The Dash for Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition

by G. A. Henty

"My lord will never hear of it," she said. "When he has said a thing he has said it. There is nothing to do now but to wait until we learn what force is coming against us. There is another encampment of the tribe in a wady two days' journey to the north, and we may summon help from there if the party is not too strong. The great thing will be to kill Hamish, for the Wady El Bahr Nile is known only to a few of our own tribe, and were he not with them they would not be able to find their way there. Even this wady is known to few, for it lies altogether beyond the track of caravans. But now there is nothing to do but to wait until my lord returns. It will be, I think, on the fourteenth day. You were eight days coming across the desert. They will do it in six but will be eight on their return, for there will be no occasion for haste. Hamish will take two more days to get to Khartoum; it may be a day or two before a party is sent out from there, and they will take ten days getting here, so that it should be some days at least after my lord's return before they appear."

"I am sorry, indeed, to have been the cause of so much trouble falling upon you," Edgar said.

"It is not your fault. It was the will of Allah that you should be brought here. But anyhow we should not have stopped here much longer. We have been here six months now, and my lord was saying but a few days since that as soon as the rest of the crops were gathered he should send those who are not fit to travel to El Bahr Nile, and should leave you there and should start with the camels to Khartoum, sell our crops there, and then carry merchandise to El-Obeid or some other distant place. He has been waiting for things to settle down; we have only been stopping here so long because trade has been stopped by the siege of Khartoum, and since then he has not ventured to go there lest his camels should be seized by the Mahdi; but, as he said, he must risk something. Of what use is it to have camels if you do not employ them. They are getting fat and lazy; never have they had so long a rest before. It matters nothing our having to leave this wady. The worst is that the Mahdi will be set against us, and that we shall have to move away far from here to get trade."

"It is possible that at the present time Khartoum is in the hands of the English," Edgar said. "We have heard no news from without since I came here three months ago now, and by this time our expedition may have arrived there and the Mahdi's power may be altogether broken."

"I hope it may be so," the woman said; "before the Mahdi came the country was peaceful and prosperous; there was employment and trade for our camels, and all went about their occupations unmolested. Now everything is changed; trade is at an end, the villages are destroyed, and the fields deserted. I know not how it will end. If the tribes would all turn together against them they would soon drive them out of the land. But there is no hope of this; we have our own quarrels, and cannot unite even when everything is at stake. The Mahdi may be the Mahdi, but what is that to us? He tells his followers that he will lead them to conquer Egypt, and to go to Jerusalem and Roum (Constantinople). But how is he to do it when a handful of white soldiers defeated thousands of his men in the desert? What would it be were he to meet a great army of them? It is one thing to fight the Egyptians as they did at El-Obeid, but another when it is your soldiers. I hear that multitudes of Osman Digma's men were slain down by the sea, and yet they say they fought well."

"They did fight well," Edgar said. "I was there and saw it; no men could have been braver; but we have terrible weapons, and it was impossible for them to stand against them. The Mahdi may say what he likes, but there is no more chance of his taking Egypt as long as we stay there than there is of his flying."

"Well, well!" the woman said, "it will be as Allah chooses. You do not believe in Allah, Muley, you are a Kaffir."

"I beg your pardon," Edgar said; "we and you worship the same God. We call him God, and you call him Allah; but it is the same. Your Prophet acknowledges Moses and Christ to be prophets. The only difference between us is that you believe that Mohammed was also a prophet, and the greatest of all, while we do not acknowledge that, but in other respects there is no great difference between us."

"My lord will talk to you, Muley; I am but a woman, and these things are not for us."

Each morning one of the boys remaining at the douar was sent up to the crest of the sand-hills, and there remained all day on watch. At the end of the thirteenth day the sheik's wife gave orders that everything should be in readiness for instant departure. The camels had returned on the previous day from El Bahr Nile, having made two journeys there and back, and were now ready for a fresh departure. There was a further cutting of the crops until as much was gathered as would, with the remaining tents and goods, make up a full load for the camels, for as the party had not arrived it was almost certain that they had not succeeded in overtaking the fugitive. On the evening of the thirteenth day a shout from the boy on the hill proclaimed that he saw figures coming.