The bimbashi disclaimed any such intention.
Then the Khalifa surrendered, placing his sword in Jones's hands with the inimitable grace of a cavalier of olden time; which circumstance, however, did not strike the bimbashi as in any degree strange, but only highly decorous and proper.
And now telegrams of congratulation poured in. Every one of the wounded British officers quickly recovered; even several whom the bimbashi knew to have been killed turned up again (without causing him any surprise) to shake the hero by the hand. In the gilded halls of Omdurman he was the admired of all beholders. The ladies vied to dance with him, though none of them explained how they got there; while the men spoke of impending promotions, peerages, and what not.
As for the Khalifa, he sat next to Bimbashi Jones at supper, and did his very best to convert the young man to Mohammedanism; and to everything that the Khalifa advanced, the Sirdar, sitting on Jones's left, would remark,—
"There's a good deal in what the old boy says."
There was indeed, Jones thought, for—and this was the only circumstance in the whole affair that caused him some surprise—the Khalifa simply preached at him a sermon which Jones's own father (Vicar of Stoke Netherby, Yorkshire, and certainly not a follower of the Prophet) had delivered from his own pulpit on the very last Sunday that the bimbashi had spent in the old home.
"Why," he remarked, when the Khalifa had quite finished, "you are a pious fraud, my good man. Are you aware that you have stolen that sermon, word for word, from my own father, who preached it—"
"Bimbashi Jones—Alaric, my boy—don't you know me?" said the Khalifa very gushingly; and Jones was just about to recognize his parent, whom indeed the Khalifa promptly declared himself to be in very flesh, and to rush to his arms, when he awoke, and the whole thing was spoiled, the dream ending and the curtain falling upon a highly-dramatic situation, somewhat mysterious withal, and left entirely unexplained. Poor Bimbashi Jones was now no longer the victorious preserver of the honour of England and the safety of Egypt; he was but his own unfortunate self, a forlorn piece of jetsam cast ashore upon the sand-ocean of the Soudan, with sand-scud flying like solid sea-spray, and filling his eyes and nose and mouth and clothes, blotting out tracks and directions, and reducing poor Jones to a condition of great misery and wretchedness. He would have felt even more wretched had he realized that, by falling off his camel and sleeping on while it walked away, he had landed himself in a very serious position indeed. He was in the midst of a sand-storm.
The bimbashi stood and raged, shouting for his servant Ali, upon whose head he showered many useless abuses and sundry flowers of speech.
But Ali was far away by this time, and so was Jones's camel; and after waiting for half an hour or more, the lost youth decided that he must make a guess at the direction to be pursued, and at any rate keep moving, even though he followed a wrong course; better that than be buried alive in the abominable moving desert of flying and stinging sand.