuous rush over the heavy ground. Burnet freed himself without much difficulty from his opponent's grip: then, getting his hand behind the Arab's neck in the position known to the wrestler as the "half-nelson," he forced him downwards and finally threw him helpless into a pocket of sand. In a few seconds he had secured the man's weapons—a clumsy pistol and a crooked dagger called shabriyeh—and regained his own pistol. Then he stood above the Arab, who now lay on his back, staring up at the supposed fellow-Arab who had thrown him so easily and in a manner so unfamiliar.

The stranger was no older than Burnet himself. He was an Arab of the best type, with handsome features and intelligent and fearless eyes.

"Rise, I pray you, brother," said Burnet in Arabic. "We have somewhat to say one to the other."

The Arab got up quickly. Puzzled as he had been by the wrestling trick, he was still more puzzled by the friendly manner of the man who had vanquished him, and especially by the slight smile that accompanied his words. He fixed his keen eyes on Burnet's face, but said nothing.

"I am alone here, as you see," Burnet went on, "and in these times, when it is hard to know friends from foes, a man must needs take care. We are strangers, yet it may be that we are also friends."

The Arab assented merely with a word, but did not relax his attitude of watchfulness. This man who spoke to him used good Arabic, but was more direct and less given to expletives than the average Arab.

"You are my captive," Burnet continued. "Tell me who you are, whence you come, and why you ran hither in such headlong haste."

"My lips are dry; give me drink," said the Arab.

"By the grace of Allah I have fresh water—not like the foul water of the swamp," said Burnet, unscrewing the stopper of his water-bottle. "Drink, brother."

The young man took a deep draught, returned the bottle with a word of thanks, and said:

"My tongue will speak true things, and Allah judge between us."

Burnet threw a keen glance around the horizon, then sat down on a broken block of stone, inviting the Arab to sit opposite him. And then the young man began his story.

His name was Rejeb, and he was the chief of a clan of the Anazeh whose territory lay on the far side of the Euphrates. His father, now some years dead, had been a lifelong rebel against the Turkish rule, and in his last year had suffered a disastrous defeat through the defection and treachery of another chief who had been his ally. In this final battle he had lost his life; his people had escaped extermination only by fleeing into the desert. Since the outbreak of the Great War they had gradually reoccupied their old districts, the Turks having enough to do without taking measures to suppress so unimportant an enemy. It was otherwise, however, with the treacherous tribe which had been his father's ruin. For some time its chief, Halil, had made no sign: his fighting strength was greatly reduced through the fact that many of his men were with the Turks. But after the British failure to relieve Kut he had collected a considerable force, and taking advantage of Rejeb's absence at Kerbela he had first cut off the young man's tribe and then attacked it. The tribe, after a stout resistance, had made good its retreat across the Euphrates, to a fastness in the swamps. Rejeb, on his way back from Kerbela, had been met by a messenger with news of the reverse, and, changing his route in order to rejoin his people, had been chased by a party of Halil's horsemen. In eluding them he had lost touch with the messenger who had hitherto accompanied him; his horse had foundered, and the only course then open to him was to swim the Euphrates on a skin. This he had done, and thought himself safe, when the reappearance of his pursuers revived his anxieties. Fortunately their horses were useless in the swamps, and on foot he had reasonable hope of escaping them. An hour or so, however, before his arrival at the tell, he had only just succeeded in giving their main party the slip. The direction of his flight had been seen by three or four of their number who had separated from the rest, and he did not doubt that these three or four, if not the whole body, had tracked him and before long would reach the tell.

Rejeb's story was told rapidly, and with an air of sincerity that would have disarmed suspicion even in one far more sceptical by nature than Roger Burnet. The news that men of a hostile tribe in Turkish pay were hastening to this spot was very disturbing. Burnet knew that he was in fully as much danger from his captive's pursuers as the captive himself. His disguise might pass muster; the story he had invented to account for the presence of a solitary boatman so far from the river, if he were challenged, was sufficiently plausible; but if he was found in the company of the young chief whom Halil's men were hounding down he would certainly be seized and carried to Halil for examination at least. He had very little time in which to secure himself.

The obvious course was to release Rejeb, who would no doubt continue in the direction he had been going, and as soon as he was out of sight, to take refuge in the subterranean room until the chase was past. But the young chief was jaded, worn out by his hurried flight and the subsequent struggle on the tell. It was almost certain that he would be run down. Burnet had taken an instinctive liking to him; he could not give him up to his enemies, who were at the same time enemies of the British. After a few moments' reflection he turned suddenly to the Arab and said:

"If I save you from the hands of Halil, will you swear by the beard of the Prophet not to play me false?"

Rejeb was apparently staggered by this strange offer from a man with whom, a few minutes before, he had been locked in fierce struggle—a man, moreover, who had given no account of himself and about whom there was something mysterious. He flashed a keen questioning glance at Burnet, as if fearful of a trap.

"You are no boatman?" he said slowly.

"And if I am not? What is that to you if I am a friend?"

The Arab hesitated for a brief moment. Then perhaps it occurred to him that his situation could scarcely be worse than it was; perhaps he was mutually attracted to this young man of his own age. At any rate, after the slightest pause, he said, raising his hand:

"By the beard of the Prophet I swear it."

During this conversation the two men had remained behind the wall, Burnet every now and then peering through a gap in the masonry in the direction from which the Arab had come. He now suggested that Rejeb should go to the corner and keep watch for the pursuers. Having left his field glasses with the rest of his equipment in the underground room, he was less able than the keener-sighted Arab to view the distant country.

Rejeb went to the corner and flattened himself against the wall with the instinct for cover natural to a dweller in the wilds. In a few moments he beckoned to Burnet with one hand, the rest of his body remaining motionless. When Burnet joined him, he asked him to look at a large bed of rushes some distance to the north-west. Shading his eyes with his hand, and careful not to expose himself, Burnet gazed towards the spot indicated, and was soon able to make out five or six figures moving among the reeds and advancing straight towards the tell. Burnet led the Arab to the central ruins and through the porch to the entrance of the underground room. Raising the slab they descended; then Burnet mounted into the interior of the colossal animal in which he had left his broom, and swept sand over the slab and the nearest footprints as before. He had hardly withdrawn the broom when he heard shuffling footsteps on the rough ground beyond the wall, and looked out through the wide mouth of the image. It was almost completely dark within, and in the unlikely event of any enquirer thinking to peer into the jaws of the colossus he could escape discovery by stooping.

In a few minutes a tall Arab appeared round the corner of the wall. He was followed at short intervals by four others. All were stalwart sinewy warriors of the desert, bristling with arms. They hunted through the ruins like a pack of dogs that have lost the scent. Here one would point to the impressions of sandals, and the rest followed him as he traced them along the wall and up to the portico. Burnet watched them without much anxiety, for he had taken care that no tell-tale footmarks remained around the slab; and knowing that the tracks that were visible led both towards and away from the ruins, he guessed that the Arabs would suppose that their quarry had come and returned. Their actions justified him. They traced the marks back to the wall, then back again to the portico, beneath which they stood to consult together. From the few words that Burnet caught it was clear that they had seen Rejeb mount the tell, and they supposed that he had crossed it and pursued his journey on the other side. Presently one of them climbed a pile of rubbish from which he could scan the surrounding country. The fugitive could not have gone any great distance, and he must become visible on one or other of the open spaces between the beds of rushes. The scout's four companions meanwhile threw themselves down in the shade of the portico to rest.

Secure in his hiding-place, Burnet felt some amusement at the situation. He went down to the chamber beneath, and, warning Rejeb against making any sound, took him up to his peep-hole and showed him the figure of his enemy looking for him. It was some time before the Arab gave up his vain task and returned to his companions. They came to the conclusion that the fugitive must be lying hidden among the rushes near the tell, and separating, started to scour the vicinity thoroughly. They went methodically through clump after clump until Burnet grew tired of watching them. Not until it was getting late in the afternoon did their perseverance give out. Baffled, weary, and angry at their failure, they rested awhile on the tell and ate some of the food they had brought with them; then they set off to return the way they had come.

Burnet was glad enough to win release at last from his stuffy quarters. Emerging with Rejeb, he made all secure, and prepared to resume the mission which the day's events had interrupted. In the underground chamber he had already returned the young Arab's arms, and discussed with him his subsequent movements. Rejeb would continue his journey to his people, who were a march away to the south-east. He was full of gratitude to his rescuer, and begged to know how he might serve him.

"Surely it is right that I should serve the saviour of my life," he said; "and my people also: they shall know that in serving him they serve me."

"We will not talk of service now," replied Burnet. "Who can tell the future?"

"At least let me know the name of my preserver: how else can I speak of him rightly to my people, and bid them watch for opportunities of serving him?"

"Call me Yusuf the boatman," said Burnet, after a slight hesitation. "By that name I am known to some in Bagdad and elsewhere. It may be that some day we shall meet again."

As soon as darkness made it safe to leave the tell they parted. Rejeb took his way to the south-east; Burnet set off north-west through the swamps, in the direction followed by Rejeb's pursuers.