The G.A. Henty

by G. A. Henty

  Leaving the two men to look after the horses, Edgar and Sidi entered the city. The scene was intensely interesting, Cairo being vastly more oriental in its appearance than Alexandria. The narrow streets were crowded; strict orders had been issued against plundering, Napoleon being anxious to win the good-will of the population, and merchandise of all sorts was displayed in the shops. Each trade had its special bazaar, the gold and silversmiths, the dealers in silks, in carpets, richly embroidered garments, tobacco, long pipes with jewelled mouthpieces, narghiles with their long twisted stems; workers in iron, vendors of the yellow shoes used by the women in walking, the dainty gold-embroidered velvet slippers for indoors, or the pointed upturned shoes of the men, had each its own bazaars scattered throughout the streets.

  Women, in their long dark blue garments, and the hideous white linen yakmash covering the whole face below the eyes, and falling to the breast, moved through the crowd, others of higher rank, seated on donkeys and attended by eunuchs, made their way back from the baths, or from visits to their friends. Stout Turkish merchants or functionaries rode along perched on high saddles, looking as if they would bear to the ground the little donkeys, that nevertheless went lightly along with their burden. French soldiers abounded, gazing into the shops, and occasionally making small purchases, chattering and laughing, the fatigues and sufferings of the march being now forgotten.

  There were comparatively few of the richer class in the streets, many of these having left the city at the approach of the French, while on the night before the latter entered there had been serious tumults in the city, and the houses of many of the beys had been broken into and sacked. Through all this crowd Edgar and Sidi wandered unnoticed.

  “It does not look as if there were any strong feeling against the Franks,” Sidi remarked, as they issued into a large square which was comparatively deserted, and seated themselves on a bench in the shade of the trees near a fountain.

  “No; but it is not here that one would expect to find any signs of disaffection. No doubt the traders are doing a good business, for every officer and soldier will be sure to spend all his pay in presents for those at home, or in mementoes of his stay here, and I am sure the things are pretty enough to tempt anyone. It is in the poorer quarters that trouble will be brewing.”

  Presently a group of French officers came along and seated themselves at a short distance from the two young Arabs. Having not the slightest idea that these could understand what they said, they talked loudly and unrestrainedly.

  “The thing is serious, gentlemen,” one of them, who was clearly of superior rank to the rest, said. “Since the news of this most unfortunate affair arrived, there has been a great change in the situation. For the last two days there has not been a single horse brought into the horse-market, and the number of bullocks has fallen off so greatly that the commissariat had difficulty this morning in buying sufficient for the day’s rations for the army, but the worst of it is, that assassinations are becoming terribly common, and in the last three days fifty-two men have been killed. There will be a general order out to-morrow that men are not to go beyond certain limits, unless at least four are together, and that they are not, under any pretext whatever, to enter a native house.

  “Besides those known to have been killed, there are twenty-three missing, and there is no doubt they too have been murdered, and their bodies buried. The Egyptian head of the police has warned us that there are gatherings in the lower quarters, and that he believes that some of Mourad’s emissaries are stirring the people up to revolt. A good many parties of Arabs are reported as having been seen near the city. Altogether I fear that we are going to have serious trouble; not that there is any fear of revolt, we can put that down without difficulty, but this system of assassination is alarming, and if it goes on, the men will never be safe outside their barracks, except in the main thoroughfares. One does not see how to put it down. An open enemy one can fight, but there is no discovering who these fellows are in a large population like this, and it would be of no use inflicting a fine on the city for every French soldier killed; that would affect only the richer class and the traders. There is no doubt, too, that the news that our fleet has been completely destroyed has dispirited the soldiers, who feel that for the present, an any rate, they are completely cut off from France.”

  “That is certainly serious, general,” one of the officers said, “and there seems only the project of the invasion of India or a march to Constantinople. After our march here, though it was but little over a hundred miles, and the greater portion of the way along the bank of the river, with our flotilla with stores abreast of us, neither of these alternatives look as easy as they seemed to us before we set foot in this country.”

  “No, indeed, colonel; our campaign at home gave us no idea of what the march of our army would be across these deserts, and it certainly seems to me that the idea of twenty thousand men marching from here to India is altogether out of the question. If our fleet had beaten the English, gone back and brought us twenty thousand more men, and had then sailed round the Cape, and come up to Suez to fetch us and land us in India, the thing would have been feasible enough, and in alliance with the Sultan of Mysore we might have cleared the English out altogether, but the land march seems to be impossible; a small body of men could never fight their way there, a large body could not find subsistence.”

  “No; I fancy that Constantinople will be the place at which we shall emerge. A march to Palestine will, of course, be hard, but it is only three or four days from the Egyptian frontier. I don’t fancy that there will be any difficulty on the way up through Syria and Asia Minor, and that almost everywhere we shall find cultivated land, and an abundant supply of provisions for the army. As for the Turks, I have no doubt that we shall thrash them, if they venture to interfere with us, as easily as we did the Egyptians. I have no fear for the safety of the army, and if the Egyptians venture on a rising here, before we start, we shall give them such a lesson that a few thousand men left here should have no difficulty in keeping the country in order.”

  They chatted for some time longer, and then moved off. Edgar repeated to his friend the substance of their conversation, and they then returned to their tent. The next day they wandered through the poorer portion of the town. Groups of men were assembled in many places, talking excitedly; when, as it sometimes happened, a party of French soldiers came along, they broke up, only to assemble at another spot. Sidi and Edgar mingled with them, and gathered that in a short time there would be trouble. It was agreed that so long as the whole French army remained there nothing could be done, but it was regarded as certain that it would soon break up. It was argued that they could not remain at Cairo. Mourad was gathering a large force higher up on the Nile. The Arabs were moving again. Damietta and Rosetta would have to be occupied. There were numbers of the Mamelukes between Cairo and Suez. The French could not remain quietly until the whole country was in arms against them. No doubt columns would be sent off, and as soon as they were gone, the time for a rising would come.

  They were going down a quiet lane when two men came out from a house. One of them looked fixedly at Sidi and exclaimed:

  “This is the Arab boy who got us into trouble at Alexandria; now it is our turn.”

  Paying no attention to Edgar, who was so entirely altered by his disguise as to defy recognition, the two men seized Sidi, and began to drag him into the house. Edgar sprang forward and struck one of them so heavy a blow in the face that he released his hold of Sidi and staggered back against the wall. Then with a shout of fury he drew his knife and rushed at Edgar. The latter also snatched his knife from his girdle, shifted it into his left hand, and threw himself into the usual boxing attitude with his left foot forward. The Maltese paused in his rush. This line of defence was altogether new to him. He had been engaged in many a fierce fray, but his opponents had always, like himself, fought with their knives in their right hands.

  The momentary indecision was fatal to him. With th
e speed of a practised boxer Edgar changed feet. Springing forward with his right foot in advance he caught his opponent’s wrist with his right hand, and snatched the man’s arm across his body, and plunged his own knife to the hilt under the other’s arm. He was but just in time, for the Greek, who, having hurled Sidi into the passage, had turned to the assistance of his comrade, was close upon him, giving vent to a hoarse howl of fury as his comrade dropped. Edgar faced him in the same attitude as that in which he had met the Maltese. The man paused out of reach and then crouched, swaying his body from side to side in readiness for a spring, but he never gave it. Sidi, although thrown heavily down, had leapt up again with the activity of a cat, and with a single bound from the door he reached the Greek and buried his knife between his shoulders. Almost at the same moment there was a shout from the other end of the street, and two or three men were seen running towards them.

  “Through the house, Sidi!” Edgar exclaimed.

  They rushed in, closed and fastened the door, and then ran out into the yard behind the house, which was fortunately empty. They were over the wall in a moment into another yard, entered a door that stood open, went noiselessly along the passage, for both were barefooted, opened a door and went out into the lane beyond, pausing for a moment before they did so to see that there were no blood-stains that would attract attention on their dress. As their arms were bare, there were but a few spots of blood to be seen. They wiped the blood from the hands that held the knives on the inside of their dress, and then walked quietly out, pulled the door to, but did not attempt to close it, walked quietly down the lane, took the first turning, turned again four or five times, and then quickened their pace to a fast walk, and in ten minutes emerged from the labyrinth of lanes they had been traversing. Up to this time not a word had been spoken from the moment they entered the house.

  “We are well out of that, Sidi,” Edgar said. “Who would have thought of our meeting those two scoundrels again? I am sorry that I had to kill that man, but it was his life or mine.”

  “You have assuredly again saved my life, Edgar. I am sure that they would have murdered me.”

  “No doubt they would,” Edgar said. “But as I was with you, and was not likely to stand and look on while they did it, it was a fight of two against two, and you did your share.”

  “It was a poor share, brother. You drew off the attention of the man that would have killed me, and I had but to strike him down without danger to myself. Again you have saved my life.”

  “That may be, but I think that you in turn saved mine, for I doubt whether I should have got on as well with the second fellow as I did with the first.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt you would!” the young Arab said confidently. “How did you kill him? I saw nothing of it.”

  “It was simple enough,” Edgar replied, and related how the short conflict had begun and ended.

  “You must really teach me these things, Edgar. It is wonderful how quick you are, and with a knife too; for I have heard you say that in England people never fight with knives.”

  “One learns quickness from boxing,” Edgar said carelessly. “That is one of the advantages of it. It teaches one to think quickly and act quickly; and if one can fight with one’s fists, of course one can fight with a knife. It was a boxing trick I used, and a very useful one, and more easy than it would be against a good boxer, who would have hit me with his left before I could strike my blow, but of course this fellow had no idea of doing that, so that unless I had failed to grasp his wrist it was a certainty. Did the other hurt you? I heard you go down with a crash.”

  “I feel stiff,” Sidi replied, “and I expect that I shall be a good deal worse to-morrow, for I am sure I am bruised all down the back; but that is no matter. It is a good thing that we have done with those two men; I felt sure that they would try to be revenged on us if they ever fell in with us again.”

  The next day, the anniversary of the establishment of the republic, was celebrated by a grand review of the troops, and a few days later the news came that Desaix’s division, which had set out in pursuit of Mourad on the day after the battle of the Pyramids, had overtaken him, and another fierce fight had ensued. The charge of the Mamelukes had broken one of the French squares, and for a time great confusion prevailed, but Desaix shouted to the soldiers to throw themselves down on the ground, and then the next square opened so terrible a fire on the Mamelukes that they were forced to retreat. Two days later Kleber marched with his division for Damietta.

  In the native quarter the agitation continued, but so far peace had not been broken, and the French took little heed of what was passing, and had no idea that there was any danger of a rising. Had it been their object to provoke such movement, they could hardly have taken steps better calculated to bring it about. They had, in the first place, after their arrival proceeded to largely strengthen and increase the fortifications, and in doing so had altogether disregarded the feelings of the people, had pulled down houses and mosques, had desecrated tombs, and cleared away all buildings on spaces of ground across which the guns would play. This desecration of their sacred places had given rise to the deepest feelings of exasperation among the people.

  In the next place, many of the fortifications were converted so that the guns menaced the town instead of the country round, and at the citadel especially, which dominated the whole city, guns were placed to overawe it. The next step was deeply resented by the people, for interfering with their ancient usages. Cairo was divided into fifty quarters, each of which had a wall and gate. These gates were closed at night, or indeed at any time, by the orders of the chief of the quarter, and the interruption caused by these breaks in the line of communication had given rise to many quarrels between the soldiers and the townspeople. The inconvenience was a distinct one, and the French, without giving any notice of their intentions, sent a strong party of engineers, supported by troops, to demolish all these gateways.

  The taxes were onerous in the extreme. By means of a council that had been appointed, consisting of notabilities who had, either by fear or bribery, been brought over to the side of the French, a crushing taxation was imposed, and this rendered the trading and upper classes, upon whom the burden principally fell, as hostile to the French domination as were the lower classes. Thus the French themselves had, by their high-handed conduct and their absolute disregard for the feelings and religious sentiments of the people, prepared a mine that was on the point of exploding.

  That afternoon a messenger arrived from the sheik, saying that he should be at the Pyramids on the following morning, at nine o’clock, and that he wished them to meet him there.

  “Would you take the men with us, Edgar?”

  “No, I think it would be best to leave them. They are well established here now, and have come to be looked upon by those around them as having left the tribe altogether and as intending to work as carriers. I should tell one or other of them to go into the town every day, and see how matters are going on. If your father, as I hope, decides to take no part in any attack on the French here, he can easily send a messenger to recall them.”

  Accordingly, the next morning they mounted at daybreak, rode down to Boulak, and were, with their horses, ferried across the river; then they mounted again and rode to the Pyramids. An hour later a cloud of dust was seen rising to the south-west, and in a few minutes the sheik, with fifty followers, rode up.

  “What is the news?” he asked his son as he leapt from his horse. “We heard that the people of Cairo are about to rise against the Franks, and numbers of our people have already ridden to join them in the attack.”

  “The city is in a very disturbed state, father, but as yet the rising has not begun.”

  “That is good, my son. We were unable to strike a blow at the Franks in the battle here; this time we will do our share, with the aid of Allah.

  “You do not think that that is well?” he broke off as he glanced at Edgar.

  “It is for you to decide, sheik,” Edgar
said. “For my part, I do not believe that the rising will be successful. It is true that a large number of the French are absent. Desaix has gone with his division to capture the northern provinces and drive out Mourad Bey and the Mamelukes. Kleber marched yesterday, they say, to Damietta, but there is still a strong force here. I doubt not that the rising will be successful at first. Many French soldiers away from their regiments will be cut down and killed, detached parties may be attacked and overpowered, but I believe that in the end their discipline will triumph. Their cannon will sweep the streets, the guns of the citadel and the new forts that they have armed will shell the town; and although, if a really desperate defence is made, the town can hardly be captured without great loss, Bonaparte is sure to do so sooner or later, for, if necessary, he can call back Kleber and Desaix. It is a matter of life and death to them. Were the country to hear that Cairo had been recovered and the French driven out with heavy loss, there would be a rush to arms. The army would, I believe, be able to fight its way down to Alexandria, but when beleaguered there, unable to obtain any stores from the country round, and their retreat from sea cut off, their position would be desperate.”

  “I do not say that you are not right,” the sheik said gravely. “You understand the mode of warfare of these Franks much better than I do, and have been right in all your predictions of what would happen; but whatever may be the danger, it is clear to me that it must be faced. Brave men do not shrink from encountering death, and how can a follower of the Prophet shrink from death in battle with infidels. Numbers of my countrymen will assuredly take part in the struggle, and did I ride away without sharing in the conflict, I should not be able to lift up my head again. It may be that it is fated that I shall not return; so be it; if it is the will of Allah that I should die now, who am I to oppose it?