The Pursuit Part 27

Wrathfully he led the way back to the bivouac and carefully extinguished every cinder of the fire.

"And now," he ordered, "our duty is to wait--beside our horses. If it will not inconvenience Monsieur, I should be obliged if he will defer sleeping, for the present. If we are not molested for the next hour or two, it will be different. The moon rises before midnight and after that a couple of sentries will amply suffice."

It was a memory which stayed by Aylmer for many a month--that long, silent, and very weary vigil of the next few hours. He sat, with his back supported by a palm trunk, the haltering rein of his horse in his hand, his eyes trying vainly to pierce the gloom which surrounded him, and his ears strained to attention.

The forest, though in the windless calm not a leaf fluttered, was full of disquieting noises. There were rustlings, faint, half perceptible crackings of twigs, dull, m.u.f.fled, resistant sounds from the earth which must surely be caused by human footfall. Once his whole frame sprung into startled alertness as a night bird shrieked in the cork branches not twenty yards away. The faint but distinct after-echo of a chorussed sigh told him how a dozen other pulses had leaped with his. The quick, irregular darting run of a small animal--a jerboa or a forest rat--produced a little less disturbing effect. But the soft, stolid breathing of his horse, as its breath beat past his shoulder, was a soothing, soporific sound which his nerves welcomed, yet seemed to protest against as tending to lull him into an unalert insecurity. With a sudden qualm of reproach he found his head dropping sideways and smiting lightly the trunk of the palm. He drew himself up with a quick, decisive tautening of his muscles. He would not sleep; his eyelids almost ached with the intensity with which he held them apart.

Sleep, like fate, is a tricky jade to defy. It was Perinaud's voice, level and stolid, but with a faint note of sarcasm, which aroused him.

"Monsieur may now sleep in comfort if he will," suggested the sergeant.

"There is little fear from surprise with such a moon."

Aylmer blinked. The round white orb was sending its rays in full flood through the broad fans of the palm leaves overhead. It tinged the cork trees with silver radiance; it produced an effect of grateful coolness in the cinder-dry thickets and powdery earth. It was as if dew had fallen, a dew of light. And the shadows of the gorge were of a velvet blackness in contrast.

Aylmer looked carefully round. It was as Perinaud said. The forest s.p.a.ces were clear; one could trace them almost as distinctly as in the daylight. No enemy could steal upon them unseen.

And so it was with a little sigh of content that he laid his head back upon his saddle, pulled his cloak more disposedly about him, and prepared to give nature freely what during the past three hours she had stolen.

With the usual result. Sleep deserted him. He closed his eyes resolutely; he breathed with exact precision; he even counted an imaginary flock of sheep as they pa.s.sed sedately between two supposit.i.tious hurdles. He remained broadly awake, his eyes rebelling against their imprisonment till at last he gave up trying to coerce them. He searched his pocket, found tobacco and a pipe, and smoked. His brain became suddenly active.

He reviewed the circ.u.mstances of the last few days. He debated his position, appraised his progress. It was typical of his temperament equability that he did this; it was part of the dogged resolution with which he approached the vital problems of his career. He knew that for the first time he had encountered pa.s.sion, and that it had mastered him.

He had seen Claire Van Arlen perhaps half a dozen times before he realized this, and realized it, too, with a certain ingenuous wonder at the thing which had such power over him. But he had made no attempt to combat it. He knew that this girl had become for him the pivot of existence. As matters had gone, he had scarcely had the opportunity for introspection. Pa.s.sion had gripped him, and now pa.s.sion's authority had gone beyond the limits of question. He set his face unswervingly towards his goal. The days of debating an alternative path had gone by.

He sighed. Up the path he had chosen had he made any progress? Yes, one great step had been taken. She knew the goal he sought; he had made it absolutely plain. He had read repulse in her eyes as she first divined it. He had read it again, but tinged with a thrill of curiosity, at his second allusion. The third time? There he was beaten. She had seemed to fling him a sort of encouragement. Why? What was her intention here? She had not softened towards him; instinct told him that. And yet--and yet.

He sighed again. There were many barriers in this road he had set out upon--barriers which must be levelled one by one. Dislike, suspicion, but not, thank G.o.d, apathy. No--from the first he had interested her--from the moment of their first meeting he had been forced into prominence in her regard.

A hand fell lightly upon his shoulder, bringing him back with a start from the possibilities of romance to the facts of an everyday African world. The most engrossing of these, for the moment, was Daoud's face.

There was a sense of importance in the Moor's aspect, the importance of discovery. Aylmer realized this at once.

"You have discovered--what?" he asked sharply.

Daoud waved his hand with a magnificent and comprehensive gesture.

"All, Sidi," he answered. "The two we seek, with the child, are in an encampment of Berber tribesmen within an hour's march."

Aylmer scrambled to his feet. He made but little noise as he did so, but there was a corresponding movement in the half-dozen rec.u.mbent figures beside him. Perinaud, raising himself upon his elbow, looked thoughtfully at the scout.

"Well, my friend?" he asked amiably. "Your researches take us where?"

"Five miles further up the ravine," said Daoud. "It is more than a camp.

A village of some importance. Our friend who escaped from the broom thicket has not arrived there. There was no alertness, no watch kept. By the time I left snores were echoing from practically every tent and dwelling of mud. We are not expected."

Perinaud nodded.

"_Bien._ The moment of attack then--?"

"Is now, Sidi. By the time we reach it the dawn will have come."

Aylmer fumbled for his watch. It was true. The hour was between four and five. The wan light of the false morning was, indeed, faintly paling the east. He looked at Perinaud.

The sergeant nodded.

"Short rest for the horses, Monsieur," he said, "but that we cannot help. The time is short enough, as it is."

He motioned the waiting figures of the Goumiers into activity. The sentries were recalled. A tiny fire was kindled, and coffee made with incredible quickness while the saddles were being flung upon the horses'

backs.

Aylmer gulped his portion gratefully, for the dew-brimmed air was chill.

But within twenty minutes of Daoud's return, the half score of hors.e.m.e.n were following him in single file along the river bank.

Progress was slow, the path imperceptible or devious. The light of morning was no longer yellow, but alive with the rose red of sunrise as they halted, at a gesture from their leader, and gazed between the trunks of a grove of palms.

White against the green of crops a dozen houses lined the edge of an oval s.p.a.ce, which some winter floods of bygone years had hewn deep in the surrounding alluvial soil. The forest thickets grew up to the fringe of the arable land, divided from it by hedges of cactus. Between the house and the river was an encampment of brown, dilapidated tents. The land immediately in front of these was bare and open, as if some ceaseless traffic had beaten all vegetation down. On an eminence stood a lime-washed, dome-topped shrine.

"If possible, we should surround and examine each house or tent in silence, and one by one," suggested Daoud.

"A matter of hours," said Perinaud. "No, let our men form rank where their rifles command each doorway, and I will see to the summoning of the inhabitants. For the moment, softly. Keep your horses off the rock, but avoid the thickest of the jungle. Show judgment, my children, show judgment!"

He finished with a little oath of surprise. For almost at his horse's feet, or, at the furthest, a bare five yards from him, a man had suddenly risen from a thicket--a man clad in a dirty _djelab_, who viewed the sitting hors.e.m.e.n with every sign of amazement and sudden panic. In another moment, and with a shrill cry, he had darted through the palm grove and was flying across the crop lands, straight towards the line of silent tents.

Perinaud struck spurs into his stallion.

"Take him!" he cried, and his voice had a queer note of exasperation as he tried to make it vehement and yet hold it below the level of a shout.

He led the charge which raced across the herbage. Aylmer, carried away by the sudden infection of repressed excitement, thundered at his side.

The dark spot of brown made by the _djelab_ of the fugitive seemed, for the moment, to comprehend all that was vital in existence. He must not reach the tents, he must not give the alarm. Although he was a matter of fifty yards or more behind his quarry, owing to the start the runner had gained by the intervening palms, Aylmer began to lean forward in the saddle, to thrust out his arm, feel a tenseness, a twitching in his fingers as if he already grasped the hood of the garment which rose and fell with its owner's every stride.

A yell burst from Perinaud's lips--a yell of rage and warning!

"A trap!" he cried. "The silos! The silos! Pull wide! Pull wide!"

Aylmer heard a crash. A Goumier on his right seemed to have been swallowed with his horse into the very earth. He gripped his own rein, moved by a sudden and imperfectly comprehended pulse of fear, and wrenched at his bridle. His horse fought under the strain, made a half-hearted attempt to halt, and was carried by mere impetus another fifty yards. There came another crash; another Goumier's horse disappeared, while the man, spilled from the saddle, rolled over a dozen times across the hardened flat. Perinaud's stallion, its eyes wild, its nostrils round with terror, spread out its legs and skated forward to the very brink of--what?

A huge round hole, beneath which was darkness only. Aylmer saw it, saw that he himself must reach it, and comprehended as in a flash the sergeant's cry.

The silos!

Even his narrow experience of things Moroquin had taught him what the word meant. They were the underground grain cellars of the villagers, sunk in the earth, unfenced, often coverless, and, as now, open traps for the unwary. The thought and the flash of apprehension which it kindled added force to the grip with which he tore at the reins.

Too late!

His realization of the hideous fall which was inevitable was swift as a lightning flash, and yet at the same time the thing itself seemed to arrive with a horrible deliberation. His thews were tense, his knees clutched the saddle. And then, and the feeling was as if he watched for the culmination of a well-understood and expected movement of familiar machinery--his horse's feet slid grudgingly over the edge. The black hole in the earth rose instantly--rose and sucked him down. There was a shock and then night fell--a night impenetrable.

CHAPTER XIV

ONE SIDE OF A BARGAIN