CHAPTER XVII
The Road to Bagdad
Free from prison, after an adventure the success of which might well stimulate them to greater effort, to greater daring, and give them hopes beyond any they had possessed during the weary weeks of waiting which had passed, it was yet not by any means certain that Geoff Keith and his chum Philip would ever win their way back to that Expeditionary Force with which they had landed in Mesopotamia. It was weeks and weeks, and it seemed to them years, since they had been captured with Esbul at Nasiriyeh; and though their jailer had not been entirely uncommunicative—for at heart he was quite a genial fellow, and the thought of reward warmed his heart wonderfully—yet they had failed to hear of the easy, bloodless capture of Amara. Indeed, all tidings of the Mesopotamian invading force had ceased; and whether it had retired, whether it still hung on to the banks of the River Tigris, what its fortunes were now, were withheld from them.
"If we don't get out soon there won't be an Englishman left in the whole of Mesopotamia," Philip grumbled one day during their long and tedious imprisonment, when he was perhaps a trifle bilious, and feeling out of sorts and out of temper. "Everything's wrong".
And Geoff had grinned at him, an irritating grin, which had roused the irate Philip to a state of anger which set him stuttering, and which caused him to clench those powerful fists of his—made powerful by the exercises he and Geoff practised. But just as suddenly as his cheeks had flamed with anger, just as quickly as he had allowed natural vexation and irritation to get the better of him, Philip's better sense, his honest heart, his real affection for his chum, caused him suddenly to beam upon him.
"I'm in a rotten humour," he told him, "just the sort of humour in which a fellow grumbles, asks 'What's the good of anything?' and grouses 'Nuffin'."
"I've felt the same often enough," Geoff told him, "and I dare say you've known it, and have seen what a nasty sulky beast I could be. You see, fellows chained up like this, close together in a cell, get to know all there is that's worth knowing about a chap—all the good side, you know."
"And a precious deal of the bad side too," grinned Philip. "Trust a campaign to show up a man from every point of view. People say that aboard-ship life is the most trying of existences; but I imagine that one of those Arctic Expeditions of ours, when a hundred men, perhaps, are bottled up in winter quarters for months together, must try officers and men to the last extremity, must prove their good feelings and temper, and must bring them back to safety comrades for life—friends who will never be forgotten."
Doubtless the fact of hearing nothing of the Expeditionary Force did try the nerves and the temper of the two prisoners in their cell extremely. Yet what mattered such a trial now? Now that they were out of their prison; now that they had dropped from the window of the Governor's quarters; now that they had worsted that odious fellow, von Hildemaller—that mass of perspiring flesh and fat, that ogling, cunning, scheming German?
"Jingo!" Philip kept on repeating, as he and Geoff crouched by the wall, and then let go a chuckle. "To think that we've done that von what's his name—Hilde something—"