The Collected Works of P. C. Wren: Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories. P. C. Wren
couple of days later we were riding in a long line, just within sight of each other, and scouting for signs of human beings or water.
Hank was on the right of the line, I next to him and half a mile away, having Buddy on my left, with Digby at the far end.
Looking to my right, I saw Hank, topping a little undulation, suddenly wheel towards me, urging his camel to its topmost speed.
As I looked, a crowd of riders swarmed over the skyline, and, two or three of them, halting their camels, opened fire on us.
Buddy rode at full speed toward me and Hank. Digby was cut off from view by a tor of rocks.
"Dismount and form sqar'," yelled Hank, riding up.
I knew what he meant.
We brought our camels to their knees, made a pretence of getting out rifles from under the saddles, crouched behind the camels, and levelled our sticks as though they were guns, across the backs of the animals, and awaited death.
"This is whar we gits what's comin' to us," said Buddy.
"The durned galoots may not call our bluff," growled Hank.
The band, Hoggar or Tebu robbers by the look of them, bore down upon us with yells of "Ul-ul-ul-ul-ul-ullah Akbar," on pleasure and profit bent--the pleasure of slaughtering us and the profit of taking our camels--brandishing swords, lances, and rifles as they swept along.
I could have wept that we had no rifles. Steady magazine fire from three marksmen like ourselves, would have brought the yelling fiends crashing to earth in such numbers as might have saved us and provided us with much that we sorely needed.
The feeling of utter impotence was horrible, and like the impotence of nightmare. . . . To be butchered like sheep without striking a blow. . . . Could Digby possibly escape? . . . Or would they see his tracks and follow him after slaughtering us? . . . There was an excellent chance that they would pass straight on without crossing his trail. . . . Would they swerve from our apparently levelled rifles? No. On they came. . . . Digby might be well away by now. . . .
And then from somewhere, there rang out loud, clear, and (to these Arabs) terrible, a bugle-call--that portentous bugle-call, menacing and fateful, that had been almost the last thing so many desert tribesmen had heard, the bugle-call that announced the closing of the trap and preluded the hail of ballets against which no Arab charge could prevail.
The effect was instant and magical. The band swerved to their right, wheeled, and fled--fled to avoid what they thought a terrible trap, so neatly baited and into which they had so nearly fallen!
As the bugle-calls died away, Hank roared orders in French at the top of his enormous voice, and away to the left a man was apparently signalling back with excited energy, to the French forces behind him, "enemy in sight."
Evidently the panic-stricken mob of raiders thought that the danger was behind the spot on which they had first seen Hank, for they fled in a direction to the right of the rocks behind which Digby had blown his bugle. . . .
Suddenly my heart leapt into my throat, as one of the robbers, perhaps their leader or a candidate for leadership, swerved to the left from the ruck of the fleeing band, and, either in a spirit of savage vengeance, or the desire, not uncommon with these people, for single combat in the presence of many onlookers, rode at the man who had exposed himself to signal back to the French force of which he was evidently the scout. . . .
"Quick!" I shouted. "He'll get him," and I found myself yelling Digby's name.
We scrambled on to our camels, Hank bawling commands in French, and Buddy yelling devilish war-whoops.
Digby stooped and then poised himself in the attitude of a javelin-thrower. As the Arab raised his great sword, Digby's arm shot forward and the Arab reeled, receiving the stone full in his face, and jerking the camel's head round as he did so. Digby sprang at the man's leg and pulled him down, the two falling together.
They rose simultaneously, the Arab's sword went up, Digby's fist shot out, and we heard the smack as the man reeled backwards and fell, his sword dropping from his hand. Digby seized it and stood over the half-stunned robber, who was twitching and clawing at the sand. . . .
And then we heard another sound.
A rifle was fired, and Digby swayed and fell.
An Arab had wheeled from the tail of the fleeing band, fired this shot at thirty yards' range, and fled again, we three on our galloping camels being not a hundred yards from him.
* * *
Digby was dead before I got to him, shot through the back of the head with an expanding bullet. . . .
We tied the Arab's feet, and I blew bugle-calls to the best of my ability.
I am going to say nothing at all about my feelings.
Digby was dead. Michael was dead. I felt that the essential me was dead too.
I lived on like an automaton, and--like a creature sentenced to death--I waited for the blow to fall, the moment of collapse to come.
§4.
We buried Digby there, although we expected the return of the Arabs at any moment.
"He shore gave his life for ourn," said Hank, chewing his lips.
"'Greater love hath no man,'" I was able to reply.
Buddy said nothing, but Buddy wept. He then untied the completely-recovered Arab, a huge, powerful young fellow, twice his size, and without weapons on either side, fought him and beat him insensible.
Discussing the question of this robber's future, I suggested we should bind his hands, put him on his camel, and make him our guide--bidding him lead us first to the oasis from which the band had come.
"Lead us not into temptation," said Buddy. "He'd shore lead us where he wanted us."
Speaking to the man in his own tongue, when he had recovered from Buddy's handling of him, I asked him what he was prepared to do to save his life. . . . Could he lead us south, parallel with the caravan route, from one oasis or water-hole to another, if we agreed to set him free as soon as we were in the Kano territory?
He replied that he would willingly lead us to Hell and cheerfully abide there himself, so long as he got us there too. He was undoubtedly a brave man.
I told him that in that case we should take his camel and weapons (unfortunately for us he had no rifle), and leave him where he was, to die of thirst.
"El Mektub Mektub" (What is written is written), he replied, with a shrug, and that was all we could get out of him.
In the end we took him with us, bound, on his camel, which was tied to Buddy's, and left him at the first water-hole to which we came. This we found by following the track made by his friends as they had come northward.
From here we rode on with filled water-skins and half the food-supply of the Arab whom we had abandoned. . . .
Digby's death proved to be the first tragic catastrophe of a series of disasters that now overtook us.
* * *
First we encountered a terrible sand-storm that nearly killed us, and quite obliterated all tracks.
Then we missed the caravan-route when we reluctantly decided to return to it, either crossing it in ignorance, where the ground was too rocky for there to be any footprints, or else riding over the road itself at a spot where all traces of it had been wiped out, or buried, by the sand-storm.
Next, nearly dead with thirst, we reached a water-hole, and found it dried up!
Here our starving camels ate some poisonous shrub or other, speedily sickened, and within thirty-six hours were all dead.
We thus found ourselves stranded in the desert, not knowing whether the caravan-route was to the east or to the west of us, without rifles, without food, without camels,