Part 39 (1/2)

”You have more than a hope. You have a plan of escape?” Trench asked eagerly.

”More than a plan,” returned Feversham. ”The preparations are made.

There are camels waiting in the desert ten miles west of Omdurman.”

”Now?” exclaimed Trench. ”Now?”

”Yes, man, now. There are rifles and ammunition buried near the camels, provisions and water kept in readiness. We travel by Metemneh, where fresh camels wait, from Metemneh to Berber. There we cross the Nile; camels are waiting for us five miles from Berber. From Berber we ride in over the Kokreb pa.s.s to Suakin.”

”When?” exclaimed Trench. ”Oh, when, when?”

”When I have strength enough to sit a horse for ten miles, and a camel for a week,” answered Feversham. ”How soon will that be? Not long, Trench, I promise you not long,” and he rose up from the ground.

”As you get up,” he continued, ”glance round. You will see a man in a blue linen dress, loitering between us and the gaol. As we came past him, he made me a sign. I did not return it. I shall return it on the day when we escape.”

”He will wait?”

”For a month. We must manage on one night during that month to escape from the House of Stone. We can signal him to bring help. A pa.s.sage might be made in one night through that wall; the stones are loosely built.”

They walked a little farther and came to the water's edge. There amid the crowd they spoke again of their escape, but with the air of men amused at what went on about them.

”There is a better way than breaking through the wall,” said Trench, and he uttered a laugh as he spoke and pointed to a prisoner with a great load upon his back who had fallen upon his face in the water, and enc.u.mbered by his fetters, pressed down by his load, was vainly struggling to lift himself again. ”There is a better way. You have money?”

”Ai, ai!” shouted Feversham, roaring with laughter, as the prisoner half rose and soused again. ”I have some concealed on me. Idris took what I did not conceal.”

”Good!” said Trench. ”Idris will come to you to-day or to-morrow. He will talk to you of the goodness of Allah who has brought you out of the wickedness of the world to the holy city of Omdurman. He will tell you at great length of the peril of your soul and of the only means of averting it, and he will wind up with a few significant sentences about his starving family. If you come to the aid of his starving family and bid him keep for himself fifteen dollars out of the amount he took from you, you may get permission to sleep in the zareeba outside the prison.

Be content with that for a night or two. Then he will come to you again, and again you will a.s.sist his starving family, and this time you will ask for permission for me to sleep in the open too. Come! There's Idris shepherding us home.”

It fell out as Trench had predicted. Idris read Feversham an abnormally long lecture that afternoon. Feversham learned that now G.o.d loved him; and how Hicks Pasha's army had been destroyed. The holy angels had done that, not a single shot was fired, not a single spear thrown by the Mahdi's soldiers. The spears flew from their hands by the angels'

guidance and pierced the unbelievers. Feversham heard for the first time of a most convenient spirit, Nebbi Khiddr, who was the Khalifa's eyes and ears and reported to him all that went on in the gaol. It was pointed out to Feversham that if Nebbi Khiddr reported against him, he would have heavier shackles riveted upon his feet, and many unpleasant things would happen. At last came the exordium about the starving children, and Feversham begged Idris to take fifteen dollars.

Trench's plan succeeded. That night Feversham slept in the open, and two nights later Trench lay down beside him. Overhead was a clear sky and the blazing stars.

”Only three more days,” said Feversham, and he heard his companion draw in a long breath. For a while they lay side by side in silence, breathing the cool night air, and then Trench said:--

”Are you awake?”

”Yes.”

”Well,” and with some hesitation he made that confidence which he had repressed on the day when they sat upon the foresh.o.r.e of the Nile. ”Each man has his particular weak spot of sentiment, I suppose. I have mine. I am not a marrying man, so it's not sentiment of that kind. Perhaps you will laugh at it. It isn't merely that I loathe this squalid, shadeless, vile town of Omdurman, or the horrors of its prison. It isn't merely that I hate the emptiness of those desert wastes. It isn't merely that I am sick of the palm trees of Khartum, or these chains or the whips of the gaolers. But there's something more. I want to die at home, and I have been desperately afraid so often that I should die here. I want to die at home--not merely in my own country, but in my own village, and be buried there under the trees I know, in the sight of the church and the houses I know, and the trout stream where I fished when I was a boy.

You'll laugh, no doubt.”

Feversham was not laughing. The words had a queer ring of familiarity to him, and he knew why. They never had actually been spoken to him, but they might have been and by Ethne Eustace.

”No, I am not laughing,” he answered. ”I understand.” And he spoke with a warmth of tone which rather surprised Trench. And indeed an actual friends.h.i.+p sprang up between the two men, and it dated from that night.

It was a fit moment for confidences. Lying side by side in that enclosure, they made them one to the other in low voices. The shouts and yells came m.u.f.fled from within the House of Stone, and gave to them both a feeling that they were well off. They could breathe; they could see; no low roof oppressed them; they were in the cool of the night air. That night air would be very cold before morning and wake them to s.h.i.+ver in their rags and huddle together in their corner. But at present they lay comfortably upon their backs with their hands clasped behind their heads and watched the great stars and planets burn in the blue dome of sky.

”It will be strange to find them dim and small again,” said Trench.