“Well, we can’t do more than try,” said Mr Hicks resignedly. “But all the same,” he added to Mansfield, “you bet I wouldn’t do that but for the boss. He is chafing fit to burst, and if we got carried off to the tents of the Beni Ayub, I wouldn’t answer for him. And now for our sheikh.”
The sheikh approved highly of Cyril’s determination to outwit the enemy, although he had little confidence in the success of the means suggested, and in order to avert suspicion the camp on the hill-top made ostentatious preparations for repose. Three men were told off to move about round the fires and keep them supplied with fuel and sand, and the rest wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down. As soon as all was quiet in the camp of the Beni Ayub below, one man at a time rose and crept softly to the spot where the horses were picketed. The sheikh insisted on being the first to try the path, as his horse had been trained to follow him like a dog, and to Mansfield’s intense relief and secret pride the animal, its feet muffled in pieces of cloth, picked its way down the hill after its master, reluctantly but without accident. The rest followed one by one, with more or less willingness, the men at the fires covering the occasional noises, which were unavoidable in the case of a stumble, or when a stone was set rolling, by a vigorous breaking of sticks, which sounded so distinct in the clear desert air that Mr Hicks muttered it was enough to wake all the Arabs for miles round. Then the men at the fires were called down in their turn, the last to descend exhibiting marvellous activity in producing dense clouds of smoke before he departed, and the whole of the Sitt Zeynab party stood safely in the desert with their horses. Mounting, they felt their way with extreme caution round the flank of the Beni Ayub, and resumed their interrupted journey, taking a direction that would enable them to reach Damascus without coming upon the camp to which their enemies had intended to conduct them. They had ridden some distance before any one had leisure to look round, and it was Mr Hicks who perceived first that the forsaken hill-top was no longer deserted, and uttered an exclamation. The eyes of the rest followed his, to distinguish a number of figures outlined against the red glow of the fires, which had by this time burnt up.
“That I should have been sold by a nigger chief!” groaned Mr Hicks. “All the time we were busy circumventing them, they were calculating to circumvent us, and all that old sinner’s respect and veneration was only a cute dodge to put us off our guard. As soon as they guessed our stokers had sneaked off to bed, up they come to rush our camp. Well, that gentleman and I have got to meet again, and you bet he’ll be surprised at the strength of my attachment for him,” and again Mr Hicks patted the rope which hung from his saddle.
“The sons of Shaitan thought to laugh at our beards,” said the skeikh, with a grim sound dimly suggestive of a chuckle; “but now their own faces are black. They will not pursue us until dawn, and we may even yet out-distance them.”
But in making this forecast the sheikh forgot that the enemy’s horses, which had done little work the day before, were far fresher than those of his party; and it was less than an hour after sunrise when one of his men, halting a moment to repair a broken girth, called out that the pursuers were in sight. Cyril uttered an angry exclamation.
“Look here, Hicks,” he said impatiently, “I can’t stand any more of this foolery. I don’t want bloodshed; but if these fellows will have it, they must. Our sheikh and two of his men have rifles, and with our three we can diminish the enemy’s numbers effectually before they get close to us, and then the revolver will settle the matter. I can’t risk losing everything merely to save the skins of the Beni Ayub.”
“Gently, Count. If you once set up a blood-feud with the Beni Ayub, your chance of making friends with them in future is gone. I guess we’ll keep on as hard as possible right now, so as just to separate the enemy. When we get to the locality I have in my mind, Mr Mansfield and I and the two men with rifles will stay behind and go on the shoot, while you ride ahead with the sheikh and the rest and draw the enemy into chasing you.”
“Do you think it likely,” irritably, “that I shall consent to save myself at the risk of your lives? We shall come out of this fight side by side, as we went in, or go down together.”
“Now, now, Count”—Mr Hicks laid a soothing hand on Cyril’s arm—“we aren’t going to hurl our lives away, you bet. There’s no sort of sentimental self-sacrifice about me—no, sir! I have a smart piece of business on hand, and I want a young fellow of large bodily strength to help me put it through. You are just a bundle of nerves this journey, and so used up with strain and anxiety that it’s only spirit and nothing else keeps you on your horse. Mr Mansfield and I are partners in this deal, and you watch how well things will pan out when they recognise who’s got ’em in charge.”
Cyril laughed shamefacedly, and turned his attention to keeping his horse in hand in the headlong race which now ensued. Mr Hicks’s object was to escape from the flat stretch of desert on which the enemy, with their fresher horses, might easily surround his little party, and to gain the shelter of the sandhills in front. Pausing to look back, he observed with satisfaction that the Beni Ayub, no longer massed in a compact body, were tailing off gradually, the sheikh and a few better-mounted men alone seeming to gain perceptibly on the pursued. When the sandhills were reached, he glanced back once more, and saw that the sheikh, on his magnificent horse, was now considerably in advance of his nearest followers. This was what Mr Hicks had hoped for.