Mustapha Kali turned slowly. “I am sick of cholera,” he said as loudly as he could to the awe-stricken crowd. “May God not cool my resting-place if it be not so!”
“Tell the people to go to their homes and obey us,” said Dicky, putting away his pistol.
“These be good men, I have seen with mine own eyes,” said Mustapha hoarsely to the crowd. “It is for your good they do all. Have I not seen? Let God fill both my hands with dust if it be not so! God hath stricken me, and behold I give myself into the hands of the Inglesi, for I believe!”
He would have fallen to the ground, but Dicky and the Soudanese caught him and carried him down to the bank, while the crowd scuttled from the boat, and Fielding made ready to bear the dying man to Abdallah—a race against death.
Fielding brought Mustapha Kali to Abdallah in time to die there, and buried him with his fathers; and Dicky stayed behind to cleanse Kalamoun with perchloride and limewash.
The story went abroad and travelled fast, and the words of Mustapha Kali, oft repeated, became as the speech of a holy man; and the people no longer hid their dead, but brought them to the Amenhotep.
This was the beginning of better things; the disease was stayed.
And for all the things that these men did—Fielding Bey and Donovan Pasha—they got naught but an Egyptian ribbon to wear on the breast and a laboured censure from the Administration for overrunning the budget allowance.
Dicky, however, seemed satisfied, for Fielding’s little barque of life had not gone down “On the reef of Norman’s woe.” Mrs. Henshaw felt so also when she was told all, and she disconcerted Dicky by bursting into tears.
“Why those tears?” said Dicky to Fielding afterwards; “I wasn’t eloquent.”