Part 33 (1/2)

Warriner cast a look across his shoulder. Mequinez was still visible, a greyer blot upon the grey hillside. ”No,” said he.

They rode forward over carpets of flowers, between the hills. The light fell; the marigolds paled beneath their mules' feet; the gentians became any flower of a light hue. At last a toothed savage screen of rock moved across Mequinez.

”Here,” said Warriner. He tumbled rather than dismounted from his mule, stretched his limbs out upon the gra.s.s, and in a moment was asleep. Hamet gathered a bundle of leaves from a dwarf palm tree and a few sticks, lit a fire, and cooked their supper. Charnock woke Warriner, who ate his meal and slept again; and all that night, with a Mouser pistol in his hand, Charnock sat by his side and guarded him.

The next morning they started betimes; they pa.s.sed a caravan, farther on a tent-village, and towards evening, from the shoulder of a hill they looked down upon the vast plain of the Sebou. Level as a sea it stretched away until the distinct colours of its flower-patches merged into one soft blue.

”Eight days,” said Warriner; and that night, as last night, he asked no questions of Charnock, but ate his supper and so slept; and that night again Charnock sat by his side and guarded him.

But the next morning Warriner for the first time began to evince some curiosity as to his rescue and the man who had rescued him. The two men had just bathed in a little stream which ran tinkling through the gra.s.s beside their camp. Warriner was kneeling upon the bank of the stream and contemplating himself in the clear mirror of its water, when he said to Charnock: ”How in the world did you know me?”

”By your eyes.”

”We are not strangers, eh?”

”I hailed you from a hansom cab once outside Lloyd's bank in Plymouth.

You expressed an amiable wish that I should sit in that cab and rot away in my boots. Lucky for you I didn't!”

”You were the man who jammed his finger? I remember; I thought you had got a warrant in your pocket. By the way,” and he lifted his head quickly, ”you never, I suppose, came across a man called Wilbraham?”

”Ambrose?”

”Yes, yes; when did you come across him?”

”He was blackmailing your wife.”

”Oh, my wife,” said Warriner, suddenly, as though it had only just occurred to him that he had a wife. He turned his head and looked curiously to Charnock, who was scrubbing himself dry some yards behind him. ”So you know my wife?”

”Yes.”

”Ah!” Warriner again examined his face in the stream. ”I think I might walk straight up from the Ragged Staff,” said he, wagging his grey beard, ”and shake hands with the Governor of Gibraltar and no one be a penny the wiser.” Then he paused. ”So you know Wilbraham,” he said slowly, and paused again. ”So you know my wife too;” and the pair went to their breakfast.

Warriner walked in front of Charnock, and the latter could not but notice how within these two days his companion had changed. His back was losing its timid differential curve; there was less of a slink in his walk; he no longer shrank when a loud word was addressed to him.

Moreover, his curiosity increased, and while they were at breakfast he asked ”How did you find me?”

And that morning as they rode forwards over the marigolds and irises, Charnock told him of his first visit to Tangier and of Ha.s.san Akbar.

”So when I came again,” he said with perhaps a little awkwardness and after a pause, ”I had a clue, a slight one, but still a clue, and I followed it.”

”It was you who shouted through Fournier's shop-door, was it?” said Warriner. ”That's the second time a cry of yours has fairly scared me.

So you know Wilbraham,” he added in a moment; ”so you know my wife too.”

They halted at noon under a hedge of cactus, and Charnock, tired with his long vigils, covered his head and slept. Through the long afternoon, over pink and violet flowers, under a burning sun, they journeyed drowsily, with no conversation and no sound at all but the humming of the insects in the air and the whistle of birds and the brus.h.i.+ng of their mules' feet through the gra.s.s. That evening they crossed the Sebou and camped a few yards from the river's bank in a most lucid air.

It was after supper. Charnock was lying upon his back, his head resting upon his arms, and his eyes upturned to the throbbing stars and the rich violet sky. Warriner squatted cross-legged beside a dying fire, and now and then, as a flame spirted up, he cast a curious glance towards Charnock.

”How long have you been searching?” he asked.

”Two years,” replied Charnock.

”Why?”