Fighting in a burnous is very much like fighting under the bed clothes, a pastime in which I had often indulged during my school-boy days. Moreover I was master of numerous grips and holds which are not in the Arab vocabulary. But Azad was at grips with death and knew it; in addition I felt sure that he still had his pistol which, if he could but press it against my side, would be unfortunate.
His wiry strength surprised me. He constantly slipped from my grasp. It was like fighting a basket of eels in a clothes-hamper. Hither and yon we thrashed. Once I got a grip on his Adam’s apple and thought to have wrenched it from his throat but his teeth closed on my ear lobe and I loosened my hold. Now I heard the thud of horses’ hoofs, footsteps and approaching voices.
“Club him! Club him!” shouted some one.
But the rescuing party were in a dilemma. They could not tell which of the struggling forms to club. Resolved not to let go of my enemy, with my brain reeling and the blood pounding in my temples I decided on a desperate expedient.
“Club us both,” I shouted with my last ounce of breath.
A heavy blow sounded and the figure in my arms relaxed. Before I could cry “Hold!” a second blow fell. A white light blazed before my eyes and I knew no more.
Chapter IX
Mine at Last!
Chapter IX
They told me afterward that I lay unconscious, hovering twixt life and death, for four days. On the fifth my temperature rose and I was seized by a delirium in which I babbled of early days, my boyhood in Derby, travels, dangers, women ... I know not all I said. But paramount in my thoughts was Lady Sarah whose name I called at intervals. Prior to coming up with Azad’s men I had not slept for seventy-two hours. I had ridden scores of miles, been wounded a dozen times and suffered from the keenest anxiety. The final blow on the head, added for good measure, had been the death of one less virile. But my will-to-live won out.
On the fifth day I slowly opened my eyes and gazed, mystified at the vision above me. It was Lady Sarah’s face but through my filmy pupils it loomed vague and indefinite like the harvest moon in a fog. Then my vision cleared.