Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt Part 6

But when he would have taken it away, the little hand still clung, though the eyes were scarce opened upon life.

"See, Mahommed Selim," Soada cried, "he would go with thee."

"He shall come to me one day, by the mercy of G.o.d," answered Mahommed Selim.

Then he went out into the market-place and gave himself up to the fat sergeant. As they reached the outskirts of the village a sorry camel came with a sprawling gallop after them, and swaying and rolling above it was Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, his naboot of dom-wood across his knees.

"What dost thou come for, friend of the mercy of G.o.d?" asked Mahommed Selim.

"To be thy messenger, praise be to G.o.d!" answered Yusef, swinging his water-bottle clear for a drink.

V

In Egypt, the longest way round is not the shortest way home, and that was why Mahommed Selim's court-martial took just three minutes and a half; and the bimbas.h.i.+ who judged him found even that too long, for he yawned in the deserter's face as he condemned him to death.

Mahommed Selim showed no feeling when the sentence was p.r.o.nounced. His face had an apathetic look. It seemed as if it were all one to him. But when they had turned him round to march to the shed where he was to be kept, till hung like a pig at sunrise, his eyes glanced about restlessly. For even as the sentence had been p.r.o.nounced a new idea had come into his mind. Over the heads of the Gippy soldiers, with their pipestem legs, his look flashed eagerly, then a little painfully--then suddenly stayed, for it rested on the green turban of Yusef, the drunken ghaffir. Yusef's eyes were almost shut; his face had the grey look of fresh-killed veal, for he had come from an awful debauch of has.h.i.+sh.

"Allah! Allah!" cried Mahommed Selim, for that was the sound which always waked the torpid brain of Yusef since Wa.s.sef the camel-driver's skull had crackled under his naboot.

Yusef's wide shoulders straightened back, his tongue licked his lips, his eyes stared before him, his throat was dry. He licked his lips again. "Allah!" he cried and ran forward.

The soldiers thrust Yusef back. Mahommed Selim turned and whispered to the sergeant.

"Backshees.h.!.+" he said; "my grey Arab for a word with Yusef the ghaffir."

"Malais.h.!.+" said the sergeant; and the soldiers cleared a way for Yusef.

The palms of the men from Beni Souef met once, twice, thrice; they touched their lips, their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, their foreheads, with their hands, three times. Then Mahommed Selim fell upon the breast of Yusef and embraced him. Doing so he whispered in his ear:

"In the name of Allah, tell Soada I died fighting the Dervishes!"

"So be it, in G.o.d's name!" said Yusef. "A safe journey to you, brother of giants."

Next morning at sunrise, between two dom-palms, stood Mahommed Selim; but scarce a handful of the soldiers sent to see him die laughed when the rope was thrown over his head. For his story had gone abroad, and it was said that he was mad--none but a madman would throw away his life for a fellah woman. And was it not written that a madman was one beloved of Allah, who had taken his spirit up into heaven, leaving only the disordered body behind?

If, at the last moment, Mahommed Selim had but cried out: "I am mad; with my eyes I have seen G.o.d!" no man would have touched the rope that hanged him up that day.

But, according to the sacred custom, he only asked for a bowl of water, drank it, said "Allah!" and bowed his head three times towards Mecca--and bowed his head no more.

Before another quarter was added to the moon, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, at the door of Soada's hut in Beni Souef, told old Fatima the most wonderful tale, how Mahommed Selim had died on his sheepskin, having killed ten Dervishes with his own hand; and that a whole regiment had attended his funeral.

This is to the credit of Yusef's account, that the last half of his statement was no lie.

ON THE REEF OF NORMAN'S WOE

"It was the schooner Hesperus That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter To bear him company.

------------------- Such was the wreck of the Hesperus In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's woe!"

Only it was not the schooner Hesperus, and she did not sail the wintry sea. It was the stern-wheeled tub Amenhotep, which churned her way up and down the Nile, sc.r.a.ping over sand banks, b.u.t.ting the sh.o.r.es with gaiety embarra.s.sing--for it was the time of cholera, just before the annual rise of the Nile. Fielding Bey, the skipper, had not taken his little daughter, for he had none; but he had taken little d.i.c.ky Donovan, who had been in at least three departments of the Government, with advantage to all.

d.i.c.ky was dining with Fielding at the Turf Club, when a telegram came saying that cholera had appeared at a certain village on the Nile.

Fielding had dreaded this, had tried to make preparation for it, had begged of the Government this reform and that--to no purpose. He knew that the saving of the country from an epidemic lay with his handful of Englishmen and the faithful native officials; but chiefly with the Englishmen. He was prepared only as a forlorn hope is prepared, with energy, with personal courage, with knowledge; and never were these more needed.

With the telegram in his hand, he thought of his few English a.s.sistants, and sighed; for the game they would play was the game of Hercules and Death over the body of Alcestis.

d.i.c.ky noted the sigh, read the telegram, drank another gla.s.s of claret, lighted a cigarette, drew his coffee to him, and said: "The Khedive is away--I'm off duty; take me."

Fielding looked surprised, yet with an eye of hope. If there was one man in Egypt who could do useful work in the business, it was little d.i.c.ky Donovan, who had a way with natives such as no man ever had in Egypt; who knew no fear of anything mortal; who was as tireless as a beaver, as keen-minded as a lynx is sharp-eyed. It was said to d.i.c.ky's discredit that he had no heart, but Fielding knew better. When d.i.c.ky offered himself now, Fielding said, almost feverishly: "But, dear old D., you don't see--"

"Don't I?--Well, then,

"'What are the blessings of the sight?-- Oh, tell your poor blind boy!'"

What Fielding told him did not alter his intention, nor was it Fielding's wish that it should, though he felt it right to warn the little man what sort of thing was in store for them.

"As if I don't know, old lime-burner!" answered d.i.c.ky coolly.

In an hour they were on the Amenhotep, and in two hours they were on the way--a floating hospital--to the infected district of Kalamoun. There the troubles began. It wasn't the heat, and it wasn't the work, and it wasn't the everlasting care of the sick: it was the ceaseless hunt for the disease-stricken, the still, tireless opposition of the natives, the remorseless deception, the hopeless struggle against the covert odds.

With nothing behind: no support from the Government, no adequate supplies, few capable men; and all the time the dead, inert, dust-powdered air; the offices of policeman, doctor, apothecary, even undertaker and gravedigger, to perform; and the endless weeks of it all. A handful of good men under two leaders of nerve, conscience and ability, to fight an invisible enemy, which, gaining headway, would destroy its scores of thousands!

At the end of the first two months Fielding Bey became hopeless.

"We can't throttle it," he said to d.i.c.ky Donovan. "They don't give us the ghost of a chance. To-day I found a dead-un hid in an oven under a heap of flour to be used for to-morrow's baking; I found another doubled up in a cupboard, and another under a pile of dourha which will be ground into flour."

"With twenty ghaffirs I beat five cane and dourha fields this morning,"

said d.i.c.ky. "Found three cases. They'd been taken out of the village during the night."

"Bad ones?"

"So so. They'll be worse before they're better. That was my morning's flutter. This afternoon I found the huts these gentlemen call their homes. I knocked holes in the roofs per usual, burnt everything that wasn't wood, let in the light o' heaven, and splashed about limewash and perchloride. That's my day's tot-up. Any particular trouble?" he added, eyeing Fielding closely.

Fielding fretfully jerked his foot on the floor, and lighted his pipe, the first that day.

"Heaps. I've put the barber in prison, and given the sarraf twenty lashes for certifying that the death of the son of the Mamour was el aadah--the ordinary. It was one of the worst cases I've ever seen. He fell ill at ten and was dead at two, the permis d'inhumation was given at four, and the usual thing occurred: the bodywashers got the bedding and clothing, and the others the coverlet. G.o.d only knows who'll wear that clothing, who'll sleep in that bed!"

"If the Lord would only send them sense, we'd supply sublimate solution--douche and spray, and zinc for their little long boxes of bones," mused d.i.c.ky, his eyes half shut, as he turned over in his hands some scarabs a place-hunting official had brought him that day. "Well, that isn't all?" he added, with a quick upward glance and a quizzical smile. His eyes, however, as they fell on Fielding's, softened in a peculiar way, and a troubled look flashed through them; for Fielding's face was drawn and cold, though the eyes were feverish, and a bright spot burned on his high cheek-bones.

"No, it isn't all, d.i.c.ky. The devil's in the whole business. Steady, sullen opposition meets us at every hand. Norman's been here--rode over from Abdallah--twenty-five miles. A report's going through the native villages, started at Abdallah, that our sanitary agents are throwing yellow handkerchiefs in the faces of those they're going to isolate."

"That's Hoskai Bey's yellow handkerchief. He's a good man, but he blows his nose too much, and blows it with a flourish.... Has Norman gone back?"

"No, I've made him lie down in my cabin. He says he can't sleep, says he can only work. He looks ten years older. Abdallah's an awful place, and it's a heavy district. The Mamour there's a scoundrel. He has influenced the whole district against Norman and our men. Norman--you know what an Alexander-Hannibal baby it is, all the head of him good for the best sort of work anywhere, all the fat heart of him dripping sentiment--gave a youngster a comfit the other day. By some infernal accident the child fell ill two days afterwards--it had been sucking its father's old shoe--and Norman just saved its life by the skin of his teeth. If the child had died, there'd have been a riot probably. As it is, there's talk that we're scattering poisoned sweetmeats to spread the disease.

He's done a plucky thing, though...." He paused. d.i.c.ky looked up inquiringly, and Fielding continued. "There's a fellow called Mustapha Kali, a hanger-on of the Mudir of the province. He spread a report that this business was only a scare got up by us; that we poisoned the people and buried them alive. What does Norman do? He promptly arrests him, takes him to the Mudir, and says that the brute must be punished or he'll carry the matter to the Khedive."