With Kitchener in the Soudan Part 43

"'It is with my permission that you unveil, therefore there can be no harm in it. Besides, has not Mudil saved my life, and so become my brother?'

"He opened her mouth. The tooth was far back and broken, and the gum was greatly swelled.

"'It is very bad,' I said to Abu. 'It would hurt her terribly, if I were to try and take it out; but if she will take the sleeping medicine I gave you, I think that I could do it.'

"'Then she shall take it,' he said at once. 'It is not unpleasant. On the contrary, I dreamt a pleasant dream while you were taking off my arm. Please do it, at once.'

"I at once fetched the chloroform, the inhaler, and a pair of forceps which looked well suited for the purpose, and probably were intended for it. I then told her to lie down on the angareb, which I placed close to the window.

"'Now, Abu,' I said, 'directly she has gone off to sleep, you must force her mouth open, and put the handle of your dagger between her teeth. It will not hurt her at all. But I cannot get at the tooth unless the mouth is open, and we cannot open it until she is asleep, for the whole side of her face is swollen, and the jaw almost stiff.'

"The chloroform took effect very quickly. Her husband had some difficulty in forcing the mouth open. When he had once done so, I took a firm hold of the tooth, and wrenched it out.

"'You can withdraw the dagger,' I said, 'and then lift her up, and let her rinse her mouth well with the warm water I brought in. She will have little pain afterwards, though of course it will take some little time, before the swelling goes down.'

"Then I went out, and left them together. In a few minutes, Abu came out.

"'She has no pain,' he said. 'She could hardly believe, when she came round, that the tooth was out. It is a relief, indeed. She has cried, day and night, for the past three days.'

"'Tell her that, for the rest of the day, she had better keep quiet; and go to sleep if possible, which I have no doubt she will do, as she must be worn out with the pain she has been suffering.'

"'I begin to see, Mudil, that we are very ignorant. We can fight, but that is all we are good for. How much better it would be if, instead of regarding you white men as enemies, we could get some of you to live here, and teach us the wonderful things that you know!'

"'Truly it would be better,' I said. 'It all depends upon yourselves.

You have a great country. If you would but treat the poor people here well, and live in peace with other tribes; and send word down to Cairo that you desire, above all things, white hakims and others who would teach you, to come up and settle among you, a.s.suredly they would come.

There are thousands of white men and women working in India, and China, and other countries, content to do good, not looking for high pay, but content to live poorly. The difficulty is not in getting men willing to heal and to teach, but to persuade those whom they would benefit to allow them to do the work.'

"Abu shook his head.

"'That is it,' he said. 'I would rather be able to do such things as you do, than be one of the most famous soldiers of the Mahdi; but I could never persuade others. They say that the Mahdi himself, although he is hostile to the Turks, and would conquer Egypt, would willingly befriend white men. But even he, powerful as he is, cannot go against the feelings of his emirs. Must we always be ignorant? Must we always be fighting? I can see no way out of it. Can you, Mudil?'

"'I can see but one way,' I said, 'and that may seem to you impossible, because you know nothing of the strength of England. We have, as you know, easily beaten the Egyptian Army; and we are now protectors of Egypt. If you invade that country, as the Mahdi has already threatened to do, it is we who will defend it; and if there is no other way of obtaining peace, we shall some day send an army to recover the Soudan.

You will fight, and you will fight desperately, but you have no idea of the force that will advance against you. You know how Osman Digna's tribes on the Red Sea have been defeated, not by the superior courage of our men, but by our superior arms. And so it will be here. It may be many years before it comes about, but if you insist on war, that is what will come.

"'Then, when we have taken the Soudan, there will come peace, and the peasant will till his soil in safety. Those who desire to be taught will be taught; great ca.n.a.ls from the Nile will irrigate the soil, and the desert will become fruitful.'

"'You really think that would come of it?' Abu asked, earnestly.

"'I do indeed, Abu. We have conquered many brave peoples, far more numerous than yours; and those who were our bitterest enemies now see how they have benefited by it. Certainly, England would not undertake the cost of such an expedition lightly; but if she is driven to it by your advance against Egypt, she will a.s.suredly do so. Your people--I mean the Baggaras and their allies--would suffer terribly; but the people whom you have conquered, whose villages you have burned, whose women you have carried off, would rejoice.'

"'We would fight,' Abu said pa.s.sionately.

"'Certainly you would fight, and fight gallantly, but it would not avail you. Besides, Abu, you would be fighting for that ignorance you have just regretted, and against the teaching and progress you have wished for.'

"'It is hard,' Abu said, quietly.

"'It is hard, but it has been the fate of all people who have resisted the advance of knowledge and civilization. Those who accept civilization, as the people of India--of whom there are many more than in all Africa--have accepted it, are prosperous. In America and other great countries, far beyond the seas, the native Indians opposed it, but in vain; and now a great white race inhabit the land, and there is but a handful left of those who opposed them.'

"'These things are hard to understand. If, as you say, your people come here some day to fight against us, I shall fight. If my people are defeated, and I am still alive, I shall say it is the will of Allah; let us make the best of it, and try to learn to be like those who have conquered us. I own to you that I am sick of bloodshed--not of blood shed in battle, but the blood of peaceful villagers; and though I grieve for my own people, I should feel that it was for the good of the land that the white men had become the masters.'"

Chapter 19: The Last Page.

"Khartoum, September 3rd, 1884.

"It is a long time since I made my last entry. I could put no date to it then, and till yesterday could hardly even have named the month. I am back again among friends, but I can hardly say that I am safer here than I was at El Obeid. I have not written, because there was nothing to write. One day was like another, and as my paper was finished, and there were no incidents in my life, I let the matter slide.

"Again and again I contemplated attempting to make my way to this town, but the difficulties would be enormous. There were the dangers of the desert, the absence of wells, the enormous probability of losing my way, and, most of all, the chance that, before I reached Khartoum, it would have been captured. The Emir had been expecting news of its fall, for months.

"There had been several fights, in some of which they had been victorious. In others, even according to their own accounts, they had been worsted. Traitors in the town kept them well informed of the state of supplies. They declared that these were almost exhausted, and that the garrison must surrender. Indeed, several of the commanders of bodies of troops had offered to surrender posts held by them.

"So I had put aside all hope of escape, and decided not to make any attempt until after Khartoum fell, when the Dervishes boasted they would march down and conquer Egypt, to the sea.

"They had already taken Berber. Dongola was at their mercy. I thought the best chance would be to go down with them, as far as they went, and then to slip away. In this way I should shorten the journey I should have to traverse alone; and, being on the river bank, could at least always obtain water. Besides, I might possibly secure some small native boat, and with the help of the current get down to a.s.souan before the Dervishes could arrive there. This I should have attempted; but, three weeks ago, an order came from the Mahdi to El Khatim, ordering him to send to Omdurman five hundred well-armed men, who were to be commanded by his son Abu. Khatim was to remain at El Obeid, with the main body of his force, until further orders.

"Abu came to me at once, with the news.

"'You will take me with you, Abu,' I exclaimed. 'This is the chance I have been hoping for. Once within a day's journey of Khartoum, I could slip away at night, and it would be very hard if I could not manage to cross the Nile into Khartoum.'

"'I will take you, if you wish it,' he said. 'The danger will be very great, not in going with me, but in making your way into Khartoum.'

"'It does not seem to me that it would be so,' I said. 'I should strike the river four or five miles above the town, cut a bundle of rushes, swim out to the middle of the river, drift down till I was close to the town, and then swim across.'

"'So be it,' he said. 'It is your will, not mine.'

"Khatim came to me afterwards, and advised me to stay, but I said that it might be years before I had another chance to escape; and that, whatever risk there was, I would prefer running it.

"'Then we shall see you no more,' he said, 'for Khartoum will a.s.suredly fall, and you will be killed.'

"'If you were a prisoner in the hands of the white soldiers, Emir,' I said, 'I am sure that you would run any risk, if there was a chance of getting home again. So it is with me. I have a wife and child, in Cairo. Her heart must be sick with pain, at the thought of my death. I will risk anything to get back as soon as possible. If I reach Khartoum, and it is afterwards captured, I can disguise myself and appear as I now am, hide for a while, and then find out where Abu is and join him again. But perhaps, when he sees that no further resistance can be made, General Gordon will embark on one of his steamers and go down the river, knowing that it would be better for the people of the town that the Mahdi should enter without opposition; in which case you would scarcely do harm to the peaceful portion of the population, or to the troops who had laid down their arms.'

"'Very well,' the Emir said. 'Abu has told me that he has tried to dissuade you, but that you will go. We owe you a great debt of grat.i.tude, for all that you have done for us, and therefore I will not try to dissuade you. I trust Allah will protect you.'

"And so we started the next morning. I rode by the side of Abu, and as all knew that I was the hakim who had taken off his arm, none wondered.

The journey was made without any incident worth recording. Abu did not hurry. We made a long march between each of the wells, and then halted for a day. So we journeyed, until we made our last halt before arriving at Omdurman.

"'You are still determined to go?' Abu said to me.

"'I shall leave tonight, my friend.'

"'I shall not forget all that you have told me about your people, hakim. Should any white man fall into my hands, I will spare him for your sake. These are evil times, and I regret all that has pa.s.sed. I believe that the Mahdi is a prophet; but I fear that, in many things, he has misunderstood the visions and orders he received. I see that evil rather than good has fallen upon the land, and that though we loved not the rule of the Egyptians, we were all better off under it than we are now. We pa.s.s through ruined villages, and see the skeletons of many people. We know that where the waterwheels formerly spread the water from the rivers over the fields, is now a desert; and that, except the fighting men, the people perish from hunger.

"'All this is bad. I see that, if we enter Egypt, we shall be like a flight of locusts. We shall eat up the country and leave a desert behind us. Surely this cannot be according to the wishes of Allah, who is all merciful. You have taught me much in your talks with me, and I do not see things as I used to. So much do I feel it, that in my heart I could almost wish that your countrymen should come here, and establish peace and order.

"'The Mohamedans of India, you tell me, are well content with their rulers. Men may exercise their religion and their customs, without hindrance. They know that the strong cannot prey upon the weak, and each man reaps what he has sown, in peace. You tell me that India was like the Soudan before you went there--that there were great conquerors, constant wars, and the peasants starved while the robbers grew rich; and that, under your rule, peace and contentment were restored. I would that it could be so here. But it seems, to me, impossible that we should be conquered by people so far away.'