CHAPTER XLII.
THE ZEREBA OF SHEIKH MOUSSA.
At some little distance from the Nile, but what distance, whether one or ten shoni, Skene could not then discover, stood the zereba to which the Sheikh had lately fallen possessor after Zebehr (who had been lord of thirty exactly similar), in a strip of green, where a few palms, lupins, and beans grew in an amphitheatre of small mountains—rocky, jagged, volcanic in outline and aspect. A few camels and donkeys grazed spectral-like in the vicinity amid a silence that was intense, and in a district where there were no flights of birds as in Egypt, and no wide reaches of valley covered with green and golden plenty.
Through a gorge in the steep rocky mountains, whose sides were blackened by the sun of unknown ages, and broken into fragments by some great convulsion of nature, the zereba was entered.
It was a group of well-sized huts, enclosed by tall hedges, in the centre of which stood the private residence of Sheikh Moussa, having various apartments, wherein usually armed sentinels, black or swarthy, half-nude, with glowing eyes and bright weapons—swords and spears or Remington rifles—kept guard day and night.
Through these, as one who was to be treated, as yet, with hospitality at least, Malcolm Skene was conducted by a couple of handsomely attired slaves (for here the power of the Anglo-Egyptian Convention was nil), who gave him coffee, sherbet, and a tchibouk, all most welcome after the last day's toilsome march; and, throwing himself upon a carpet and some soft skins, he strove to collect his thoughts, to calculate the distance and the perils that lay between him and freedom, and to think what was to be done now!
Meanwhile the Bedouins were grooming their horses outside, laughing, chatting, smoking, and drinking long draughts of bouza from stone jars—a kind of Nubian beer made from dhurra.
'People always meet again,' said Pietro Girolamo with a savage grin, showing all his sharp, white teeth beneath a long and coal-black moustache. 'The world is round, you know, Signor, though the Sheikh thinks it flat—flat as my roulette-table at Cairo. Ah, Christi! we have not forgotten that; sooner or later people always meet again, and so shall we.'
And with these words, which contained a menace, the Greek withdrew to some other part of the zereba, where he seemed to be somewhat at home, as he was—Skene afterwards discovered—father of the third and favourite wife of Sheikh Moussa.
The chambers, or halls—for such they were—seemed silent—save a strange growling and the rasping of iron fetters—and empty now, though there sometimes, in the palmy days of the slave trade, as many as two thousand dealers in djellabs gathered with their chained and wretched victims every year.
'The regal aspect of these halls of State,' says Dr. Schweinfurth, 'was increased by the introduction of some lions, secured, as may be supposed, by sufficiently strong and massive chains.'
It was the rattle of the latter and the growling of the lions that Malcolm Skene heard with more bewilderment than curiosity on the subject.
Here in his favourite abode, Zebehr, says the doctor, was long 'a picturesque figure, tall, spare, excitable, with lions guarding his outer chamber, and his court filled with armed slaves—smart, dapper-looking fellows, supple as antelopes, fierce, unsparing, and the terror of Central Africa; while around him gathered in thousands infernal raiders, whose razzias have depopulated vast territories. Superstitious, too, was Zebehr, for in his campaign against Darfour, he melted down two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into bullets—for no charm can stay a silver bullet—and cruel as death itself! A word from him here raised the Soudan in revolt against Gordon in 1878; and it was only after some fierce righting that Gessi Pasha succeeded in breaking the back of the revolt. After hunting the slave raiders like wild beasts, he captured and shot eleven of their chiefs, including Suleiman, the son of Zebehr. Hence the blood-feud between Gordon and Zebehr which led the latter to refuse to accompany the former to Khartoum. The slave-dealers were slain in hundreds by natives whom they had plundered. Zebehr's letters were found, proving that he had ordered the revolt; but no action was taken against him, and he continued to live in luxurious detention at Cairo.'
When Baker Pasha was organizing his forces to relieve Tokar, he asked that Zebehr might go with him at the head of a Nubian division. Zebehr and Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil raised the blacks, but the Anti-Slavery Society protested against the employment of the former as improper and in the highest degree perilous. Sir Evelyn Baring pleaded for Zebehr and Moussa, but Lord Granville was inexorable. He wrote: 'The employment of Zebehr Pasha appears to her Majesty's Government inexpedient both politically and as regards the slave trade.'
Thus far some of the history of yesterday, which, nevertheless, may be new to the reader.
On his first entering the zereba Skene had returned the formal welcome or greeting of Sheikh Moussa—touching his forehead, lips, and breast—a symbolic action signifying that in thought, word, and heart he was his.
Pietro Girolamo, the Greek Islesman from Cerigo, was—we have said—the father-in-law (at least one of them) to Moussa Abu Hagil.
Malcolm Skene came to the knowledge of that connection through a stray copy of the now pretty well-known Arabic newspaper, the Mubashir, which he found in the zereba; and the columns of which contained a memoir of that enterprising Sheikh, and in retailing some startling incidents in his life gave a little light on certain habits of the dwellers in the desert.
Girolamo had been the skipper of one of his slave dhows, or armed brigs, in the Red Sea, during the palmy times, when as many as five thousand head of slaves were exposed annually in the market place of Shendy—a traffic in which Moussa, like his kinsmen, Zebehr Pasha, had grown enormously rich; and, for a suitable sum, he bought a daughter of Girolamo, a beautiful Greek girl. She became his third wife, and died in giving birth to a daughter, the inheritor of her pale and picturesque beauty, though shaded somewhat by the Arab mixture in her blood; but in her fourteenth year—a ripe age in those regions of the sun—her charms were said to surpass all that had seen before and had become the exaggerated theme of story-tellers and song-makers, even in the market places and the cafés of Damanhour and Cairo.
The girl was named Isha (or Elizabeth) after her mother, and educated in such accomplishments as were deemed necessary to the wife of a powerful and wealthy Emir, for such Moussa destined her to be, if not perhaps of his friend and leader the Mahdi Achmet when the time came; but the old brigand—for the slave dealer was little better in spirit or habit when not absent fighting, plundering, and raiding in search of djellabs—seemed never happy save when in the society of this daughter, his only one, his other children being sons, four of whom had fallen in battle against Hicks on the field of Kashgate.
Notwithstanding all the care with which the women of the East are secluded in the Kah'ah, or harem, Isha had a lover, a young Bedouin warrior named Khasim Jelalodeen, who, though he had no more hope of winning her to share his humble black tent than of obtaining the moon, loved her with all the wild passion of which his lawless Arab nature was capable.
To have whispered of this passion to the Sheikh Moussa, whom we have described as resembling a mummy of the Pharaohs' time resuscitated, would have ensured the destruction of Khasim, who had only his sword, his rifle, and a horse with all its trappings.
Yet Isha was not ignorant of the love the Bedouin bore her, as he had a sister named Emineh, who was a kind of companion and attendant of the former, and went between the lovers as carefully and subtly as any old Khatbeh, or betrother in the Abdin quarter in Cairo in the present hour—thus freely bouquets, symbolically arranged—the simple and beautiful love-letters of Oriental life, were exchanged between them through the kind agency of Emineh.
Sheikh Moussa loved his brilliant little daughter, but he loved money more; and when a caravan, under an old business friend of his named Ebn al Ajuz (or 'the son of the old woman,' obtained by his mother's prayers in the mosque of Hassan at Cairo) passed en route from Darfour for the capital and Assiout, laden with ivory, gum, and slaves—chiefly women and girls, the dealer, having heard of the beauty of Isha, applied to the Skeikh, and made him an offer which, as both were in the trade, he found himself—filial regard and affection apart—bound to consider.
Moussa, to do him justice, had no great inclination to sell his daughter, the light of his household, though he had remorselessly sold the daughters of others by the thousand; yet he was curious to know her value, as prices had gone down even before the arrival of Gordon at Khartoum, especially when Ebn al Ajuz spoke of the sum he was prepared to give, and that the purse-holder was no other than that generally supposed misogynist, the Khedive himself.
He introduced the merchant to her apartments in order to show her merits and discover the price, of which he could judge, however, by his own business experience.
Her rooms, covered with soft carpets, having luxurious divans, decorated ceilings, and tiled floors, with beautiful brackets supporting finely wrought vessels, and having large windows of lattice work, others of stained glass, representing floral objects, bouquets, and peacocks, Arabic inscriptions and maxims written in letters of gold and green, received no attention from the turbaned and bearded slave-dealer, whose attention was at once arrested by Isha, who had been clad, she knew not why, in her richest apparel, with her eyebrows needlessly blackened and her nails reddened by henna.
Ebn al Ajuz, whom long custom had rendered a dispassionate judge of beauty in all its stages, from the fairest Circassian with golden hair to the dark and full-lipped woman of Nubia, was struck with astonishment by the many attractions of the half-Greek girl.
'Allah Kerim!' he exclaimed. 'With her face, form, and entire appearance I have not the slightest fault to find,' he frankly acknowledged; 'every motion, every attitude, every feature display the most beautiful grace, symmetry, and proportion. Allah! she should be named Ayesha, after the perfect wife of the prophet!'
On hearing this a blush burned in the face of the girl, and she pulled down her yashmac or veil.
The merchant pressed Moussa to name her price, as they sat over their pipes and coffee; and so greatly did avarice exceed affection, that Moussa, who—said the writer in the Mubashir—it was thought would not have exchanged his daughter for the Emerald Mountain itself, was so dazzled by the offer made that he agreed to sell her, and preparations even were at once made for her departure, despite her tears, her entreaties, and her despair.
Khasim Jelalodeen was filled with grief and consternation. Oh for Jinn or Efrits, the spirits born of fire, to aid him!
He had his fleet horse corned, refreshed by a bitter draught of bouza (not water), saddled, and in constant readiness for any emergency; and in the night, well armed, with his heart on fire and his brain in a whirl, he made his way secretly and softly to that part of the zereba in which the Kah'ah, or women's apartments, were situated—an act involving his death if caught, and caught he was by the guards of Moussa, who were about to slay him on the spot; but immemorial usage has established a custom in the Desert that if a person who is in actual danger from another can in anticipation claim his protection, or touch him barehanded, his life is saved.
He passed himself as a Karami, or mere robber, and as such was made a close prisoner, destined to await the pleasure of Moussa, who had just then a good deal to occupy his mind.
Meanwhile Emineh, having ascertained exactly where her rash, bold brother was in durance, contrived to introduce herself there next night with a ball of thread, and tying an end thereof to his right wrist she withdrew, winding it carefully off as she went, till she penetrated to the sleeping apartment of Moussa, and applying the other end to his bosom woke him, saying in Arab fashion:
'Look on me, by the love thou bearest to God and thy own self, for this is under thy protection!'
Then the startled and angry Sheikh arose, took his sword, and followed the clue till it guided him to where Khasim, the supposed Karami, was confined, and he was compelled to declare himself the protector of the latter. His bonds were taken off; the thongs with which his hair, in token of degradation, had been tied were cut with a knife; he was entertained as a newly-arrived guest, and was then set at liberty.
Emineh gave him his horse and arms, and he took his departure from the vicinity of the zereba, but only to watch in the distance.
'In due time the caravan of Ebn al Ajuz came forth from the gates and boundaries of thorny hedge, and the lynx-eyed Arab, Khasim, with his heart beating high, watched it from the concealment of a mimosa thicket, and knew the curtained camel litter which contained the object of his adoration, as the flinty-hearted Moussa was seen to ride beside it for a time.
The love of Khasim was not that of the educated, the cultivated, as it is understood in other parts of the world—the cultivated in music, art, and literature—but of its kind it was a pure, ardent, and passionate one, and in its fiery nature unknown to 'the cold in clime and cold in blood.'
He would bear her away, he thought; she would yet be his bride, won by his spear and horse, like the bride of many an Arab song and story; they would have a home among the fairy-like gardens of Kordofan and beyond the mountains of Haraza. Was he not invulnerable? Had he not an amulet bound to his sword-arm by the Mahdi himself—an amulet before which even the bullets and bayonets of the British had failed?
So the caravan with Isha wound on its way towards the Desert!
How dark the red round sun had suddenly become. Khasim looked up to see if it still shone, and it was setting fast, amid clouds of crimson and gold, throwing long, long purple shadows far across the plain, and there in its sheen the Nile was running swiftly as ever—swift as life runs in the Desert and elsewhere!
Out of the latter arose a cloud of dust, with many a glittering point of steel! The caravan was suddenly attacked, its column broken and pierced by a band of wild Kabbabish Arab horsemen, fifty in number at least, and led by that slippery personage, the Mudir of Dongola, on whom the British Government so grotesquely bestowed the Cross of St. Michael and St. George—a gift ridiculed even by the Karakush, or Egyptian Punch.
A conflict ensued; revolvers and Remington rifles were freely used; saddles were emptied, and sabres flashed in the moonlight. General plunder of everything was the real object of the Mudir and his Kabbabishes; to rescue Isha was the sole object of Khasim, who charged in among them.
Amid the wild hurly-burly of the conflict, the shrieks of the women, their incessant cries of walwalah! the grunting of the camels, the yells of the Arabs, and amid the dense clouds of dust and sand raised by hoofs and feet, Khasim Jelalodeen speedily found the litter in which the daughter of Moussa was placed, and was in the act of drawing forth her slight figure across his saddlebow—horror-stricken though the girl was, albeit she had seen death in more than one form before—when the merchant, Ebn al Ajuz, exasperated to lose her after all the treasure he had spent, shot her dead with his long brass pistol; but ere he could draw another Khasim clove him to the chin, through every fold of the turban, by one stroke of his long and trenchant Arab sword, and, with a wild cry of grief and despair, spurred his horse into the desert and was seen no more, though rumour said he joined the banner of Osman Digna before Suakim.
So this was a brief Arab romance of the nineteenth century as acted out in a part of the world which changes not, though all the world seems to change elsewhere.
Most wearily passed the time of Malcolm Skene's captivity in the zereba of Moussa Abu Hagil. Weeks became months, and the closing days of the year found him still there, and necessitated to be ever watchful, for both Pietro Girolamo and Hassan Abdullah had, he knew, sworn to kill him if an opportunity were given them; and nothing had as yet stayed their hands but the influence of the Sheikh, who protected him for purposes of his own.
Thus his life was in hourly peril; the bondage he endured was maddening, and he could not perceive any end to it or escape from it save death. As for escape, a successful one seemed so hopeless, so difficult to achieve, that it gradually became useless to brood over it—without arms, a horse, money, or a guide.
He knew that he must now be deemed as one of the dead by his regiment, by the authorities, and, more than all, by his widowed mother and dearest friends, and have been mourned by them as such.
Rumour had said ere he left Cairo that a relieving column was to start for Khartoum. How that might affect his fate he knew not; it might be too late to help him in any way, and to be too late was the order of our affairs in Egypt now.
So time passed on, and he was in darkness as to all that passed in the outer world.
At last there came tidings which made the Sheikh Moussa eye him darkly, dubiously, and with undisguised hostility—tidings which Malcolm Skene heard with no small concern and alarm.
These were the close arrest of Zebehr Pacha as a traitor to the Khedive Tewfik, and his sudden deportation from Cairo beyond the sea to Gibraltar, by order of Lord Wolseley.
This event, thought Skene, must seal his own fate as an enforced and most unwilling hostage now!
The golden grain, the full-eared wheat and bearded barley had been gathered in every field and on every upland slope around his home; the year had deepened into the last days of autumn; the woods and orchards of ancient Dunnimarle were odorous of autumnal fruit and dying leaves; the skies were gray by day and red and gloomy at eve.
White winter had come, and every burn and linn been frozen in its rocky bed; the thundering blasts that swept the bosom of the Forth had rumbled down the wide chimneys of Dunnimarle and swept leaves and even spray against the window panes; while the aged trees in the glen below had shrieked and moaned ominously in the icy winds till winter passed away, and people began hopefully to speak of the coming spring, but still a lone mother mourned for her lost son—her handsome soldier son, ever so good, so tender, and so true to her, now gone—could she doubt it?—to the Land of the Leal!