“Really!” say they; “and had you to pay him a great deal?”
“No; that is the strange part: he will not take any money from anyone, but sees all the people that go to him, be they ever so poor, for nothing.”
“That cannot be; he must have a reason behind it all.”
“No, not unless it be this—that you know he is a Feringi, and, like all other Feringis, an unbeliever; but, more than that, he seems to want all the people to believe on Hazrat ’Esa” (Lord Jesus) “as being the Son of God” (here the Mullah and several of the men spit on the ground and say, “Tauba, tauba”), “and to this end he has got an assistant who preaches to all the people who go to him, and tells them about Hazrat ’Esa, and how he was a hakim and cured people.”
“Well, this is strange, but I wonder if he could cure Manak Khan.”
And so all particulars are asked, and the advice of all the greybeards, while Manak Khan catches at the idea as a dying man at a straw. Sadura, however, is not so easily convinced. She did not relish the idea of her husband being separated from her once more, and moreover, said she, where the doctor of Ghuzni had failed, how was it likely that another doctor, and he a blasphemer of their Prophet, would succeed?
So the idea was waived for a time, and things went on as before, while their last camel was sold to pay their increasing debts, and gloom settled on the little circle. But as the September days were lengthening and still no hope appeared, they settled that they would try the Feringi’s medicine. But then came the difficulty as to ways and means; their last camel had been sold, and Manak had no friends who would take him down to the plains free of expense.
At last a bright idea struck them: their little daughter, Gul Bibi, was now seven years old, and many a man would be willing to lend eighty or ninety rupees on condition of her being kept for his wife. And so it was settled: the bargain was struck, and with the proceeds a man was engaged to take him on camel-back down to the Derajat plains. The village carpenter made a kind of litter, which could be fastened on the back of a camel, and as his wife must stop for the children, his old mother volunteered to take the journey with him and tend him through it.
It was a sad farewell this time, and long did Sadura stand at the outskirts of the village watching the camel and its precious burden, with the old mother and sturdy camel-driver trudging by the side, gradually disappear round a corner of the defile.
On the seventh day they emerged from the Gomal Pass on to the Plain of Tank, and here they stayed a little to recuperate with the kind Dr. John Williams, of the Christian hospital there; then going on till the trees and mudhouses of Dera Ismaïl Khan came in sight. Here a fresh disappointment awaited them: the Feringi doctor had left Dera, and gone to carry on his work in Bannu, one hundred miles farther. But what cannot be cured must be endured, and so the camel’s head is turned towards Bannu, and the weary march resumed once more. Five days later, as the evening was drawing on—it was now late in November—Bannu was reached, and the new Feringi doctor inquired for; and a few minutes later the camel, with its strange burden, came through the gates of the mission compound, and the long tedium of the three hundred miles’ journey was brought to a close.