“Remove the gates of thy stable to another side.”—Arabic Proverb. An ominous dawning.
Misty, silvery shadows fleeing before the coming light left no mark upon the Crimson Desert, which stretched to the east and west a desolate unbroken plain, to the north and south in motionless, blood-red waves of sand. Sunrays, yellow, orange, red, spread like gigantic searchlights across the sky from behind a mass of clouds which the west wind had driven eastward and piled low down upon the horizon.
Copper-coloured masses against a background of green and rose and dun, concealing the end or the beginning of an arch of clouds, which flared, a signal of disaster, a pennant of death, blood-red, high across the sapphire firmament, where one great star still defied its enemy—the dawn.
Over the empty plain, under the ominous arc, straight towards the stupendous sunrise fled the three camels, leaving a dead-black trail stretching back as far as eye could see.
Namlah the body-woman glanced over her shoulder at the Morning Star and touched the amulet of good luck which hung about her neck. She looked round at the ill-omened sky and back over the miles across which the huge beasts had raced, at the almost incredible speed to which the camel can attain when urged to its greatest effort. Scarcely a word had the riders said since the sky had lightened when, wondering if the alarm had been given in the camp, they had turned to see if Yussuf overtook or if Zarah pursued them through the misty, silvery shadows.
Ralph and Helen rode side by side, their dromedaries[307] almost touching, as they raced death for their lives, their liberty, their love. Namlah, the desert born, rode ahead, steering her course unerringly by the great star.
She glanced back at Helen’s face, showing death white in the shadows of the passing night and distressed at the signs of a great fatigue, anxious to advise, to help, touched her camel upon the right shoulder, so that it turned to the right in a wide circle, whilst its companions, ignoring or totally unconscious of their leader’s change of route, and utterly lacking in imagination, reasoning power or sense of any kind, forged ahead on a non-stop run.
Once more her keen eyes swept the vast plain which lay behind and across which, like a band of jet on damask cloth, showed the path made by the camels in their flight. She made no sound as she shaded her eyes and stared and stared into the far distance, but touched the amulet for good luck which hung at her own neck and, leaning far forward, touched the amulet which had been fastened in a tuft of hair on the camel’s left shoulder, thereby guaranteeing its safe arrival at the journey’s end.
“‘O thou who troublest thyself about the care of others, to whom hast thou left thine own cares?’” She muttered the proverb, then prayed to Allah as she smote the camel so that it finished the half circle and formed up with its companions, which utterly ignored its return.
“What is it, Namlah?”
Helen leant sideways as she spoke to the body-servant, in whose eyes she had seen the light of a great fear, then turned and looked back in the direction in which the woman pointed. She turned to her lover and pointed back along the path by which they had come, to where, hardly discernible and as a mere speck in the far distance, something moved.
“We’re followed, Ra!” she cried, leaning towards him and stretching out her hand.
“I know we are, sweetheart. I’ve known it for some time. Let’s hope it’s Yussuf.” He smiled at Namlah and shouted across to her. “We’ll put up a good fight,[308] little sister, if they overtake us, and I swear they shall never take you two women alive.”
“Kismet! Excellency,” cried Namlah. “Perchance ’tis the blind one riding to join us, though verily there is but Lulah who could overtake these three beasts, the swiftest in Njed, and the black mare Yussuf does not ride. I pray thee let me have speech with Zarah if ’tis she, before death claims either the one or the other of us, likewise, if so be it is the will of Allah, allow me to approach the tyrant.”
She spat as she made her request, and guided her camel close to Helen’s and prayed to Allah, with frequent interludes of cursing, as they fled like the wind towards the spot whence they would turn due north and, if Allah the Merciful answered the prayers of the body-woman, would overtake a caravan journeying towards Oman or Hareek.
“’Tis the birds of prey, Excellency,” she said later, “calling as they ever call at dawn. Perchance from the heavens the eagles and the vultures spy food with which to break their fast.”
Helen looked up at the sky, across which drifted and wheeled vultures, eagles, hawks, and shook her head and smiled at the dusky little woman who lied to allay her fears.
“Nay! Namlah, it is a voice, it is—listen!”
Faintly but clearly the cry came to them upon the morning wind. Helen looked at her lover, and Namlah bent and touched the amulet upon the camel’s shoulder so as to hide her eyes. The battle-cry, derisive, challenging, even at a great distance, left no doubt as to who pursued them.
But Namlah was of the desert, with the eyes of a hawk and the tenacity of those whose daily life is one long fight against the greatest odds. She shaded her eyes suddenly and stared ahead. She pointed and laughed and kicked her camel vigorously.
But there was no sign of living thing in all the desert to Ralph and Helen when they looked to where she pointed.
[309]
“I see nothing, Namlah.”
“Yonder, Excellency! See you not a band of men moving many, many miles away. Allah! their backs are towards us. They go from us.” She turned in her saddle and shook her fist at the speck in the far distance, then put her hand to her ear. “Allah! ’tis verily a horse! Faster! Faster! Excellencies, urge the camels, they but crawl, urge them, for in yon band of men, be they robbers or starving Bedouins, lies our salvation.”
Infinitesimal spots upon the desert, which, ridged and wrinkled, lay like the outstretched hand of Fate, they urged the dromedaries until they fled to outstrip the wind, under the sky of violent colouring.
“Allah! open their eyes that they see us! Open their ears that they hear us! Excellency! Excellency! is there no way by which to turn their heads towards us!” Her words were lost in the rush of the tremendous speed, but Helen, understanding the expressive gestures, turned and shouted to her lover.
The camels paid no heed when the desert rang with the double report of Trenchard’s revolver, but Abdul, who journeyed in the company of the Bedouins who had succoured him, in the hope of learning news of his white master in Hareek, turned in his saddle and looked back, whilst Zarah, oblivious of the strain she was putting upon the mare, shouted the battle-cry derisively when the firing shattered the desert stillness and drove the beautiful creature at full speed over the sands, urging her with needle-pointed spear.
Nor did she look back, else might she have seen Fate pressing hard upon her heels.
“On the day of victory no fatigue is felt.”—Arabic Proverb.
Like a darker shadow amongst the shadows thrown upon the desert from the ill-omened sky, Rādi the bitch, the[310] swiftest greyhound whelped in Hasa, loped alongside the dromedary ridden by Yussuf, with “His Eyes,” pillion-wise, behind him. She barely left a mark upon the sands so lightly did she run, perplexed, upon a track which held but the common scent of horse and camel. True, she ran in the wake of Lulah, her stable friend, but of enemy there was no trace; therefore of what avail to spend her strength in chasing shadows by the light of the rising sun?
“His Eyes” frowned when she broke away, and like an arrow from a bow set off hard upon the scent of something which had crossed the path after Lulah the mare.
“She has no interest, brother.” He tapped his message upon the blind man’s shoulder. “Even now she turns to follow the scent of some small beast of no account. Give me the sandal of Zarah the Cruel, so that she holds in her fine nose the scent of the woman of whom as yet we see no sign, but whom we hunt to the death.”
Yussuf sent a long, low call ringing across the sands, and Rādi, with every muscle in her gaunt body trained to a hair, without checking her speed, spun round upon her hind feet and tore back in answer to it. She ran at an angle to overtake the black dromedary, whose price was above that of many rubies, and recognizing the object dangled just out of reach, leapt at the sandal, missing it by an inch; then, as trained to do, on touching the ground turned in a circle to the right and at the top of her terrific speed, still at an angle, tore towards the dromedary and launched herself straight upon its back. Catching her by the throat, the dumb youth held her back, whilst, with claws clinging to the tufts of hair upon the dromedary’s haunches, the bitch fought to reach the sandal, the scent of which drove her to a veritable madness of hate and filled her with a lust to kill. She had it between her teeth when firing suddenly shattered the desert stillness, and she fought like a fury to keep it, until “His Eyes,” putting out all his strength, hurled her to the ground and, clasping Yussuf round the waist, leaned[311] far sideways and stared ahead. In his excitement he snatched the mihjan from the blind man’s hand and, leaning backward, smote the dromedary upon the fleshy part of its hind leg above the knee, the tenderest spot of its tough anatomy, so that with a scream of rage it increased its pace seemingly a hundredfold and tore like a hurricane of wrath upon the path, at the far end of which “His Eyes” at last discerned a moving figure.
“Bism ’allah!” yelled Yussuf, answering the message tapped upon his shoulder. “Allah the Merciful delivereth the tyrant into our hands. The mare faileth, sayeth thou; the marks of her hoofs show ever deeper in the sand. Whence came the firing? From Zarah the Cruel or from our white brother who fleeth with the women before her vengeance? Nay! Nay! Knowest thou so little? Can’st not discern the difference ’twixt a pistol and a rifle? Allah strike her hand so that it is useless, and strike the mare dead so that the woman falls to the hound, who hates her even as I hate her in my blindness.”
He leaned down and called to the greyhound, exciting her with words as he pointed ahead, until, sensing an enemy at last, she shot in front of the dromedary. Then, sitting erect, he lifted his mutilated face to the flaming heavens and chanted verses from the Korān to the honour of Allah the one and only God, Who delivered the enemy into his hands:
“Flight shall not profit you if ye fly from death or from slaughter, and if it would, yet shall ye not enjoy this world but a little!”
“Who is he who shall defend you against God, if He is pleased to bring evil on you?”
“O Lord, give her the double of our punishment; and curse her with a heavy curse!”
The sonorous words range out on the stillness, barely broken by the padding of the dromedary’s cushioned feet upon the sand, then he stopped suddenly, alert, apprehensive.
[312]
His hearing, sharpened by his blindness, had caught the sound of the drumming of a horse’s hoofs upon the sand many miles behind.
“Look once more behind, little brother, methought ’twould not be long before her lover rode in pursuit. Ha! thou seest one riding like a leaf before the wind. By the beard! ’tis the Lion riding to find his mate! Allah smite that which he bestrides so that no harm befalls him.” He turned round in the saddle and stared back along the path he could not see. “Seest thou aught else behind the Lion, little brother? Far behind? Thou seest naught! Yet is there a sound of thunder in mine ears, even the sound of the hoofs of many horses tearing like the hurrican............