It was a hard question, and the professor felt himself at his wits’ end. He had stepped a dozen yards out of the track, and was standing amongst some rough stones which helped the darkness to conceal his presence, though the valley was in such a deep shadow that, as he strained eyes and ears to make out and count the enemy, he could do neither, though he knew now that they had halted just opposite to him, and he could hear them whispering evidently in consultation before they took another step in advance.
The professor stood there in the darkness with the perspiration streaming down his face as he recalled the stories he had heard of the atrocities committed by the outlaws who made their homes in the mountains of the sultan’s dominions. He was tortured by a dozen different plans which suggested themselves for his next course of action, but neither of them commended itself for second consideration, while there he was, face to face with the one great difficulty, that he was cut off from his companions, and unable to stir without betraying his presence and being captured or perhaps slain.
To stir was impossible. He hardly dared to breathe, while his heart throbbed with so audible a beat that he fully expected it to betray his whereabouts.
It was a perilous time, and his agony of mind was terrible, for just then it seemed to him that he had, to gratify his own selfishness, brought the son of his old friend—a lad weak and wasted from a long illness—into a peril which might have been avoided. There they were, perfectly unconscious of danger in this direction; and as soon as the party had finished their whispered consultation he felt that they would steal cautiously on and make their attack.
What should he do—fire at them or over them, and in the confusion make a dash for the little camp?
He dared not risk it, for it seemed a clumsy, gambling experiment, which would most probably result in failure.
What should he do then—sacrifice himself?
Yes. It seemed after all that his firing would not be so clumsy an expedient, for even if it ended in his own destruction it would warn his friends and place them upon their guard.
He hesitated for a few moments, as he tried once more to realise the position. This might not, after all, be the gang of men who had stolen their horses; but everything pointed to the fact that it was, as he had at first imagined—that they had been duped by Yussuf’s ruse, and then made, by some way known to them, for the principal gorge, down which they had come to turn into the lesser ravine by the spring, and then in the night or early morning, take their victims in the rear, drive them out into the open country, and master them with ease.
While Mr Preston was running over all this in his own mind he could hear the low whispering of the little, body of men going on, and every now and then an impatient stamp given by one of the horses, followed by a low muttered adjuration in the Turkish dialect, bidding the animal be still.