David had been too late to stop it. It had grown to a head with revolution and conspiracy. For months before he came conscripts had been gathered in the Nile country from Rosetta to Assouan, and here and there, far south, tribes had revolted. He had come to power too late to devise another course. One day, when this war was over, he would go alone, save for a faithful few, to deal with these tribes and peoples upon another plane than war; but here and now the only course was that which had been planned by Kaid and those who counselled him. Troubled by a deep danger drawing near, Kaid had drawn him into his tough service, half-blindly catching at his help, with a strange, almost superstitious belief that luck and good would come from the alliance; seeing in him a protection against wholesale robbery and debt—were not the English masters of finance, and was not this Englishman honest, and with a brain of fire and an eye that pierced things?
David had accepted the inevitable. The war had its value. It would draw off to the south—he would see that it was so—Achmet and Higli and Diaz and the rest, who were ever a danger. Not to himself: he did not think of that; but to Kaid and to Egypt. They had been out-manoeuvred, beaten, foiled, knew who had foiled them and what they had escaped; congratulated themselves, but had no gratitude to him, and still plotted his destruction. More than once his death had been planned, but the dark design had come to light—now from the workers of the bazaars, whose wires of intelligence pierced everywhere; now from some hungry fellah whose yelek he had filled with cakes of dourha beside a bread-shop; now from Mahommed Hassan, who was for him a thousand eyes and feet and hands, who cooked his food, and gathered round him fellaheen or Copts or Soudanese or Nubians whom he himself had tested and found true, and ruled them with a hand of plenty and a rod of iron. Also, from Nahoum's spies he learned of plots and counterplots, chiefly on Achmet's part; and these he hid from Kaid, while he trusted Nahoum—and not without reason, as yet.
The day of Nahoum's wrath and revenge was not yet come; it was his deep design to lay the foundation for his own dark actions strong on a rock of apparent confidence and devotion. A long torture and a great over- whelming was his design. He knew himself to be in the scheme of a master-workman, and by-and-by he would blunt the chisel and bend the saw; but not yet. Meanwhile, he hated, admired, schemed, and got a sweet taste on his tongue from aiding David to foil Achmet—Higli and Diaz were of little account; only the injury they felt in seeing the sluices being closed on the stream of bribery and corruption kept them in the toils of Achmet's conspiracy. They had saved their heads, but they had not learned their lesson yet; and Achmet, blinded by rage, not at all. Achmet did not understand clemency. One by one his plots had failed, until the day came when David advised Kaid to send him and his friends into the Soudan, with the punitive expedition under loyal generals. It was David's dream that, in the field of war, a better spirit might enter into Achmet and his friends; that patriotism might stir in them.
The day was approaching when the army must leave. Achmet threw dice once more.
Evening was drawing down. Over the plaintive pink and golden glow of sunset was slowly being drawn a pervasive silver veil of moonlight. A caravan of camels hunched alone in the middle distance, making for the western desert. Near by, village life manifested itself in heavily laden donkeys; in wolfish curs stealing away with refuse into the waste; in women, upright and modest, bearing jars of water on their heads; in evening fires, where the cover of the pot clattered over the boiling mass within; in the voice of the Muezzin calling to prayer.
Returning from Alexandria to Cairo in the special train which Kaid had sent for him, David watched the scene with grave and friendly interest. There was far, to go before those mud huts of the thousand years would give place to rational modern homes; and as he saw a solitary horseman spread his sheepskin on the ground and kneel to say his evening prayer, as Mahomet had done in his flight between Mecca and Medina, the distance between the Egypt of his desire and the ancient Egypt that moved round him sharply impressed his mind, and the magnitude of his task settled heavily on his spirit.
"But it is the beginning—the beginning," he said aloud to himself, looking out upon the green expanses of dourha and Lucerne, and eyeing lovingly the cotton-fields here and there, the origin of the industrial movement he foresaw—"and some one had to begin. The rest is as it must be—"
There was a touch of Oriental philosophy in his mind—was it not Galilee and the Nazarene, that Oriental source from which Mahomet also drew? But he added to the "as it must be" the words, "and as God wills." He was alone in the compartment with Lacey, whose natural garrulity had had a severe discipline in the months that had passed since he had asked to be allowed to black David's boots. He could now sit for an hour silent, talking to himself, carrying on unheard conversations. Seeing David's mood, he had not spoken twice on this journey, but had made notes in a little "Book of Experience,"—as once he had done in Mexico. At last, however, he raised his head, and looked eagerly out of the window as David did, and sniffed.
"The Nile again," he said, and smiled. The attraction of the Nile was upon him, as it grows on every one who lives in Egypt. The Nile and Egypt—Egypt and the Nile—its mystery, its greatness, its benevolence, its life-giving power, without which Egypt is as the Sahara, it conquers the mind of every man at last.
"The Nile, yes," rejoined David, and smiled also. "We shall cross it presently."