They thought that question answered, when, out of the evening pink and opal and the golden sand behind them, they saw three Arabs riding. The friends of the slain dervishes were come to take revenge, it seemed.
The two men looked at each other, but they did not try to speak. Macnamara took from his shirt a bag of gold and offered it to Mahmoud. It was the balance of the payment promised to Ebn Mazar. Mahmoud salaamed and shook his head, then in a thick voice: “It is my life and thy life. If thou diest, I die. If thou livest, the gold is Ebn Haraf’s. At Wady Halfa I will claim it, if it be the will of God.”
The words were thick and broken, but Macnamara understood him, and they turned and faced their pursuers, ready for life or death, intent to kill—and met the friends of Ebn Haraf, who had been hired to take them on to Wady Halfa! Their rescuers had been pursued, and had made a detour and forced march, thus coming on them before the time appointed. In three days more they were at Wady Halfa.
Mahmoud lived to take back to Ebn Mazar the other hundred pounds of the gold Macnamara had looted from the Khalifa; and he also took something for himself from the British officers at Wady Halfa. For him nothing remained of the desperate journey but a couple of scars.
It was different with Macnamara. He had to take a longer journey still. He was not glad to do it, for he liked the look of the English faces round him, and he liked what they said to him. Also, he was young enough to “go a-roaming still,” as he said to Henry Withers. Besides, it sorely hurt his pride that no woman or child of his would be left behind to lament him. Still, when Henry told him he had to go, he took it like a man.
“‘Ere, it ain’t no use,” said Henry to him the day he got to Wady Halfa. “‘Ere, old pal, it ain’t no use. You ‘ave to take your gruel, an’ you ‘ave to take it alone. What I want to tell yer quiet and friendly, old pal, is that yer drawfted out—all the way out—for good.”
“‘Sh-did ye think I wasn’t knowin’ it, me b’y?” Macnamara’s face clouded. “Did ye think I wasn’t knowin’ it? Go an’ lave me alone,” he added quickly.
Henry Withers went out pondering, for he was sure it was not mere dying that fretted Macnamara.
The next day the end of it all came. Henry Withers had pondered, and his mind was made up to do a certain thing. Towards evening he sat alone in the room where Macnamara lay asleep—almost his very last sleep. All at once Macnamara’s eyes opened wide. “Kitty, Kitty, me darlin’,” he murmured vaguely. Then he saw Henry Withers.
“I’m dyin’,” he said, breathing heavily. “Don’t call anny one, Hinry,” he added brokenly. “Dyin’s that aisy—aisy enough, but for wan thing.”