With the additional security the absence of the arch-brigand brought to him, there came fits of terrible depression. What was going to be the end of all this, and whither did they purpose to convey him? Northward, to wild untrodden regions of Afghanistan or Persia when the band should find it expedient to flee thither—and, what then? Sooner or later the enmity of Umar Khan would take effect in his murder, secret or open. And he was so helpless, for though, as we have said, he had adopted their costume as well as their creed, and was suffered to go out and in among them at will, never by any chance did his custodians allow him aught in the shape of a weapon.
And now, as we see him here in the heart of the Kharawan desert, after the hour of prayer, the old Syyed for the twentieth time and with unswerving patience and copious diagram is explaining the exact position of the stone of Abraham and its distance from the holy Caaba, he makes up his mind to try and break the ice.
“Ask the Syyed, Buktiar,” he says, “who was the Sirdar Dost Hussain Khan?”
But before the ex-chuprassi can put the question, a light dawns over the aged face. As the question is put it deepens and glows.
“Ya—Allah!” he responds, raising hands and eyes heavenward. “His soul is in the rim of Paradise, my son. Yet, what knowest thou of Dost Hussain Khan?”
Campian debated a moment or so what reply to make. There was nothing suspicious about this, for Orientals are never in a hurry. But he was spared the necessity of replying at all, for a diversion occurred which threw the camp into a state of wild excitement.
Away on the skyline a cloud of dust was rising. Onward it swept at a great rate of speed, whirling heavenward; and through it the tossing of horses’ heads, and the white turbans of their riders.
The dust cloud whirled over them. Recovering from the momentary blindness of its effect, Campian beheld a score and a half of wild Baluchis dashing up on horseback. A dozen of these had leaped from their steeds, and—yes—they were coming straight for him. He had no weapon, yet in that flash of time he noticed that not a tulwar was drawn. They flung themselves upon him, bore him to the earth by sheer weight of numbers, and in a trice he was powerless, bound fast in a cruelly painful attitude, being in fact trussed up in such wise as to be brought as nearly into the shape of a huge ball as the human frame is capable of being brought. Nor was this all. They rammed a gag into his mouth—a horrible gag composed of a wedge of wood covered with very dirty rag—and in this plight he was hauled to one of the kneeling camels, and, literally turned into a bale by being wrapped in sacking, was loaded up among the other packages upon the animal’s back.
The agony of it was excruciating. Every bone in his body ached with the distortion of the enforced and unwonted attitude. The rack would have been a joke to it. Moreover, what with the filthy gag, and the sacking which covered him, he was more than half suffocated. Flames danced and reeled before his eyes—his brain was bursting. Then a couple of sickening lurches and jolt—jolt—jolt. The roaring, snarling animal had risen and was proceeding at its ordinary pace—and now, in addition to the torture of his strained attitude, the jolting impact of the other packages seemed in danger of crushing the life out of him against the pack saddle.
Wherefore this outrage? A moment before, free, comparatively almost one of themselves, and now—What was the meaning of this abominable treatment?