The Collected Works of P. C. Wren: Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories. P. C. Wren
were invited to enter the palace, and through another small tunnel came into a big windowless hall, with unornamented clay walls, clay ceiling, and clay floor.
Here we were kept waiting with our escort, and stood in haughty silence until conducted across a small inner courtyard to the presence-chamber of the Sultan of Agades.
This was another windowless clay room with great arched ceiling beams and a door, ten feet from the ground, up to which ran a clay staircase. In the middle of the wall opposite the door by which we entered, was a throne, also of clay--a base material for so exalted a symbol, but at least it was of honest clay, which its occupant was not.
Cross-legged on this bed-like throne, in dirty white robes, sat Tegama, who carried on his face the stamp of his ruling passions, greed, cruelty, lust, savagery, and treachery. Around him stood a small group of wazirs, sheikhs, soldiers, and what I uncomfortably took to be executioners.
The Sultan glared at us and I felt sorrowful to the tips of my toes. I knew by now all the ways that such gentlemen have of putting to death those of whom they do not approve, and I liked none of them at all. Impaling, a favourite one, I liked, perhaps, the least. . . .
Digby took the bull by the horns, greeted Tegama politely, hoped he was well, professed pleasure at seeing him, and said he had a good deal to say to him later on, when he had made some arrangements further south and had taken the political temperature of one or two places in Damerghou and Damergrim.
Digby took it for granted that we were honoured guests, and that nothing so silly as the idea of molesting us would ever occur to so wise and great a ruler as the good Tegama of Agades.
The good Tegama of Agades continued to eye us coldly.
"And who might you be, with your talk of El Senussi?" he enquired contemptuously.
"That is for your ear alone," replied Digby. "I have told the sheikh whom we--er--met, in the Baguezan oasis, such things as are fitting to be told to underlings. I come from those whose business is not shouted in every douar and quasr and chattered about to every wayfarer."
And here I boomed:
"No, indeed! Allah forbid!" and smiled at the idea.
"Oh, you can talk, can you?" sneered Tegama, who had evidently been told that some of us were dumb.
"Salaam aleikum wa Rahmab Allah," I intoned piously. "Our Master in the north--Rahmat ullahi Allahim--(and he may be in Morocco, and he may be in Algiers, and he may be near here with a mighty army of the Faithful)--is not one of whose affairs his messengers babble, nor is he one whose messengers are delayed."
"And what is his message?" asked Tegama, with, I thought, less sneer in his voice.
"That comes not here yet," replied Digby. "The word comes to the great and good Sultan of Agades later, when the time is ripe . . ." and much more of bluff and mystification that sufficiently impressed Tegama to lead him to wait and see.
He waited but he did not see, for we escaped--this time, I must admit, thanks to Buddy's irrepressible interest in "squaws."
What he could have achieved had he had the free use of his tongue I cannot say. In this case, although love was not only blind, but dumb as well, it contrived to laugh at locksmiths, and we other three benefited by the laughter.
We got away and on good camels, but we had not a rifle among us, nor any other weapon of any sort whatever.
I am tempted to tell, in full, the story of this evasion, for it was a most romantic business, with all the accessories of fiction and melodrama. I have said that the story of this journey alone would fill a large volume, and it would be small exaggeration to say that a complete account of our sojourn in Agades would fill another.
I wish I had space in which to tell of the incredible things we saw in this place, whose atmosphere and ways and deeds were those of a thousand years ago.
I have read that the first Europeans to set foot in Agades were the members of the French Military Mission (which came with the great annual salt-caravan from the south in 1904), but I could tell of a fair-bearded man who stared at us with blazing grey eyes, a man whose tongue had been cut out, whose ears and fingers had been cut off, and who was employed as a beast of burden.
I could also tell of a Thing that sat always in the Sôk, mechanically swaying its body to and fro as it crooned. Its lips, eyelids, ears, hands, and feet had been cut off, it was blind, and it crooned in German.
I could tell of such scenes as that of the last hours of a very brave man, who was bound face downwards on a plank that was thrust over the edge of an enormously deep dry well. At the other end of the plank was a big stone and a jar of water that slowly leaked, either by reason of a crack or its porosity. When the water had leaked away to such an extent that the weight of the jar and stone was less than that of the man, he and the plank would go headlong down into the dark depths from which he would never return.
There he lay staring down into the horrible place, while round about sat citizens of leisure who told him to hurry with his last prayers, for the water was nearly gone, while others bade him to heed them not, for he had hours longer to wait. . . .
I should like to tell of Tegama's executioners, four negroes who were the most animal creatures I ever saw in human form, and not one of whom was less than seven feet in height. The speciality of their leader was the clean, neat flicking-off of a head or any required limb, from a finger to a leg, with one stroke of a great sword; while that of another was the infliction of the maximum number of wounds and injuries without causing the death of the victim.
They were skilled labourers and their work was their hobby. . . .
I could tell of some very remarkable adventures, risks, dangers, and escapes in Agades, and of some very strange doings in that horrible "palace" with its plots and intrigues, jealousies and hatreds, factions and parties, if space permitted.
And when our time and opportunity came (and we were led one dark night to where four camels, with water and food for two or three days, awaited us) we would not have taken advantage of the chance, being weaponless, had we not felt that we ran a greater danger by remaining.
Tegama was growing more suspicions and more truculent, and I rather think that the dumb Hank and Buddy had been overheard in fluent converse. Probably we gave ourselves away too (whenever we ate, drank, prayed, sat, stood, sneezed, or did anything else whatsoever), as the weirdest kind of weird Mussulmans who ever said, "Bismittah arahman arahmim. . . ."
It was time to go and we went, aided by a young person of magnificent physique, magnificent courage, and negroid ancestry--probably the daughter of some negro slave-woman from Lake Tchad. . . .
Unfortunately it was utterly impossible for her to get us weapons.
§3.
We escaped from Tegama, but not from the consequences of our encounter with him. He did not destroy us, but it was to him that we owed our destruction.
Riding as hard as we could, we followed the tactics of our escape from Zinderneuf, feeling sure that if Tegama pursued and recaptured us, our fate would be sealed and our deaths lingering and unpleasant.
We therefore avoided the caravan-route that runs from Agades, and struck out into the desert, hoping that, as hitherto, we should, sooner or later, discover someone or something that would lead us to water.
After three days of painful wandering, we chanced upon the wretched encampment of some aboriginal Beri-Beri bushmen, black, almost naked, and armed only with bows and arrows. They apparently lived by trapping ostriches by means of tethered foot-traps concealed beneath the bushes and trees, thorns and acacias, on which the birds feed.
These primitive people were camped beside an inexplicable pool of water among colossal boulders as big as cathedrals.
Here we rested ourselves and our camels for a day or two, and then again set out, with our leather water-skins filled and our food-bags nearly empty.
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