“Of course,” replied Harry. “No wonder that, with an army to back him, he made so many converts. It was, ‘Which will you have, the Koran or the sword?’ And it is so now with this man, only it is worse. Brutal violence of the most horrible description wherever he and his followers go, and there is more stress laid upon the sword than upon the Koran.”
“And the spear added,” said Frank.
“Exactly. I don’t want to harrow you with the horrors I have been compelled to witness, and what I have seen and known to occur is but a drop of blood in an ocean. The country has been laid waste for the gratification of this human fiend and his vile followers.”
As he spoke the tramp, tramp of men came through the window once more, and Harry nodded.
“As so much depends upon the army’s efficiency, this Mahdi, like his predecessor, whose paltry tomb you have seen, has done his best to bring the tribes up into as perfect a state of discipline as can be managed with such wild beasts. They have plenty of modern rifles, and they know how to use them, and they have been drilled sufficiently to make them dangerous. Of course you know how.”
“By imitating what they have seen in the troops sent against them,” said the doctor, as he sat listening intently to the sounds from without.
“By the help of renegades,” said Harry bitterly. “I might have been one of the Mahdi’s generals—an Emir, by now, if I would have taken some of the troops in hand. I had offers enough, and of course it meant becoming a follower of Mahomet.”
“But you resisted the temptations,” said Frank proudly.
“And became a groom,” said Harry, smiling bitterly. “I suppose if it had not been for my love for horses and camels I should have lost my head like my poor leader. Oh, if it is only true, and the British forces are close up! Surely the day of retribution has come at last.”
“I want the day of escape for us to have come, Hal,” said the doctor, reaching over to lay his hand upon his old school-fellow’s arm. “Our work is done when we have got you away. Let’s leave the punishment of the dervishes to— Ah, here’s Landon back. Well, have they any news for us?”