The Perfume of Egypt by C. W. Leadbeater (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📕

decided to wait until darkness gave them a better opportunity. For myself, I know that I wished that they would attack us again, that they would continue attacking us, for anything seemed to me to be better than that dreadful waiting for certain death. Of course we speculated as to where poor Tito was, and how they had killed him; as to how the attack upon the workmen had been arranged; and what had happened to the foreman, a big powerful Scotchman, who must surely have been taken unawares, or he would have contrived to give a good account of almost any number of the savages. We thought of the mother at home and wondered whether any news of our fate would ever reach her, considering that there seemed to be no one left to tell the tale.

We were, I believe, what would be called religious people, yet I do not recollect that at this crisis of our fate we talked much about religious subjects. Once only, so far as I remember, did my father refer to such matters.

“Well, boys”, he said, “you are young to have to die like this, before you have seen anything of life, and I am sorry that I brought you with me. But it is no use being sorry; and who could have foreseen this? But remember we are in God’s hands, and nothing can happen to us without His knowledge; and whatever is His will for us, somehow or other that is the best for us, and if we die bravely, as Englishmen should, you may be sure that somehow we are serving Him in doing it, and when we meet him hereafter it will matter very little when or how we died, will it?”

And I think that, young as we were, we were inspired by his example, and we were chiefly comforted by the thought that at least we were dying together.

Time wore on, and at last the quick darkness of the tropics fell upon us. I think the strain of waiting had told upon us all. I know that I had several times caught myself nodding, and I think that little Gerald was, for a time at least, sound asleep; but my father never relaxed his watch for a moment. When the darkness had fallen, and the sounds of tropical night were all around us, he gave us a few words of kindly encouragement, and for the first time made a suggestion which seemed to be inspired by the faintest gleam of hope.

“Boys”, he said, “I do not know what they are doing, but if they do not show themselves soon I shall open the door as silently as possible, and we will try to slip off among the trees”.

“But”, I objected, “surely, father, they will be watching us on all sides”.

“Yes”, said my father, “most likely they are, but at least there is just a chance that we might get through. At the worst, if we fail, they can only kill us, and that is certainly what will happen to us if we stay here”.

When he said this I was all on fire to try the experiment at once; but then came to me the awful thought that perhaps we might not all escape, but that one of us might be killed; and suppose that one should be my father, what then should Gerald and I do? Or suppose it should be little Gerald, what use would my life be to me? I said nothing of these thoughts, but my enthusiasm for the plan was damped.

However, our ferocious enemies gave us no opportunity of putting it into execution. Suddenly out of the darkness came something like a stream of fire, and then in rapid succession another and another, and it seemed as though they fell upon the roof of our hut. For a moment we could not imagine what they were, but very soon the ingenuity of the savages dawned upon us. Though the walls of our hut were made of heavy half-logs deeply set in the ground, it was thatched only with palm-leaves. Our enemies had observed that vulnerable point, and were shooting on to the roof flaming arrows wrapped round with cotton steeped in oil.

In a few moments our roof was in a blaze, the hut was filled with blinding smoke, and the flaming fragments were falling all about us. We had to spring upon these fragments and stamp them out, or we should have been roasted to death; and while we were thus fighting for our lives with the flames, the Indians ran to where their battering-ram had fallen, picked it up and charged with it. With a tremendous crash the door and its bar broke from their supports, and in a moment we were surrounded by our foes. We could hardly see through the smoke, but already most of the burning thatch had fallen, and the onrush of the savages trampled out the flames.

“Back to back”, my father shouted, and in a moment somehow he and I and little Gerald were together in the centre of the hut, in the midst of an evil-smelling mass of red men, who seemed to be charging upon us simultaneously from all sides. Even then our pistols rang out, and I know that one or two at least went down upon my side; but I received a heavy blow upon the head from behind, and then I knew no more for a while of what was happening.

After a time (how long a time I have no means of knowing) I came to myself again; but, as it seems to me in trying to remember it, only very slowly and confusedly. At first I was conscious of a vague sense of pain, of a curious persistent jolting and a strong desire that the jolting would stop, and let me be at peace. It continued, however, and the sense of discomfort increased, and presently I became dimly conscious that I was moving in some way, or rather being carried in some peculiarly awkward and uncomfortable fashion. I think I had no memory for quite a long time of the fight or the Indians, or indeed of anything; and I may have remained in this condition of semi-stupor for a long period. It seemed like interminable ages to me, yet of course it may really have been but a few minutes (I have no means of knowing); but as my senses gradually reasserted themselves, I felt that at intervals I was being roughly pushed and scratched and struck by something from above, while I was confined in some uncomfortable way from beneath.

I am trying to describe the sensations of my recovery as well as I can, and yet I cannot really express them, for it was all indescribably vague and cloudy, and I seemed quite incapable of assigning causes to these sensations, or of understanding what was happening to me. But somehow by degrees it dawned upon me that I was upon the back of a horse or a mule, that the horrible jolting was caused by his stumbling over what seemed to be very uneven ground, and that the blows and scratches came to me from the low hanging branches of the trees under which we were passing.

I think it was when I had got about as far as this, that my consciousness seemed to return to me with a kind of jerk, to wake up again within me suddenly, and I realised that I was bound upon the back of this animal, that he was one of a large number of similar creatures, some of which were loaded with what seemed to be bales of goods, while others were ridden by the Indians. I saw also that many Indians were all about us on foot. And then with a shock, memory fully returned to me, and I realised that I must have been stunned by a blow in the burning hut, and that instead of killing me on the spot these Indians were carrying me off as a prisoner.

We were pushing through the forest at a good speed, and there under the trees the darkness was impenetrable. But almost as soon as my senses had fully returned to me we came out into a sort of clearing, where I could dimly see the mob of mounted and running savages which surrounded me. My first thought was, “Is my father also a prisoner?” And I raised a shout of “Father!” At least I tried to make it a shout, though I dare say in reality it was but a feeble cry. A moment of terrible suspense, and then a great wave of thankfulness came over me as I heard his cheery voice exclaim in reply from somewhere amidst the dusky mass in front of me:

“Ha, my boy, you are alive then!” he cried; “are you much hurt? “

“No, I think not “, I called in reply, “but my head feels queer. But are you hurt?”

I had only just time to hear “No” in reply, when an Indian thrust his face into mine and savagely told me to be silent, and at the same time I saw some sort of struggle taking place in front, which suggested that they were closing round my father and trying to keep him quiet also. The man who had checked me had spoken in a kind of bastard Spanish — half Spanish, half Portuguese, but spoken with a curious thick guttural accent that made it well-nigh incomprehensible; but when the ruffians round me spoke to one another, which was very rarely, they did so in some language of their own of which I knew nothing.

I could chatter well enough with the negroes in the curious lingua franca which they speak, and I tried in that to ask the Indians around me where they were taking us, and where my little brother was; but they either did not or would not understand me. At any rate they made no reply further than roughly to repeat the command to be silent when I tried to shout to my father once more. For some time after this I was in anxiety concerning the fate of little Gerald, but at last as we were crossing an open space I had the great joy of seeing him alive and apparently unhurt. A man who seemed of some consequence among the Indians was holding him in front of him as he rode, seated on the neck of his horse. I called to him at once to ask if he was hurt, and he called back:

“No, not much”, and, I think, asked after me. But the man who was holding him shook him roughly and ordered him to be quiet. Now that my mind was relieved as to the fate of my father and brother, I had leisure to consider my own condition, and it certainly did not improve on consideration. I found that I had been stripped absolutely naked, that my wrists were fastened together tightly behind me, and that my ankles were secured by a rope or thong which passed under the body of my steed.

In front of me was some sort of pack or roll of blankets, and to this also I was bound, apparently by the rope which tied it on to the horse. In my insensible condition I suppose I must have lain on this roll, tied to it as though I had myself been simply another package; and even now that I had come to myself I was unable to sit up and ride properly, or to extend a hand to save myself from striking against the lower branches of the trees under which we passed. Altogether my position was a vilely uncomfortable one, and when I add to that the fact that my head ached