“Are you sure that it was a guard?” asked Idris.
“Allah! We spoke to him. It was good that he was alone. He stood concealed behind a rock so that we could not see him, but we heard the camel’s voice from a distance. Then we slackened our pace and rode so softly that he saw us only when we were a few steps off. He was very much frightened, and tried to point his gun at us. If he had fired, even if he had not killed one of us, the other guards would have heard the shot, and so I said to him quickly: ‘Stop! We are pursuing people who have carried off two white children, and soon all our company will be here.’ The fellow was young and stupid, and so he believed us—though he made us swear by the Koran that we were telling the truth. We dismounted from the camels and swore. The Mahdi will forgive us.”
“And bless you,” said Idris. “Tell us what you did.”
“When we had sworn,” continued the Bedouin, “I said to the young man: ‘But who can prove to us that you yourself do not belong to the thieves who are fleeing with the white children and have left you here to hold up the pursuers?’ I bade him to swear, too, which he did, and he believed us all the more. We began to question him, asking what orders had come from the sheiks along the copper wire, and whether the thieves were being pursued in the desert. He replied in the affirmative, and said that they had been promised great rewards; also that all ravines at a distance of two days’ journey from the river were guarded, and that there were large baburis (steamers) filled with Englishmen and soldiers continually passing up and down the river.”
“Neither ships nor soldiers are of any avail against the power of Allah and the prophet.”
“It is as you say!”
“And now tell us how you made way with that fellow?”
The one-eyed Bedouin pointed to his companion.
“Abu Anga,” he said, “then asked him if there were no other guards nearby, and on his replying in the negative, he suddenly drove his knife into his throat, so that the latter never uttered a sound. We threw him into a deep hollow and covered him up with stones and thorns. In the village they will think that he has fled to the Mahdi, for he told us that such things have happened.”
“May God bless those who flee, as he has blessed us,” answered Idris.