It was about noon, now, and with a start, roused from his day-dream and half-apathy, Malcolm Skene looked about him and saw that he had then to face one of the most appalling, yet sublime, sights of the desert—a sand-storm—at that season when the Egyptian winds approach the Southern tropic, and they are more variable and tempestuous than during any other season of the year—a state in which they remain till February.
Distant about two miles, he suddenly saw the Zobisha, as Hassan called it—several lofty pillars of sand travelling over the waste with wondrous swiftness. The tallest was vertical, the others seemed to lean towards it, and, at the bases of all, the sand rose as if lashed by a whirlwind into a raging sea, amid which tough mimosa bushes were uprooted and swept away like feathers.
The whirlwind subsided, but the mighty cloud of sand and small pebbles which it had raised high in the darkened heavens, almost to the zenith, continued to tower before the two sojourners in the desert for more than an hour—purple, dun, and yellow in hue at times, and anon all blended together.
Brave though he was, a nameless dread such as he had never felt before possessed the soul of Skene at a sight so unusual and terrific; and there flashed upon his mind the recollection of his letter to Hester, and how true his presentiment seemed to be proving now, for he felt on the verge of suffocation.
Hassan Abdullah, who in his prayers usually sighed for the Paradise of the Prophet, with his seventy houris awaiting him in their couches of hollow pearl, the fruits of the Tree of Toaba, and springs of unlimited lemonade, now prayed only for his own safety, while both their camels forgot their usual docility, and became well nigh unmanageable with terror.
The air was full of impalpable dust. To avoid suffocation or blindness therefrom, Skene dismounted, tied his gauze pugaree tightly over his face, and placing his camel between him and the skirt of the blast, which now developed into a wind-storm, sweeping the column of sand with wondrous speed before it, stooped his head close to the saddle and held on to a stirrup-leather.
On came the wind-storm, and before he had time to think, to express wonder to Hassan as to what it could be, the tornado swept over the desert, carrying before it mimosa bushes and cacti, clouds of shining pebbles, the withered fragments of an old gum-tree, and the white bones of a dead camel.
How his animal withstood the sharp and sweeping blast that darkened all around them, Malcolm Skene knew not; but he found his hands torn from the stirrup-leather, and himself flung furiously and helplessly amid the sand, which half covered him.
After a time, gasping, with his throat, nostrils, and ears full of dust, he struggled to his feet and looked around him, and saw, already far distant, the sand-cloud borne away by the mighty wind, then in its wild career to some other quarter of the desert.
Above him the sky was again cloudless; the air all still and clear; the awful and angry rush of the wind-storm was past.
But where was Hassan Abdullah?
A speck vanishing away in the far distance showed but too plainly where he had gone with all the speed his camel could achieve—a natural swiftness now accelerated by the extremity of fear; and in another minute even that moving speck disappeared, and Malcolm Skene found himself alone—guideless and ignorant of which way to turn his steps in the appalling solitude of the desert.
What was he to do now?
Follow in the route Hassan had taken, and which that wily personage no doubt knew led to some haunt of men, or abode of such civilization as existed there?
Even that he could not do. The horizon showed no point to indicate where the speck he knew to be Hassan and his camel had vanished.
Malcolm's alarm for the future exceeded his just anger and indignation for the present at this sudden and unexpected desertion; but action of some kind became necessary, and though apparently he could not be worse off than where he was, every step he took might be leading further from the path he should pursue to Dayr-el-Syrian—further from a well or succour, and nearer to 'dusty death.'
After glancing at the trappings of his camel, he remounted and rode forward slowly, fain to suck for a moment even a hot pebble of the desert in hope to produce a little moisture in his mouth, while consulting a small pocket map he possessed.
If Hassan had not misled him wilfully, and they had not overshot the proper distance, to judge by the position of the sun, he supposed that Dayr-el-Syrian, where the Amir-Ali's command was encamped, should be somewhere on his right; but, if so, ere this he should have come to the sequestered Macarius Convent—so called from St. Macarius the Elder, of Egypt, a shepherd of the fourth century, who (so runs the story) dwelt for sixty years in the desert; but of that edifice he saw no sign or vestige, and he saw, by the same map, that if he had passed it and gone through the extreme end of the Wady Faregh, then before him must lie the 'Petrified Forest,' of which he knew nothing, and of which he had never heard before, lying apparently more than a hundred miles westward of Cairo—a distance which it seemed almost incredible he had so nearly travelled, and the very name of which was suggestive of something of horror and dismay.
Again and again, with hollow and haggard eyes, he swept the desert through his field-glass, seeking to note a bush or tree that might indicate where a fountain lay; but in vain, and the pangs of thirst increased till they became gnawing and maddening.
He would certainly die soon!
More than once he looked, too, in the desperate hope of seeing Abdullah returning; but equally in vain.
As he rode on under the scorching sun—scorching even while setting—with his head nodding on his breast through weakness, there came before him day-dreams of runnels of gushing water—their very sound seemed to be in his ears—of 'a wee burnie wimpling under the lang yellow broom,' in the shady woods of Dunnimarle, and the rustle of their leaves seemed overhead!
The poor old mother there, to whom he was as the apple of her eye—Hester too—would never know of all he endured and would have to endure inexorably till the bitter end came; and just then, more than even his mother, dove-eyed Hester Maule seemed all the world to him!
Well—'Time and the hour run through the roughest day.'
With that appreciation of trifles peculiar to us all in moments of dire perplexity or intense excitement, he was remarking the vast length of shadow thrown across the level waste, by the light of the now nearly level sun—the shadow of himself and his camel—when a sudden acceleration in the speed of the latter attracted his attention; it began to glide over the desert sand more swiftly than ever, guided by some instinct implanted in it by nature, and in a few minutes it brought him to a little spot of green—an oasis—amid which, fenced round by stones and large pebbles, lay a pool of water!
'A well—a well—water—water at last!' exclaimed Skene with a prayer on his lips, as he threw himself beside it. Forgetting thoughts of all and everything, past and future, in the mingled agony and joy of the present, he crawled towards it on hands and knees, tossed aside his tropical helmet and drank of it deeply, thirstily, greedily, laving his face and hands in it often, and he was not sure that his tears did not mingle with the water as he did so—tears of gratitude.
By nature and its physical formation, less athirst than his rider, the camel drank of the pool too, but scantily. Skene then filled his water-bottle with the precious liquid, as if he feared the well might dry up, even as he watched it; and then (after tethering his camel) he stretched himself beside it, and, utterly worn out by all he had undergone in mind and body, fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, undisturbed alike by flies or mosquitoes.
How long he slept thus he knew not, but day had not broken, and the waning moon was shining brightly when he awoke. He was already too much of a soldier to feel surprise on awaking in a strange bed or place; but some of his surroundings there were sufficiently strange to startle him into instant wakefulness and activity.
'It is the Frenchi—the Infidel!' he heard the voice of Hassan exclaim, and he found himself surrounded by a crowd of armed Arabs, foremost among whom stood Pietro Girolamo—the rascally Girolamo of Cairo, who, having made even that city too hot to hold him, had, for the time, sought refuge with the denizens of the desert.
Partly clad and partly nude, with plaited hair, forms of bronze colour, their teeth and eyes gleaming bright as the swords and spears with which they were armed, Malcolm Skene saw some twenty or more Soudanese warriors, on foot or camel-back, around him, and gave himself up for lost indeed, as his sword and revolver were immediately torn from him.
Uttering a yell, Girolamo was rushing upon him with upraised knife, when he was roughly thrust back by a tall and towering Arab, who dealt him a sharp blow with the butt-end of his Remington rifle—so much as to say, 'I command here.'
Clearly seen and defined in the light of a moon which was silvery, yet brilliant as that of day, Skene saw before him in this personage an Arab of the Arabs.
His bronzed face was nearly black by nature and exposure to the scorching tropical sun. His arms, legs, and neck were bare, and their muscles stood forth like whipcord. His nose was somewhat hawk-like; his eyes were keen as those of a mountain eagle, and his shark-like teeth were white as ivory, in contrast to the skin of his leathern visage.
His hair, which flowed under a steel cap furnished with a nasal bar, was black as night, and shone with an unguent made from crocodile fat by the fishers of Dongola; and save for his shirt of Dharfour steel and Mahdi tunic and trousers, he looked like a mummy of the Pharaohs resuscitated and inspired by a devil.
His arms were a long cross-hilted sword, a dagger, and a Remington rifle.
Such was the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, kinsman of Zebehr Pasha—like Zebehr, almost the last of the great slave-dealers—and whose prisoner Malcolm Skene now found himself—whether for good or for evil, he could not foresee; but his heart too painfully foreboded the latter!
'Sheikh,' said he, 'you will consider me as a prisoner of war, I trust?'
'We shall see—there are things that are as bad as death, and yet are not death,' was the grim and enigmatical reply of Moussa Abu Hagil, which Skene knew referred to torture or mutilation, by having his hands struck off, like those of some prisoners he had seen.
For many a day after, the friends of Malcolm Skene searched the public prints in vain for further tidings of him than we have given three chapters back.
Applications to the War Office and telegrams to headquarters at Cairo were alike unavailing, and received only the same cold, stereotyped answer—that nothing was known of the fate of Captain Malcolm Skene but what the news papers contained.
His supposed fate and story were deemed as parallel with the Palmer tragedy on the shore of the Red Sea; but more especially with that of his countryman, Captain Gordon, an enthusiastic soldier, who, missing Colonel Burnaby's party which he was to accompany with the desert column, perished in the wilderness, far from the Gakdul track—but whether at the hands of the Arabs, or by the horrors of thirst, was never known.