that thedestruction of the dervishes and their prophet was inevitable, for noone had ever vanquished the Englishmen.
"Akbar Allah!" interrupted Idris, raising his hands upwards."Nevertheless, they have been vanquished."
"No," replied the leader of the pursuing party. "The Mahdi sent againstthem the tribes of Jaalin, Barabra, and Janghey, nearly thirty thousandin all of his best warriors, under the command of Musa, the son ofHelu. At Abu Klea a terrible battle took place in which God awarded thevictory to the unbelievers.--Yes, it is so. Musa, the son of Helu,fell, and of his soldiers only a handful returned to the Mahdi. Thesouls of the others are in Paradise, while their bodies lie upon thesands, awaiting the day of resurrection. News of this spread rapidlyover the Nile. Then we thought that the English would go farther southand relieve Khartum. The people repeated, 'The end! the end!' And inthe meantime God disposed otherwise."
"How? What happened?" asked Idris feverishly.
"What happened?" said the leader with a brightened countenance. "Why,in the meantime the Mahdi captured Khartum, and during the assaultGordon's head was cut off. And as the Englishmen were concerned onlyabout Gordon, learning of his death, they returned to the north. Allah!We again saw the steamers with the stalwart soldiers floating down theriver, but did not understand what it meant. The English publish goodnews immediately and suppress bad. Some of our people said that theMahdi had already perished. But finally the truth came to the surface.This region belongs yet to the Government. In Wadi Haifa and farther,as far as the Third and perhaps the Fourth Cataract, the soldiers ofthe Khedive can be found; nevertheless, after the retirement of theEnglish troops, we believe now that the Mahdi will subdue not onlyNubia and Egypt, not only Mecca and Medina, but the whole world. Forthat reason instead of capturing you and delivering you to the hands ofthe Government we are going together with you to the prophet."
"So orders came to capture us?"
"To all the villages, to all the sheiks, to the military garrisons.Wherever the copper wire, over which fly the commands of the Khedive,does not reach, there came the 'zabdis' (gendarmes) with theannouncement that whoever captures you will receive one thousand poundsreward. Mashallah!--That is great wealth!--Great!"
Idris glanced suspiciously at the speaker.
"But you prefer the blessing of the Mahdi?"
"Yes. He captured such immense booty and so much money in Khartum thathe measures the Egyptian pounds in fodder sacks and distributes themamong his faithful--"
"Nevertheless, if the Egyptian troops are yet in Wadi Haifa, andfurther, they may seize us on the way."
"No. It is necessary only to hurry before they recover their wits. Nowsince the retreat of the Englishmen they have lost their headsentirely--the sheiks, the loyal to the Government, as well as thesoldiers and 'zabdis.' All think that the Mahdi at any moment willarrive; for that reason those of us who in our souls favored him arenow running to him boldly, and nobody is pursuing us, for in the firstmoments no one is issuing orders and no one knows whom to obey."
"Yes," replied Idris, "you say truly that it is necessary to hurry,before they recover their wits, since Khartum is yet far--"
For an instant a faint gleam of hope glimmered again for Stas. If theEgyptian soldiers up to that time occupied various localities on thebanks in Nubia, then in view of the fact that the English troops hadtaken all the steamers, they would have to retreat before the Mahdi'shordes by land. In such case it might happen that the caravan wouldencounter some retreating detachment and might be surrounded. Stasreckoned also that before the news of the capture of Khartum circulatedamong the Arabian tribes north of Wadi Haifa, considerable time wouldelapse; the more so as the Egyptian Government and the English peoplesuppressed it. He therefore assumed that the panic which must haveprevailed among the Egyptians in the first moment must have alreadypassed away. To the inexperienced boy it never occurred that in anyevent the downfall of Khartum and the death of Gordon would causepeople to forget about everything else, and that the sheiks loyal tothe Government as well as the local authorities would now havesomething else to do than to think of rescuing two white children.
And in fact the Arabs who joined the caravan did not fear the pursuitvery much. They rode with great haste and did not spare the camels, butthey kept close to the Nile and often during the night turned to theriver to water the animals and to fill the leather bags with water. Attimes they ventured to ride to villages even in daytime. For safetythey sent in advance for scouting a few men who, under the pretext ofbuying provisions, inquired for news of the locality; whether therewere any Egyptian troops near-by and whether the inhabitants belongedto "the loyal Turks." If they met residents secretly favoring theMahdi, then the entire caravan would visit the village, and often ithappened that it was increased by a few or even a dozen or more youngArabs who also wanted to fly to the Mahdi.
Idris learned also that almost all the Egyptian detachments werestationed on the side of the Nubian Desert, therefore on the right, theeastern side of the Nile. In order to avoid an encounter with them itwas necessary only to keep to the left bank and to pass by the largercities and settlements. This indeed lengthened their route a greatdeal, for the river, beginning at Wadi Haifa, forms a gigantic archinclining far towards the south and afterwards again curving to thenortheast as far as Abu Hamed, where it takes a direct southern course,but on the other hand this left bank, particularly from the Oasis ofSelimeh, was left almost entirely unguarded. The journey passed merrilyfor the Sudanese in an increased company with an abundance of water andsupplies. Passing the Third Cataract, they ceased even to hurry, androde only at night, hiding during the day among sandy hills and ravineswith which the whole desert was intersected. A cloudless sky nowextended over them, gray at the horizon's edges, bulging in the centerlike a gigantic cupola, silent and calm. With each day, however, theheat, in proportion to their southward advance, became more and moreterrible, and even in the ravines, in the deep shade, it distressed thepeople and the beasts. On the other hand, the nights were very cool;they scintillated with twinkling stars which formed, as it were,greater and smaller clusters. Stas observed that they were not the sameconstellations which shone at night over Port Said. At times he haddreamed of seeing sometime in his life the Southern Cross, and finallybeheld it beyond El-Ordeh. But at present its luster proclaimed to himhis own misfortune. For a few nights there shone for him the pale,scattered, and sad zodiacal light, which, after the waning of theevening twilight, silvered until a late hour the western side of thesky.
XV
In two weeks after starting from the neighborhood of Wadi Haifa thecaravan entered upon the region subdued by the Mahdi. They speedilycrossed the hilly Jesira Desert, and near Shendi, where previously theEnglish forces had completely routed Musa, Uled of Helu, they rode intoa locality entirely unlike the desert. Neither sands nor dunes could beseen here. As far as the eye could reach stretched a steppe overgrownin part by green grass and in part by a jungle amid which grew clustersof thorny acacias, yielding the well-known Sudanese gum; while here andthere stood solitary gigantic nabbuk trees, so expansive that undertheir boughs a hundred people could find shelter from the sun. Fromtime to time the caravan passed by high, pillar-like hillocks oftermites or white ants, with which tropical Africa is strewn. Theverdure of the pasture and the acacias agreeably charmed the eyes afterthe monotonous, tawny-hued sands of the desert.
In the places where the steppe was a meadow, herds of camels pastured,guarded by the armed warriors of the Mahdi. At the sight of the caravanthey started up suddenly, like birds of prey; rushed towards it,surrounded it from all sides; and shaking their spears and at the sametime yelling at the top of their voices they asked the men from whencethey came, why they were going southward, and whither they were bound?At times they assumed such a threatening attitude that Idris wascompelled to reply to their questions in the greatest haste in order toavoid attack.
Stas, who had imagined that the inhabitants of the Sudan differed fromother Arabs residing in Egypt only i
n this, that they believed in theMahdi and did not want to acknowledge the authority of the Khedive,perceived that he was totally mistaken. The greater part of those whoevery little while stopped the caravan had skins darker than even Idrisand Gebhr, and in comparison with the two Bedouins were almost black.The negro blood in them predominated over the Arabian. Their faces andbreasts were tattooed and the prickings represented various designs, orinscriptions from the Koran. Some were almost naked; others wore"jubhas" or wrappers of cotton texture sewed out of patches of variouscolors. A great many had twigs of coral or pieces of ivory in theirpierced nostrils, lips and ears. The heads of the leaders were coveredwith caps of the same texture as the wrappers, and the heads of commonwarriors were bare, but not shaven like those of the Arabs in Egypt. Onthe contrary, they were covered with