Chapter Thirteen.
An Unexpected Meeting.
Gradually Harry Forsyth came back to real life, as it were. First of all he had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong, but he wanted a word or an event to strike the key-note of his memory. His uncle never spoke of home matters; he was kind, and even affectionate, but was much away. He would come out into the large courtyard in the early morning, mount the horse which was held ready for him with an activity worthy of a much younger man, and scour off at a gallop with a troop of his wild retainers racing behind him. He might come back that evening, or not for a week.
And when he was at home he was very busy, seeing different people, who came and went in a great hurry, and writing despatches, which mounted orderlies, or what answered for such, were always in waiting to carry. And when they were together he talked of the wild life of the desert; of the sport to be had further up in the Black Country, but never of England.
He spoke Arabic always, even when they were alone, and never lapsed into his native tongue. Yet his face and the tone of his voice disturbed Harry, causing him to make an effort to get his mind clear.
At length, one morning he awoke with a distinct remembrance of his mother and sister, and the knowledge that he was far away from them in a foreign land, and had not had any communication with them for a long time. And he felt a strong desire to relieve their anxiety, and let them know he was alive, and also to have news of them. But he could not remember what he had come to this part of the world for.
He knew that he had wanted to trace his uncle; but why? He had come out to Egypt in the service of a firm of merchants, and the name of the head of it was Williams; he was confident so far. But had he not returned home since then? And why had he sought out his uncle? Surely not on business connected with the firm, and certainly not because he had turned Mohammedan and wanted to live like an ostrich.
A little longer, and his connection with Hicks Pasha’s force, and the disastrous termination of that expedition, came clearly back to him; and with it the necessity of keeping silent about the matter, for he now wanted to get away to a civilised place like Cairo, at all events, if not to England. For though he did not know that the British Government had taken up the Egyptian quarrel, and that war had actually been waged between them and the Soudanese in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea, he knew that an officer of the late expedition would be looked upon with suspicion, if not treated as an open enemy.
Neither was he sure how his uncle would bear the disappointment if he found out that he had been in the ranks of his enemies—the Egyptians. Though he need not have worried himself about that, for the Sheikh Burrachee would only have thought it the method which Destiny had taken to bring him to him.
As Forsyth’s mind grew sounder his body kept pace with it, and he was able at last to mount a horse and take short rides; and it amused him to saunter about the bazaar occasionally, though it was not a very extensive or grand one; indeed, the poet who wrote “Man wants but little here below,” would have been pleased to see how completely an Arab, as a rule, verifies his theory.
One day he, (Harry, not the poet) was puzzled by some round balls of a frothy appearance, which he could not make out; could it possibly be soap? What sale could there be for such an article? The shopman might just as well have offered straps and stay-laces to the population around him. But it did not smell like soap, either; indeed, the odour was extremely unpleasant.
“That is not an object worthy of your attention,” said the owner of the shop, who sat on a cushion in the midst of his goods. “I have a preparation for the hair which is infallible for restoring it if it falls off from age or sickness, for example, and which is as agreeable to the nose as beneficial to the scalp. Those balls of mutton fat are only fit for the poor who can afford no better.”
“Oh, it is for the hair, then,” observed Harry; “and what makes it look all frothy like that?”
“It is prepared by chewing, and women are employed for the purpose; they cheat me sometimes, and swallow a portion. But deign to come up, oh illustrious one, and partake of a cup of coffee or a glass of sherbet and a chibouque, and allow me the unparalleled and illustrious honour of showing you my poor goods.”
Harry consented, not that he wanted to purchase anything, but because something about the man’s face struck him as familiar, and he was anxious to remember where and under what circumstances he had seen him before.
“I have here a French pistol, a revolver with six chambers, which I can offer your Excellency almost for nothing, with ammunition to match. It is a weapon which will save your life a hundred times by its accuracy and the rapidity of its fire; and what says the wise man? ‘Life is sweet, even to the bravest.’” And all the time he was talking, Harry Forsyth kept thinking, “Where have I seen him? What circumstance does his face recall?”
As he left the shop his eye fell on a bale of goods yet unopened, and on it he read the name Daireh!
It acted like a match on a gas-jet. He had come out to seek the will, and Daireh was the man who had abstracted it!
And as he walked home, he remembered everything which had been a puzzle to him. Being still weak, he now grew as much excited as before he had been apathetic, and had his uncle been at home he would have gone to him with the whole story at once. But the sheikh was away, superintending the drill of certain European ruffians in the Mahdi’s service who were to man some Krupp guns taken from the Egyptians, and Harry had a forced respite in which to collect his ideas and frame them in the manner best calculated to gain his uncle’s attention and assistance.
And now his anxiety about those at home who had no doubt long mourned him as dead grew more poignant, and remembering his uncle’s affection for his sister, he regretted not having confided in him and begged him to get a letter conveyed to some point sufficiently civilised to have a post. He tried to find out from Fatima how long he had been laid up at the fakir’s residence, and at first she was puzzled. But at last she gave him a clue.
“The Nile had risen and gone back,” she said, “when you were brought to us as dead. It rose again, and fell again, and now it will soon rise once more.”
Two years! Was it possible? Nearly two years! And he wondered whether his people had gone into mourning for him, or if they still hoped on. He next made inquiries about Daireh, setting Fatima to gossip for him and tell him the result. He seemed to bear a shockingly bad character, and to be very unpopular. The fact was that he was a money-lender, and his extortions caused him to be hated.
Harry was glad of this, since it promised to make his task easier.
The Sheikh Burrachee returned, and was rejoiced to find his nephew so much improved in health.
Harry took the first opportunity of opening his budget.
“Do you mind my speaking to you in English?” he said. “I have got to say things which I should find it difficult to explain in a foreign language, which I have very imperfectly picked up, and which may not have idioms answering to the English.”
“I do not love the English tongue,” said the sheikh, using it, however. “But what things do you allude to?”
“Family matters, affecting my mother and all of us—you, perhaps.”
“When I last went to England,” said the sheikh, “I took a final farewell of all relatives, and of everything belonging to the country from which I shook off the dust on my feet, you only excepted, for I saw that you, too, were called out of the seething hotbed of corruption, which is called civilisation, to the natural life of man. Why disturb the ashes of the buried past?”
“I love my mother,” replied Harry; “and you, her brother, once loved her too.”
His uncle bowed his head. “True,” he said; “speak on.”
“And besides,” added Harry, “justice is justice all the world over, and crime should not prosper. Richard Burke, your brother, died at his home in Ireland. He had made two wills, one leaving the bulk of his fortune to his step-son, Stephen Philipson, and another, and later one, made on the occasion of Philipson turning out badly, leaving him a modest allowance, and bequeathing the bulk of his fortune between his sister and Reginald Kavanagh. This will, which would make my mother and Beatrice comfortable, as they have been brought up to esteem comfort, was not to be found; neither was the other. A dishonest clerk, forced to fly the country because a forgery he had committed must soon be discovered, stole them both out of the lawyer’s office where he was employed, for the purpose of levying a sum for giving them to one or the other of the parties interested. But the police were too close on his traces, and he had to fly without a chance of making use of either document. He was an Egyptian, and went home; but not feeling safe at Alexandria or Cairo, and having connections in the Soudan, he came to this country. If both wills are destroyed, part of the property comes to you.”
“And the cause has need of funds!” exclaimed the sheikh. “But how shall we find this dog?”
“I saw him the other day in the bazaar; his name is Daireh.”
“Daireh, the money-lender, against whom I have had so many complaints, but who always manages to have the law on his side?”
“The very same.”
The Sheikh Burrachee clapped his hands; an attendant came. “Bring hither Daireh, the Egyptian usurer,” said the sheikh; “and keep him guarded in the outer court.”
The Arab inclined his head and departed without a word.
It may seem to you that Harry Forsyth had recovered his wits very rapidly, and this, indeed, was the case. Up to a certain point his progress had been very slow, but that once passed he had come to himself almost at a bound. But as for his clear statement to his uncle, that he had prepared beforehand with great care, writing it out and learning it by heart, feeling that it was necessary to be as concise as possible.
A thoughtful expression came over the Sheikh Burrachee’s face, quite different from the wild faraway look which now ordinarily characterised it.
“And so Richard is dead,” he murmured to himself; “and Mary has known poverty in a land where there is no kindness for the poor; where all is hard and cold, and people can no longer love or even hate. And this fellow has robbed her. By my beard he shall smart for it!”
When the sheikh swore by his beard the matter was serious, and if Daireh had heard him he would not have walked along between the guards who arrested him with so impudent an air. He had so often been had up, and had got the best of his accusers, that he felt quite safe. For he knew well the customs which had the force of laws in the country, and took care not to violate them, though straining every point to his advantage. And the Sheikh Burrachee was just, and however much he might sympathise with the complainant, would not allow his judgment to be affected by his feelings.
It was indeed a rough-and-ready justice, not always consistent, and such as would not meet entire approval from any civilised persons; he went on the principle that when he could not do what he would, he did what he could, to set things straight according to his judgment and the evidence before him, adopting the habits of the people with whom he had identified himself, who had not the horror of physical pain—for others—or the employment of it to elicit truth, which we have.
He rose from the divan by the garden where he had been sitting with Harry, and, beckoning to the latter to follow him, proceeded to the outer and larger hall, where he took his seat, with his nephew at his side. And hardly had he done so when Daireh was brought in. He salaamed with a confident air, which expressed, “Who will find me tripping? It would take a clever fellow to do that. They are willing enough to agree to my terms when they want to borrow, but when I claim my own, there is all this bother and outcry, and I am dragged before the sheikh forsooth!”
But he looked more serious when the Sheikh Burrachee said to him—
“Daireh, where are the two wills you stole from Burrows and Fagan, the Dublin lawyers, when you ran away from their employ?”
Surely such an incongruous question was never put in an Arab town in the heart of Africa by a sheikh dressed in bernouse and turban, with a jewel-hilted yataghan at his side, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. No wonder Daireh was flabbergasted; such a thunderbolt out of a clear sky has seldom fallen upon any man.
“Your Mightiness is mistaken,” he stammered. “I have lived, earning an honest livelihood as a poor merchant, at Khartoum and Berber, Alexandria and Cairo. But what is Dublin? I know it not.”
“Is that your photograph?” asked Harry Forsyth, suddenly, in English.
“No!” replied Daireh, startled into answering in the same language; and the moment he did so he could have bitten his tongue out for vexation.
The sheikh took the likeness in his hand; it was unmistakable.
“Here is your portrait, and it was taken in Dublin, for it bears that name upon it. Also you know English,” he said.
“I learned that language at Alexandria,” replied Daireh, more firmly now he had collected his wits; “and I had a brother very like me who went beyond the seas, and may have lived in the place you speak of, for I never heard of him again.”
“You speak the words of Sheytan, the father of lies,” said the sheikh sternly; “where are the stolen documents?”
“I never heard of them, your Justice; and I know not what you mean,” replied Daireh, striving, but with indifferent success, not to tremble.
“Hassan!” called the sheikh, and a tall, stalwart black stepped forward, with a courbash in his hand. “Twenty lashes to refresh his memory.”
“Mercy, great sheikh; oh, favourite of Allah, have mercy, and listen to me!” cried the wretch; but without heeding his cries four men seized him and flung him on the ground face downwards. Two held his legs, one his arms, and a third put a knee on his back between the shoulder-blades to keep him in position. It was all done in a twinkling.
Then Hassan stepped up, courbash in hand, and measured his distance. The courbash is a fearful whip made of hippopotamus’ hide, a stroke from which is felt by a bullock as painfully as a cut from an ordinary whip is by a horse.
It whistled through the air, and came down upon the naked flesh of the victim, who screamed with the pain as if he would break a blood-vessel. The wild men in the hall gathered round, their eyes sparkling and their teeth gleaming with enjoyment and laughter. It was good fun to them to see any one flogged, but a money-lender and extortioner, that the punishment should fall upon such an one, was indeed a treat! And Daireh too was particularly disliked. Then the currish way in which he took his licking added to the sport. The little civilisation they had was very superficial, and did not go nearly deep enough to repress the instinct of cruelty.
Another and another lash, and the fellow’s howls, yells, and cries for pity were hardly human, but seemed rather those of some powerful spirit in pain. Harry felt quite faint and sick, and looked down so as not to see what was going on. But he could not close his ears, unfortunately, and he counted the strokes, longing for them to be over. He feared being mastered by his feelings, and pleading for the wretch, so displaying a compassion which would be considered by the Arabs as a most despicable weakness, and it was part of his plan now to gain their respect, and appear to enter into his uncle’s plans.
No, it served the rascal right; let him have that, and more too. Only he had rather not be present. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. The screams subsided into a whimpering and wailing, and when Harry looked up he saw Daireh on his feet again, his eyes bloodshot, and his features convulsed with pain and terror.
“Where are the wills you stole?” asked the Sheikh Burrachee, unconcernedly, as if nothing had occurred since he last put the question.
“They are at my house, your Mightiness; send some one with me, and I will give them up.”
“I rejoice that your memory has returned; it is one of the choicest gifts of Allah,” said the sheikh. “Go with him and get the papers, and bring them back with the prisoner.”
“A bad speculation from the first!” reflected Daireh, as he was escorted through the streets, his woe-begone appearance and gingerly gait exciting much mirth and mockery amongst the juvenile population. “I wish I had left the accursed wills alone. And what son of Sheytan is this who has traced them, and had my likeness in his pocket? A detective? No; no English policeman would win upon this mad fool of a sheikh—may the vultures tear his heart out while he is still alive—to treat him like a son. He must be one of the parties interested in the last will. What wretched luck that I did not meet him in a fair way, and make a proper agreement with him! But it is too late for that now. If I could only be revenged upon him, upon all of them—sheikh, torturer, mocking demons, and all! Ugh, how sore I am! If it were but all over! But I fear they may torment me further. I had almost sooner they took my head off at once rather than put me to more of that agony. But no; I hope they won’t do that either. There is a remedy for every evil but death.” With these reflections, fears, and impotent rages tormenting him, Daireh reached his house, and from a box, which contained what he had of most value, produced the required documents which had cost Harry Forsyth so much anxiety, toil, and suffering to come at. He was strongly tempted to destroy them, and so glean some little vengeance; but the certainty of perishing in fearful pain if he did so deterred him, and when he was brought back, he delivered them to the sheikh, wrapped in the oilskin in which he had carried them about him until he had a fixed residence where he could deposit them in tolerable security.
“Are these the right wills?” asked the Sheikh Burrachee, handing them to Harry.
“I think so,” replied the latter, as he looked them over and examined the signatures; “indeed, I feel certain that they are.”
“Then,” said the sheikh, “since after all it was but infidels, and not true believers, that this rascal robbed, the justice of the case will perhaps be met by fifty lashes of the courbash, those he has already received being allowed to count. Dog!” he added, indignantly, as Daireh, flinging himself on the ground, wallowed, gasping and crying for mercy, “tempt me not, if you are wise, to treat you according to your deserts, but know that you are treated with extreme leniency.”
And so saying he rose and withdrew to the inner garden court, whither his nephew gladly followed him, and here they refreshed themselves with pipes and coffee.
But the screams of the miserable felon told with what energy Hassan was performing his duty, and Harry thought the punishment would never be over. If it seemed long to him, you may be certain Daireh thought it an age, and indeed he believed that mortal endurance had reached the acme of suffering, and that one more stroke must drive the soul from the body, some time before the last had cut into his palpitating flesh.
But it takes a good deal to kill, and when all was over he was alive, though unable to stand, and when spurned from the courtyard into the street, managed to crawl and drag himself home, where he obtained the draught of water, the want of which had been his chief torment since the stripes ended.
“And now we have recovered the will, uncle, how are we to send it to my mother?” asked Harry when the distracting cries extracted by the courbash had ceased. “The old one I will destroy, as should have been done before. The money will add to her comfort, but news that I am alive and with you will make her happier still.”
This last was a skilful touch, and, I fear, Harry was becoming a bit of a cheat. For, though tidings of her son’s own safety would undoubtedly be the best news Mrs Forsyth could receive, the fact that he was domiciled with her crazy brother would as certainly not add to her satisfaction.
“Keep it safely for the present,” said the sheikh, after smoking some time in thoughtful deliberation; “we shall find a method of transmitting it. Great events will occur soon. The authority of the Mahdi being established in the Soudan, we shall sweep Egypt like the simoom, and Cairo and Alexandria once in our hands, we shall find no difficulty in communicating with Europe. Or, perhaps, it may be done more quickly by Suakim, should the forces of the Mahdi’s lieutenant, Osman Digna, recover from their check,” he added, musing and thinking aloud rather than addressing his nephew.
Harry longed to ask what check, but it was part of his newly-formed system not to ask questions or show curiosity, but yield himself passively to the course of events, and watch his opportunity. For the same reason he would not propose taking the will home himself, feeling certain that so obvious a course would be suggested by his uncle himself if he could feel it was practicable. But it was evident what he was driving at now; as his nephew picked up health and strength he began asking him about his connection with the volunteers, and whether he had paid attention to the theory as well as the practice of shooting.
And though Harry pretended not to understand, and parried the questions as well as he could, he saw very well that he wanted him to take an active part in the training of Soudanese soldiers in the use of the Remington rifles which had fallen into their hands.
For never in the history of war had a nation been armed so completely by its enemies. The Egyptians sent out armies with weapons of precision and improved artillery, and they fortified towns, where they massed vast stores of ammunition, suited to both rifles and guns. The soldiers of the Mahdi rushed upon their feeble foes with sword and spear, totally annihilated army after army, and collected the rifles. Then they took the towns and possessed themselves of the cartridges. Napoleon the Great used to say that war should support war; but this was going a step further, and making war supply the means of waging war. The only drawback was this, that the more elaborate the weapons which you put into a soldier’s hands, the more skill he requires to use them effectively; and this skill can only be acquired by proper training.
But the Mahdi had never taken the precaution to send any officers to Hythe, and amongst the miraculous powers which he was said by some of his followers to possess, that of creating ready-made musketry instructors was apparently not included. The consequence was that his men were extremely bad shots, and wasted their ammunition in an almost incredible manner. What mischief they were enabled to do, especially with the artillery, was principally owing to the lessons they received from European scoundrels who had been forced to fly from their own countries by their crimes, or reckless adventurers who did not care for cause, nationality, or anything else, so long as they were where fighting and a chance of plunder was going on—men who would have made most excellent mediaeval heroes, and would have had a good chance of living in song and story had they not been born a few centuries too late.
Amongst all these the Sheikh Burrachee was an exception. He was a genuine crack-brained enthusiast, sane and even shrewd enough in many things, but quite crazy upon certain points. Convinced, to begin with, that it was the duty of every Irishman to hate the English, he had imaginary private wrongs of his own to avenge. On the top of all that, he had become a thorough Mohammedan in his sympathetic feelings and habits, and quite sincere in his adoption of the cause of the Mahdi. The appearance of England in the field, which would have caused many to hesitate, was a spur to his enthusiasm, since it offered him an opportunity of having it out with the foes of his predilection.
Harry Forsyth had no idea whatever that England had engaged in hostilities in the Soudan. When he last had any information, she was firmly determined to do nothing of the kind, but to let the Egyptian Government get out of the difficulty in the best way they could. Indeed, it was the last thing he would have guessed. But still he knew well enough that English interests were firmly bound up in Egyptian, since any disturbance of the Government at Cairo might endanger the route to India, and therefore that to assist in any way the enemies of Egypt was to act indirectly against his own country; and he was determined to be of no use, even if he made believe to espouse the cause which his uncle had made his own. And this he suspected more and more he would have to do, if he was to get an opportunity of leaving the country.
His uncle had hinted at an impending advance upon Egypt; if he could join that, and once reach the Nile, surely he would find some opportunity of slipping down the river, and joining the Egyptian troops, who would receive a relic of Hicks Pasha’s army with open arms. Then he would get to Cairo, and find friends to assist him to reach England with the will in his pocket.
He did not fear that the Arabs would be able to penetrate far into Egypt proper, for there were probably some English troops still at Cairo, and more would be sent there on the first intimation of danger. The will, by-the-by, had now taken the place which the parchment given to him by his uncle had formerly held, and he seldom laid it aside, not knowing what might happen from day to day.
His health, meantime, became re-established, and he grew rapidly stronger, while his mind was perfectly clear now. At times, indeed, he had violent neuralgic headaches, but these recurred less and less frequently, and he had every prospect of soon losing all ill effects of that wound in his head.
But the stronger and better he became, the more restless he grew. The only amusement he had to pass the time in was riding. He had always been very fond of horses, and now he had a good choice, and as the two he had fancied most had not been often backed, they took some riding; and that was exercise and amusement both. But the bits and the saddles were not to his fancy: the former too severe; the latter heavy, with high peaks before and behind. But one cannot have everything, and he was grateful to be able once more to sit a horse and enjoy a gallop at all. And to watch the wild cavalry at their exercises on a broad plain outside the town was a pretty sight, though it seemed to him that their performances were too much of the circus order.
“Can the English dragoons or hussars do anything like that?” the Sheikh Burrachee asked him one day, when they were together watching a body of horsemen who were supposed to be skirmishing.
They pulled up their horses to a dead halt from a gallop with their cruel bits; went, not over the head, as it seemed they must, but under the body of the animal; fired a shot from that position, and remounted anyhow—one by the neck, another over the tail; a third ran alongside his horse for some way, using him as cover, and then vaulted on his back without checking the pace.
Harry was bound to confess that, to the best of his belief, no British regiment, light or heavy, could rival such equestrian gymnastics.
“No,” said the sheikh; “they learn to stick on while the horse keeps his footing, but these cannot be thrown; for should the horse fall, even, he jumps at once to the ground.”
“But surely he must reach it head or shoulder first sometimes,” objected Harry.
“No,” replied his uncle; “he turns a somersault and alights on his feet. The European is as far behind the Asiatic in horsemanship as in everything else which is manly and not demoniac. The use of the sword, for example. The dragoon has a straight weapon, with which he is taught to cut or thrust. If he does the former, and the blow is not parried, he may knock his opponent down, but he seldom inflicts a dangerous wound. If he gives point, he may kill his man indeed, but his weapon will often become so entangled that he is for some time unable to free it, and he remains defenceless against another attack. But with his curved blade of temper, which will not shiver and which takes a razor’s edge, the warrior of the East neither strikes nor gives point, but presents the half-moon-shaped sword at his opponent, holding it still if galloping, pushing it forward if motionless, and will so slice off limb or head, or cut deep into the body, without useless expenditure of strength, or the chance of losing even the momentary control of his weapon. I have seen an Arab meet an enemy in full career, and slice his head clean off in this way, with hardly a perceptible movement of the arm.”
Having no knowledge on this subject, Harry assented without any mental reserve; but concerning the military utility of acrobatic equestrian performances, or of their being available at all in the hunting field, he entertained the very gravest doubt. But they were good fun to watch, for all that, and one, that of vaulting into the saddle while the horse was in motion, he practised, and to a certain extent caught the knack. He also went in for throwing the spear, which the natives could do for ten yards or so with great force and accuracy; and though he did not make very good practice, it proved an excellent exercise for his muscles after his long confinement.
The Sheikh Burrachee was delighted to see how his nephew took to these martial exercises, and at last he put the question to him point-blank, whether he would not assist in teaching some of the men the use of the Remington rifles they had captured.
Harry, having thought over the best course to pursue in such a contingency, consented with apparent alacrity, but said that he hoped his shortcomings would be excused. His uncle, not knowing how much that hope covered, replied that he must not take the Kor Dofan for Wimbledon, and the most elementary instruction would be esteemed extremely scientific.
So the very next day Harry found himself with a squad of five hundred men to instruct.
“Delightful task, to rear the tender root—to teach five hundred Arabs how to shoot!” he said to himself, when the lot were handed over to him. There was one consolation: do what he would, his instructions to so large a number, without assistance, could not avail much: but he wanted to do nothing at all.
His uncle was not present; he had no one to check him, able to judge whether his instruction was good or bad. So he stuck some stones up for butts, at about twelve hundred yards, and set them all firing at them. He judged that by this he would in the first place accustom them to firing at a comparatively innocuous distance; and in the second, that they would waste a good deal of ammunition.
“His honour rooted in dishonour stood;
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true,”
in the words of Tennyson’s famous conundrum.