Chapter Twenty Three.
In the Ranks of the Enemy.
Harry Forsyth had put off the evil day as long as he could, but at length he found himself forced to turn an apparent traitor to his Queen and country, or else to give up the object of his journey when his trials, dangers, and sufferings had been crowned with success, and probably to lose his life into the bargain.
The detachment in which the Sheikh Burrachee held a command came to a precipitous rocky mountain overlooking the Nile, and here they were to stop the English advance. No position could have been more judiciously chosen: the rocks looked down on a narrow gorge of the river still more straightened by an island named Dulka, which it was determined to garrison strongly with riflemen, and there was debate as to who should undertake this duty. Harry hoped that it would be the tribe with which his uncle had become associated, and of which he himself was now supposed to be a member, because he thought it would be hardly difficult to slip away down the stream somehow, by swimming if no other means were to be had, and so join the English before they attacked, and avoid even the appearance of being a partaker of his uncle’s crimes. But this chance was denied to him, and others went to the island, while the Sheikh Burrachee and his men were posted in the steepest part, the very citadel of this natural fortress.
To escape from there before the assault was obviously impossible. Up to that time Harry had taken it for granted in his own mind that his countrymen would carry any position they chose, with more or less loss, and pass on, but he now began to fear that this one was really impregnable. Parts of it were difficult to climb if unopposed, but with an enemy with a rifle in his hand behind every crag and boulder, it looked simply impossible for any living thing to make the ascent. Now for the first time Harry Forsyth became an active hypocrite, for he had only been a passive one up to this. He busied himself about to select a good commanding spot in which to ensconce himself with his rifle with an energy which delighted his uncle extremely. And so much was thought of his shooting that he was sure not to be interfered with.
“Not a man of them can ever pass the Rackabit el Gamel by water, and they can as soon take these rocks as scale the heavens. Here the freedom of the Soudan will be worked out; the authority of the Mahdi established!” exclaimed the sheikh. Rackabit el Gamel, or the Camel’s Neck, is the name of the gorge by Dulka Island.
When the sun rose on the tenth of February, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, Harry Forsyth, from his lofty position on the heights of Kirbekan, strained his eyes in the direction from which the British force was expected to come. Nothing yet; yes, those red ants, as they seem in the far distance, what are they? And there were larger black ants in rear of them.
And now in the clearer light grey ants aligned with the red. The red ants, had he known it, were the Black Watch, going into action in their red coats and kilts; the grey were the men of the South Staffordshire Regiment; the large black ants in rear were the guns. He did not know these details, but he recognised English troops, not seen now for a long time by him, and his heart beat high with excitement and hope. Now was his chance of escape. Unless he were killed during the assault, or taken prisoner and shot before he had time to explain himself, he would surely be able to get away in the confusion of fight. Even if the English were repulsed, he could feign pursuit and so come up with them.
