Wyndham looked at them all and pondered. “If the devils out there would only attack us,” he said between his teeth, “or if we could only attack them!” he added, and he nervously hastened his footsteps; for to him this inaction was terrible. “They’d forget their thirst if they were fighting,” he muttered, and then he frowned; for the painful neighing of the horses behind the house came to his ear. In desperation he went inside and climbed to the roof, where he could see the circle of the enemy.
It was no use. They were five to one, and his Gippies were demoralised. It would be a fine bit of pluck to try and cut his way through the Arabs to the Nile—but how many would reach it?
No, he had made his full measure of mistakes, he would not add to the list. If Hassan got through to Kerbat his Gippies here would no doubt be relieved, and there would be no more blood on his head. Relieved? And when they were relieved, what of himself, Wyndham bimbashi? He knew what men would say in Cairo, what men would say at the War Office in London town, at “The Rag”—everywhere! He could not look his future in the face. He felt that every man in Egypt, save himself, had known all along that he was a complete failure.
It did not matter while he himself was not conscious of it; but now that the armour-plate of conceit protecting his honest mind had been torn away on the reefs of foolish deeds, it mattered everything. For when his conceit was peeled away, there was left a crimson cuticle of the Wyndham pride. Certainly he could not attack the Arabs—he had had his eternal fill of sorties.
Also he could not wait for the relief party, for his Gippies and the friendlies were famishing, dying of thirst. He prayed for night. How slowly the minutes, the hours passed; and how bright was the moon when it rose! brighter even than it was when Hassan crept out to steal through the Arab lines.
.....................
At midnight, Wyndham stole softly out of a gate in the garden wall, and, like Hassan, dropping to the ground, crept towards a patch of maize lying between the house and the river. He was dressed like a fellah, with the long blue yelek, and a poor wool fez, and round the fez was a white cloth, as it were to protect his mouth from the night air, after the manner of the peasant.
The fires of the enemy were dying down, and only here and there Arabs gossiped or drank coffee by the embers. At last Wyndham was able to drop into the narrow channel, now dry, through which, when the sluice was open and the sakkia turned, the water flowed to the house. All went well till he was within a hundred yards of the wheel, though now and again he could hear sentries snoring or talking just above him. Suddenly he heard breathing an arm’s length before him, then a figure raised itself and a head turned towards him. The Arab had been asleep, but his hand ran to his knife by instinct—too late, for Wyndham’s fingers were at his throat, and he had neither time nor chance to cry Allah! before the breath left him.
Wyndham crept on. The sound of the sakkia was in his ears—the long, creaking, crying song, filling the night. And now there arose the Song of the Sakkia from the man at the wheel:
“Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left;
The heron feeds by the water side—shall I starve in my onion-field!
Shall the Lord of the World withhold his tears that water the land—
Turn, O Sakkia!”