In the Mahdi's Grasp

by George Manville Fenn

“But it is not fair to judge it,” said the professor quietly. “We can see next to nothing; it is fully two miles away; and we are all weary and low-spirited with our long march. Wait till morning.”

It had been expected that they would march in that night, but a halt was called in the midst of a great, dusty plain, and preparations for camping were at once begun.

Frank lay wakeful and restless for long enough. In his excited state sleep refused to come. Now that the goal had been reached it was hard to believe that they were there, and had succeeded in making their way to the neighbourhood of the far-famed cities of the Soudan with so little difficulty. Of physical effort there had been plenty, but he had anticipated bitter struggles and disappointments; attempts to reach the prison of his brother in one direction, and being turned back, to attempt it again and again in others. Instead all had been straightforward, and their ruse had succeeded beyond all expectation.

But now that they were at one of the late Mahdi’s strongholds on the Nile the question was, Would Harry Frere be there after all, or taken far to the south to the home of someone who held him as a slave?

Now for about the first time the adventurer fully realised the magnitude of the task he had taken in hand. The desert journey had impressed him by the vastness of the sandy plains and the utter desolation they had traversed; but that only appeared now to be the threshold of the place he had come to search. All the vast continent of Africa seemed to be before him, dim, shadowy, and mysterious, and as he sank at last into a feverish sleep, it was with his brother’s despairing face gazing at him, the reproachful eyes sunken and strained and looking farewell before all was dark with the obscurity of the to-come.

“Hadn’t you better rouse up now, sir?” said a familiar voice; but Frank, after his long and painful vigil, was unable to grasp the meaning of the words, far more to move.

“Mr Frank, sir—I mean, Ben—Ben Eddin. Humph! what an idiot I am!” came softly out of the gloom. “It was bad enough to make such a slip out in the desert, where there were no next door neighbours; but to go and shout it out here, just beside this what-do-they-call-him’s city was about the maddest thing I could have done. S’pose some one had heard me; it would have taken a great deal of lathering and scraping, more than ever a ’Rabian Night’s barber ever got through, to make people believe I was the Hakim’s slave.

“Mr—Bother! What’s the matter with me this morning? I believe I’m half asleep, or else my brains are all shook up into a muddle by that brute of a camel. Here, Ben Eddin, rouse up and put on your best white soot. Here’s the Sheikh been with a message to say that we’re all going to form a procession and march through the town to camp in the groves on the other side. It’s to be a triumphal what-do-they-call-it? and the Baggara chief is going to show off all his prisoners and plunder, and we’re to make the principal part of the show. I say, Ben, do wake up; the coffee’s nearly ready, and you ought to do a bit o’ blacking, for the back of your neck where the jacket doesn’t reach is getting quite grey with the sun burning it so much.”

Procession—show—triumph—coffee—and the rest of it, made not the slightest impression upon Frank’s torpid brain; but those words about the black stain and the bleaching caused by the scorching sun somehow suggested the risk he might run of being discovered, and that meant the frustration of his plans to rescue his brother. In a moment now his brain began to work.

“Is that you, Sam?” he cried hastily.