sacrifice to proclaim my existence and my position, by firing again. . . . And while I argued the matter with my conscience, I saw that all was well--the relieving force was approaching en tirailleur, preceded by scouts and guarded by flankers.
Slowly and carefully the French force advanced, well handled by somebody more prudent than the officer who had arrived first, and by no means disposed to walk into an Arab ambush.
A few minutes later, I heard the trumpeter summoning the fort, blowing his calls to dead ears.
I could imagine the bewilderment of the officer standing before those closed gates, waiting for them to open, while the dead stared at him and nothing stirred.
As I waited for him to climb up into the fort or to send somebody in, to open the gates for him, I came to the conclusion that the Arabs must have abandoned the siege and departed altogether. I wondered whether this had been due to Lejaune's ruse and the fort's apparently undiminished garrison, or to news, from their scouts, of the approach of a strong relief force. Anyhow, gone they were, and very probably they had raised the siege and vanished after moonrise the previous night. . . .
The officer, his sous-officier, the trumpeter, and a fourth man, stood in a little group beneath the wall, some three hundred yards or so from where I lay. . . . I gathered that the fourth man was refusing to climb into the fort. There was pointing, there were gesticulations, and the officer drew his revolver and presented it at the face of the man who had shaken his head when the officer pointed up at the wall.
The trumpeter, his trumpet dangling as he swung himself up, climbed from the back of his camel to a projecting water-spout, and through an embrasure into the fort.
I expected to see him reappear a minute later at the gate, and admit the others.
He never reappeared at all, and, about a quarter of an hour later, the officer himself climbed up and entered the fort in the same way.
As before, I expected to see the gates opened a minute later--but nothing happened. There was silence and stillness. The minutes dragged by, and the men of the relief-column stood still as statues, staring at the enigmatical fort.
Presently I heard the officer bawling to the trumpeter, the men outside the fort began to move towards it in attack-formation, another squadron of the relief-column arrived on mules, the gates were thrown open from within, and the officer came out alone.
He gave some orders, and re-entered the fort with his second-in-command. No one else went in.
A few minutes later, the officer's companion reappeared, called up a sergeant, and gave orders, evidently for camping in the oasis.
It occurred to me that my situation was about to become an unwholesome one, as, before long, there would be vedettes posted on all four sides of the fort in a big circle, to say nothing of patrols.
I must be going, if I wished to go at all, before I was within a ring of sentries. . . .
After a good look round, I crawled painfully and slowly to the next sand-hill, trusting that the two in the fort would find too much of interest, within its walls, to have time to look over them and see me on my brief journey from cover to cover. Apparently this was the case, for when I reached the next sand-hill and looked back from behind its crest, there was no sign that I had been seen.
I rested, regained my breath, and then made another bolt to the sand-hill behind me, keeping the fort between the oasis and my line of retreat, and a good look-out for the vedette which, sooner or later, was certain to come more or less in this direction.
My best plan would be to creep from cover to cover, between the sand-hills, as I was doing, until beyond the vedette-circle, and then hide and rest till night fell. A good night's forced marching and I should be thirty miles away before the sun gained full strength, on the morrow. As though for a prize--and, of course, my life was the prize--I carried out this careful scouting retirement until I was half a mile from the fort and among the big stones that crowned a little hill of rock and sand. Here I was safe enough for the present. I could lie hidden and see where the vedettes were posted; sleep in what shade there was; eat, drink, rest, and gather strength; and set forth, when the moon rose, on my fairly hopeless journey. . . . Fairly hopeless? . . . Absolutely hopeless--unless I could secure a camel. . . . And then and there, I firmly rejected the idea that entered my mind--of killing a vedette to get his beast. That I could regard as nothing better than cold-blooded murder.
A more acceptable notion was that of trying to creep into the oasis, during the night, and stealing a camel from there. It would be an extremely difficult thing to do successfully, for there would be brilliant moonlight, a very sharp look-out for Arabs, and a horrible row from the camel when one disturbed it. . . . Yes, very difficult and dangerous, but just possible, inasmuch as I was in uniform and might be believed if, challenged by the camel-guard, I pretended I was an orderly in search of his camel, for duty. Or if I walked up boldly and announced that I had been ordered to take a camel and ride back to Tokotu with a dispatch. . . . Distinctly possible, I considered. With really good luck and a really good bluff, it might be done. The good luck would lie in the camel-guard being unaware that I wasn't a member of the relief-force at all.
If I were not recognised, if my bluff were convincing, if I were not caught in the act by the very officer whom I should be pretending to have sent me for a camel; or if, on the other hand, there were a chance of simply stealing the camel unseen--I might get away with it. But there seemed to be a good many ifs. . . .
However, after thinking the matter over from all points of view, and weighing the chances impartially, I came to the conclusion that there was more likelihood of Michael's letter reaching Aunt Patricia if I had a shot at getting a camel, than if I did not. A thousand-mile stroll across the Soudanese Sahara did not strike me as one that would lead me home, in view of the fact that it takes a good man to do it under the somewhat more favourable conditions of preparation, organisation, and the protection of numbers and of the law (such as it is).
I decided to wait until night, see what happened, and reconnoitre the oasis with a view to deciding whether theft, bluff, or a combination of the two, offered the greater possibilities of success in securing a mount.
And the more I could concentrate my thoughts upon problems and considerations of this sort, the longer could I postpone and evade the on-rushing realisation of my loss . . . the longer could I keep myself numb and insensate beneath the hammer-blows of the terrible Fact that lurked and struck, lurked and struck; the longer deafen myself to the waxing Voice with its . . . Michael is dead . . . Michael is dead. . . . Listen and heed--Michael is dead. . . .
In spite of the terrific heat and my unutterable misery and wretchedness, I fell asleep, and slept soundly until towards evening.
§2.
When I awoke, I realised that I had been lucky. The nearest vedette was quite a thousand yards to my right, and so placed that there was no fear of my being seen, so long as I exercised reasonable precaution.
The sun was setting, the appalling heat of the day was waning in fierceness, and the fort and oasis presented a scene of normal military activity--or rather inactivity--for nothing whatever moved in or around the fort, and there was but little coming and going about the oasis. Here and there, a sentry's bayonet gleamed, a man led a mule or camel; a little column of smoke rose from among the palms, as a cooking-fire was lighted or replenished.
So far as I could see, the fort had not been taken over by a new garrison, nor, to my surprise, had the dead been removed from the walls. Those motionless figures could not be living soldiers, for no Commandant
