CHAPTER X
THE WELLS OF OBAK
In that month of May Durrance lifted his eyes from Wadi Halfa and beganeagerly to look homeward. But in the contrary direction, five hundredmiles to the south of his frontier town, on the other side of the greatNubian desert and the Belly of Stones, the events of real importance tohim were occurring without his knowledge. On the deserted track betweenBerber and Suakin the wells of Obak are sunk deep amongst mounds ofshifting sand. Eastward a belt of trees divides the dunes from a hardstony plain built upon with granite hills; westward the desert stretchesfor fifty-eight waterless miles to Mahobey and Berber on the Nile, adesert so flat that the merest tuft of grass knee-high seems at thedistance of a mile a tree promising shade for a noonday halt, and a pileof stones no bigger than one might see by the side of any roadway inrepair achieves the stature of a considerable hill. In this particularMay there could be no spot more desolate than the wells of Obak. The sunblazed upon it from six in the morning with an intolerable heat, and allnight the wind blew across it piercingly cold, and played with the sandas it would, building pyramids house-high and levelling them, tunnellingvalleys, silting up long slopes, so that the face of the country wascontinually changed. The vultures and the sand-grouse held itundisturbed in a perpetual tenancy. And to make the spot yet moredesolate, there remained scattered here and there the bleached bones andskeletons of camels to bear evidence that about these wells once thecaravans had crossed and halted; and the remnants of a house built ofbranches bent in hoops showed that once Arabs had herded their goats andmade their habitation there. Now the sun rose and set, and the hot skypressed upon an empty round of honey-coloured earth. Silence broodedthere like night upon the waters; and the absolute stillness made it aplace of mystery and expectation.
Yet in this month of May one man sojourned by the wells and sojournedsecretly. Every morning at sunrise he drove two camels, swiftriding-mares of the pure Bisharin breed, from the belt of trees, wateredthem, and sat by the well-mouth for the space of three hours. Then hedrove them back again into the shelter of the trees, and fed themdelicately with dhoura upon a cloth; and for the rest of the day heappeared no more. For five mornings he thus came from his hiding-placeand sat looking toward the sand-dunes and Berber, and no one approachedhim. But on the sixth, as he was on the point of returning to hisshelter, he saw the figures of a man and a donkey suddenly outlinedagainst the sky upon a crest of the sand. The Arab seated by the welllooked first at the donkey, and, remarking its grey colour, half rose tohis feet. But as he rose he looked at the man who drove it, and saw thatwhile his jellab was drawn forward over his face to protect it from thesun, his bare legs showed of an ebony blackness against the sand. Thedonkey-driver was a negro. The Arab sat down again and waited with anair of the most complete indifference for the stranger to descend tohim. He did not even move or turn when he heard the negro's feettreading the sand close behind him.
"Salam aleikum," said the negro, as he stopped. He carried a long spearand a short one, and a shield of hide. These he laid upon the ground andsat by the Arab's side.
The Arab bowed his head and returned the salutation.
"Aleikum es salam," said he, and he waited.
"It is Abou Fatma?" asked the negro.
The Arab nodded an assent.
"Two days ago," the other continued, "a man of the Bisharin, MoussaFedil, stopped me in the market-place of Berber, and seeing that I washungry, gave me food. And when I had eaten he charged me to drive thisdonkey to Abou Fatma at the wells of Obak."
Abou Fatma looked carelessly at the donkey as though now for the firsttime he had remarked it.
"Tayeeb," he said, no less carelessly. "The donkey is mine," and he satinattentive and motionless, as though the negro's business were done andhe might go.
The negro, however, held his ground.
"I am to meet Moussa Fedil again on the third morning from now, in themarket-place of Berber. Give me a token which I may carry back, so thathe may know I have fulfilled the charge and reward me."
Abou Fatma took his knife from the small of his back, and picking up astick from the ground, notched it thrice at each end.
"This shall be a sign to Moussa Fedil;" and he handed the stick to hiscompanion. The negro tied it securely into a corner of his wrap, loosedhis water-skin from the donkey's back, filled it at the well and slungit about his shoulders. Then he picked up his spears and his shield.Abou Fatma watched him labour up the slope of loose sand and disappearagain on the further incline of the crest. Then in his turn he rose, andhastily. When Harry Feversham had set out from Obak six days before totraverse the fifty-eight miles of barren desert to the Nile, this greydonkey had carried his water-skins and food.
Abou Fatma drove the donkey down amongst the trees, and fastening it toa stem examined its shoulders. In the left shoulder a tiny incision hadbeen made and the skin neatly stitched up again with fine thread. He cutthe stitches, and pressing open the two edges of the wound, forced out atiny package little bigger than a postage stamp. The package was agoat's bladder, and enclosed within the bladder was a note written inArabic and folded very small. Abou Fatma had not been Gordon'sbody-servant for nothing; he had been taught during his service to read.He unfolded the note, and this is what was written:--
"The houses which were once Berber are destroyed, and a new town of widestreets is building. There is no longer any sign by which I may know theruins of Yusef's house from the ruins of a hundred houses; nor doesYusef any longer sell rock-salt in the bazaar. Yet wait for me anotherweek."
The Arab of the Bisharin who wrote the letter was Harry Feversham.Wearing the patched jubbeh of the Dervishes over his stained skin, hishair frizzed on the crown of his head and falling upon the nape of hisneck in locks matted and gummed into the semblance of seaweed, he wentabout his search for Yusef through the wide streets of New Berber withits gaping pits. To the south, and separated by a mile or so of desert,lay the old town where Abou Fatma had slept one night and hidden theletters, a warren of ruined houses facing upon narrow alleys and windingstreets. The front walls had been pulled down, the roofs carried away,only the bare inner walls were left standing, so that Feversham when hewandered amongst them vainly at night seemed to have come into longlanes of five courts, crumbling into decay. And each court was onlydistinguishable from its neighbour by a degree of ruin. Already thefoxes made their burrows beneath the walls.
He had calculated that one night would have been the term of his stay inBerber. He was to have crept through the gate in the dusk of theevening, and before the grey light had quenched the stars his faceshould be set towards Obak. Now he must go steadily forward amongst thecrowds like a man that has business of moment, dreading conversationlest his tongue should betray him, listening ever for the name of Yusefto strike upon his ears. Despair kept him company at times, and fearalways. But from the sharp pangs of these emotions a sort of madnesswas begotten in him, a frenzy of obstinacy, a belief fanatical as thedark religion of those amongst whom he moved, that he could not now failand the world go on, that there could be no injustice in the wholescheme of the universe great enough to lay this heavy burden upon theone man least fitted to bear it and then callously to destroy himbecause he tried.
Fear had him in its grip on that morning three days after he had leftAbou Fatma at the wells, when coming over a slope he first saw the sandstretched like a lagoon up to the dark brown walls of the town, and theovershadowing foliage of the big date palms rising on the Nile bankbeyond. Within those walls were the crowded Dervishes. It was surely themerest madness for a man to imagine that he could escape detectionthere, even for an hour. Was it right, he began to ask, that a manshould even try? The longer he stood, the more insistent did thisquestion grow. The low mud walls grew strangely sinister; the welcomegreen of the waving palms, after so many arid days of sun and sand andstones, became an ironical invitation to death. He began to wonderwhether he had not already done enough for honour in venturing so near.
The sun beat
upon him; his strength ebbed from him as though his veinswere opened. If he were caught, he thought, as surely he would be--oh,very surely! He saw the fanatical faces crowding fiercely about him ...were not mutilations practised?... He looked about him, shivering evenin that strong heat, and the great loneliness of the place smote uponhim, so that his knees shook. He faced about and commenced to run,leaping in a panic alone and unpursued across the naked desert under thesun, while from his throat feeble cries broke inarticulately.
He ran, however, only for a few yards, and it was the very violence ofhis flight which stopped him. These four years of anticipation were asnothing, then? He had schooled himself in the tongue, he had lived inthe bazaars, to no end? He was still the craven who had sent in hispapers? The quiet confidence with which he had revealed his plan toLieutenant Sutch over the table in the Criterion grill-room was the merevainglory of a man who continually deceived himself? And Ethne?...
He dropped upon the ground and, drawing his coat over his head, lay, abrown spot indistinguishable from the sand about him, an irregularity inthe great waste surface of earth. He shut the prospect from his eyes,and over the thousands of miles of continent and sea he drew Ethne'sface towards him. A little while and he was back again in Donegal. Thesummer night whispered through the open doorway in the hall; in a roomnear by people danced to music. He saw the three feathers fluttering tothe floor; he read the growing trouble in Ethne's face. If he could dothis thing, and the still harder thing which now he knew to lie beyond,he might perhaps some day see that face cleared of its trouble. Therewere significant words too in his ears, "I should have no doubt that youand I would see much of one another afterwards." Towards the setting ofthe sun he rose from the ground, and walking down towards Berber, passedbetween the gates.