Part 32 (2/2)
”I can do nothing,” he said. ”Perhaps, in a hospital, with baths and dressings--! Relief will be given at all events; but more? I do not know. Here I could not even begin to do anything at all. Do these two men understand English?”
”No,” answered Calder.
”Then I can tell you something. He did not get the hurt by falling out of any palm tree. That is a lie. The injury was done by the blade of a spear or some weapon of the kind.”
”Are you sure?”
”Yes.”
Calder bent down suddenly towards the Arab on the angareb. Although he never moved, the man was conscious. Calder had been looking steadily at him, and he saw that his eyes followed the spoken words.
”You understand English?” said Calder.
The Arab could not answer with his lips, but a look of comprehension came into his face.
”Where do you come from?” asked Calder.
The lips tried to move, but not so much as a whisper escaped from them.
Yet his eyes spoke, but spoke vainly. For the most which they could tell was a great eagerness to answer. Calder dropped upon his knee close by the man's head and, holding the lantern close, enunciated the towns.
”From Dongola?”
No gleam in the Arab's eyes responded to that name.
”From Metemneh? From Berber? From Omdurman? Ah!”
The Arab answered to that word. He closed his eyelids. Calder went on still more eagerly.
”You were wounded there? No. Where then? At Berber? Yes. You were in prison at Omdurman and escaped? No. Yet you were wounded.”
Calder sank back upon his knee and reflected. His reflections roused in him some excitement. He bent down to the Arab's ear and spoke in a lower key.
”You were helping some one to escape? Yes. Who? El Kaimakam Trench? No.”
He mentioned the names of other white captives in Omdurman, and to each name the Arab's eyes answered ”No.” ”It was Effendi Feversham, then?”
he said, and the eyes a.s.sented as clearly as though the lips had spoken.
But this was all the information which Calder could secure. ”I too am pledged to help Effendi Feversham,” he said, but in vain. The Arab could not speak, he could not so much as tell his name, and his companions would not. Whatever those two men knew or suspected, they had no mind to meddle in the matter themselves, and they clung consistently to a story which absolved them from responsibility. Kinsmen of theirs in Korosko, hearing that they were travelling to a.s.souan, had asked them to take charge of the wounded man, who was a stranger to them, and they had consented. Calder could get nothing more explicit from them than this statement, however closely he questioned them. He had under his hand the information which he desired, the news of Harry Feversham for which Durrance asked by every mail, but it was hidden from him in a locked book. He stood beside the helpless man upon the angareb. There he was, eager enough to speak, but the extremity of weakness to which he had sunk laid a finger upon his lips. All that Calder could do was to see him safely bestowed within the hospital at a.s.souan. ”Will he recover?”
Calder asked, and the doctors shook their heads in doubt. There was a chance perhaps, a very slight chance; but at the best, recovery would be slow.
Calder continued upon his journey to Cairo and Europe. An opportunity of helping Harry Feversham had slipped away; for the Arab who could not even speak his name was Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe, and his presence wounded and helpless upon the Nile steamer between Korosko and a.s.souan meant that Harry Feversham's carefully laid plan for the rescue of Colonel Trench had failed.
CHAPTER XXV
LIEUTENANT SUTCH COMES OFF THE HALF-PAY LIST
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