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

If I remember rightly, I think I had decided that if there was to be some kind of intervention, the most likely form for it to take was that in some unexpected way the Government might have received warning of the forced marches which Martinez supposed to be unknown to them, and that they on their part might have sent a force to intercept and surround him. I knew that that was practically impossible, yet every other supposition seemed even more impossible still, unless I was to expect some sort of direct angelic intervention, and I knew that such things were rare in these latter days. But that something would happen either to kill me or to release me I felt quite assured. And when the something did happen, although it came in a way which had never for a moment occurred to me, it was only for the moment that I was startled.

I felt the touch of a hand, evidently extended from behind the tree, and immediately afterwards I was conscious that the rope which bound me with such painful tightness to the tree was relaxing. I remember it flashed through my mind that my unknown friend behind the tree was probably not aware that I was unable to stand, and should certainly fall as soon as that rope was removed, and that thus his amiable intentions would be frustrated, and the sentry’s attention attracted. But that was evidently foreseen. My deliverer waited until the nearest sentry’s back was turned, and then, as the rope slackened, an arm came round, caught me and drew me quickly and silently behind the tree. I had just time to recognise in the faint flash of the distant firelight that my rescuers were my father and the negro servant Tito, when the latter picked me up in his arms, and we executed a hurried and silent retreat into the forest.

When we had penetrated perhaps two hundred yards Tito laid me down, pulled out his huge clasp-knife and quickly cut the cords which still bound my wrists; but even when my arms were free I was unable to use them, because they had been so cramped and strained by the many hours of confinement. We exchanged a few hurried words, my father commiserating me for my sufferings, and I interrupting to ask whether he knew of Gerald’s fate, and in the same breath assuring him that I had seen him since his death. My father seemed hardly to understand; I think that he supposed me to be delirious — as indeed I well might have been, considering all that I had been through; at any rate he said that he knew of Gerald’s death, and that we must not stop to talk now, but must make every effort to get as far away from the camp as possible before my escape should be discovered. I was a helpless burden upon them, as I could not walk a step, and even the motion of being carried, gently and carefully as Tito did it, cost me harrowing pain.

In the dense forest the darkness was intense, and it was necessary that we should move as silently as possible, and with the utmost circumspection; so our advance was naturally of the slowest. Every moment we expected that an alarm would be given, and that we should hear the commencement of a pursuit. But I hoped that the sentry might not notice my absence, because the tree to which I had been hound was at some distance from him, just within the shade at the edge of the wood, and the campfires, which, an hour or two earlier had lit up that place, were now dying down. Time went on and nothing happened, and we made such progress as we could, but even at the best it was painfully slow. I knew nothing of the direction in which we were going, for the only thing of which we thought was to put as great a distance as possible between ourselves and that camp. Soon we found that the ground was rising — in places rather steeply.

All too soon for us the dawn came, and the earth leaped from dark night into broad daylight with the suddenness peculiar to the tropics. At the first light Tito laid me gently down, and asked my father to sit with me while he looked round for some place of concealment, as it was clear that we were still far too near the camp to avoid discovery unless we contrived to hide ourselves. Also it seems that I was rapidly sinking into stupor of exhaustion, and Tito, who knew something about medicine as practised among the negroes, thought it would be dangerous for me to push on farther.

After some search he found a place that would suit us admirably, and came back to carry me to it. It was a huge tree of unknown age, the heart of which had gradually rotted away, so that there was quite a chamber inside it, carpeted deeply by a soft powdering of decayed wood — a kind of natural sawdust. To all appearance the tree was as perfect and as sound as those around it, and the only way to enter this sylvan chamber was by climbing up the tree to a height of some fifteen feet, and then lowering oneself through a hole, whence perhaps a branch had fallen a century ago. The problem was how to get me into this retreat; but it was a case of necessity, and at last the thing was accomplished.

My father slipped off the poncho which had been given to him the day before. I was laid on that, and the corners were tied together so as to make a kind of cradle. Through that Tito slipped the rope which had bound me to the tree, which he had had the forethought to bring with him, rightly thinking that in our desperate condition almost anything might come in useful. Then he climbed the tree to a certain height, my father throwing up the end of the rope to him, and slowly and with great care he raised me from the ground and got me wedged between the trunk of the tree and a huge liana. Then he descended and helped my father to mount, and left him to hold on precariously to the liana and to support me, while he himself climbed a little higher, obtained a foothold close to the hole, and then by means of the rope drew me up and rested me beside him. Then he dropped lightly down upon the dust, which made that inside floor much higher than the level of the ground outside. My father then climbed up the few remaining feet, and carefully lowered me down into the arms of Tito. Soon they had me laid upon the floor, and it seemed almost comfortable to be able thus to rest in a recumbent position after so many hours of misery.

I hoped to sleep, but fever had seized upon me, and I believe that most of that day I was barely conscious, and at times even delirious. I knew nothing of what was going forward, but my father told me afterwards that, almost as soon as we were established, they heard a great noise from the direction of the camp, and an amount of shouting which evidently betokened great excitement. The faithful Tito climbed to the top of our tree and found that, because of the rising ground, he was able to see most of the camp. He reported much hurry and tumult, and presently declared that large bodies of soldiers were being sent into the forest in several different directions, evidently to search for us.

You see, our recapture was of enormous importance to the plans of Martinez. He had succeeded in altogether eluding the Government forces which had been sent out in pursuit of him. By several days of almost incredible forced marching he had contrived to lead his men into a position from which they could easily attack a town of great importance. His manoeuvre was entirely unexpected by the Government army whom he had deluded into the idea that he had moved in the opposite direction; indeed, they were occupied in hunting down the small band which he had sent down there in order to mislead them — they supposing that that was his entire army. He had halted his men at the spot where we had made his acquaintance, to give them a couple of days’ rest after the forced marching before they swept down upon the town, and in that wild district it was reasonably certain that he could not have been seen or his presence reported.

But if I and my father, or even one of us alone, could escape, could by some incredible means make his way to the nearest house or village, and thence send the alarm down to the seaport city, all Martinez’s advantage would be lost; and since he had risked everything on this one bold move we may say that his cause would be lost too, and his life unquestionably forfeited. Therefore it was of capital importance for him to get hold of us at all costs, and so, instead of allowing his men to rest as he had intended them to do, he sent them out to range the forest in search of us. He knew well that we could not have gone far, for he knew that I at least was sorely wounded, and that my father had no weapon; nor can it have seemed conceivable to him that we could escape for a single day the myriad dangers that surrounded us on every side in that forest. He did not know that we had the invaluable assistance of Tito, who knew all about these things, and was perfectly capable of protecting himself in the forest, and of wringing subsistence out of it.

They told me that groups of soldiers again and again came past the very tree in which we were hiding. They even overheard scraps of their conversation, and Tito, who knew their language perfectly, reported that they spoke much of witchcraft and of a supernatural deliverance. It was evident from what they said that the superstitions of Martinez also had been aroused, and that he was in a condition of panic fear. He thought (it seems one of his officers had told him so) that in killing Gerald he had brought ill-luck upon himself; he was unable to understand, as indeed were all of them, how my father could suddenly have got free when he was obviously securely bound, and he thought of my disappearance when I was practically at the point of death, as another instance of supernatural interference.

I remember that my father said that at one time some soldiers had thrown themselves down to rest quite close to the tree. Tito listened eagerly to their conversation, anxious to pick up any information that might be of use to us; and my father was oppressed with the fear that I might reveal our hiding-place by giving vent to low delirious mutterings. Fortunately this did not happen, and in the course of the afternoon I fell into a deep refreshing sleep, from which they wakened me only when darkness had fallen, and it was time to set out once more.

Meantime Tito had risked his life by climbing out of our refuge more than once to fetch some water for me, and some leaves of a plant which he knew, which he chewed into a paste and laid upon my burnt feet and some of the worst of my wounds. I do not know what this remedy was, but its effect was magical in the relief of pain, for when I was awakened in the evening, though still weak and in great suffering,