Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  It comforted her to think that no other woman could get him now. It was almost worth while to die for that alone; for she could not have borne that another woman should have him since he despised her, and if it had come to pass she would have tried to kill that other. But there was no danger of such a thing now; and he would die first, and she would kiss him many times when he was dead, and then she would die also.

  The pool was all gone by this time, leaving a funnel-shaped hollow in the sand where it had been. If any water still leaked through from without it lost itself under the sand, and the man and the girl were at the bottom of a great natural well that was quite dry. Baraka looked up, and she saw a vulture sitting in the sun on a pinnacle, three hundred feet above her head. He would sit there till she was dead, for he knew what was coming; then he would spread his wings a little and let himself down awkwardly, half-flying and half-scrambling. When he had finished, he would sit and look at her bones and doze, till he was able to fly away.

  Baraka thought of all this, but her face did not change, and when she had once seen the vulture she did not look at him again, but kept her eyes fixed, without blinking, on her companion’s bent head. To her he seemed the most handsome man that had ever lived. There, beside him, lay his camel bag, and in it there were rubies worth a kingdom; and Baraka was very young and was considered beautiful too, among the wild people to whom she belonged. But her father had chosen her name in an evil hour, for she was indeed not blessed, since she was to die so young; and the man with the beard of spun gold and the very white skin did not love her, and would not even make pretence of loving, though for what was left of life she would have been almost satisfied with that.

  The hours passed, and the sun rose higher in the sky and struck deeper into the shady well, till he was almost overhead, and there was scarcely any shadow left. It became very hot and stifling, because the passage through which the air had entered with the water was shut up. Then the traveller took off his loose jacket, and opened his flannel shirt at the neck, and turned up his sleeves for coolness, and he crept backwards into the hollow where the ruby mine was, to shelter himself from the sun. But Baraka edged away to the very foot of the cliff, where there remained a belt of shade, even at noon; and as she sat there she took the hem of her one garment in her hands and slowly fanned her little feet. Neither he nor she had spoken for many hours, and she could see that in the recess of the rock he was sitting as before, with his forehead against his hands that were clasped on his knees, in the attitude and bearing of despair.

  He began to be athirst now, in the heat. If he had not known that there was no water he could easily have done without it through a long day, but the knowledge that there was none, and that he was never to drink again, parched his life and his throat and his tongue till it felt like a dried fig in his mouth. He did not feel hunger, and indeed he had a little food in a wallet he carried; but he could not have eaten without water, and it did not occur to him that Baraka might be hungry. Perhaps, even if he had known that she was, he would not have given her of what he had; he would have kept it for himself. What was the life of a wild hill-girl compared with his? But the vulture was watching him, as well as Baraka, and would not move from its pinnacle till the end, though days might pass.

  The fever began to burn the traveller, the fever of thirst which surely ends in raving madness, as he knew, for he had wandered much in deserts, and had seen men go mad for lack of water. His hands felt red hot, the pulses were hammering at his temples, and his tongue became as hot as baked clay; he would have borne great pain for a time if it could have brought sleep, for this was much worse than pain, and it made sleep impossible. He tried to take account of what he felt, for he was strong, and he was conscious that the heat of the fever, and the throbbing in his arteries, and the choking dryness in his mouth and throat, were not really his main sensations, but only accessories to it or consequences of it. The real suffering was the craving for the sight, the touch, and the taste of water; to see it alone would be a relief, even if he were not allowed to drink, and to dip his hands into a stream would be heaven though he were not permitted to taste a drop. He understood, in a strangely clear way, that what suffered now was not, in the ordinary sense, his own self, that is, his nerves, but the physical composition of his body, which was being by degrees deprived of the one prime ingredient more necessary than all others. He knew that his body was eight-tenths water, or thereabouts, but that this proportion was fast decreasing by the process of thirst, and that what tormented him was the unsettling of the hydrostatic balance which nature requires and maintains where there is any sort of life in animals, plants, or stones; for stones live and are not even temporarily dead till they are calcined to the state of quicklime, or hydraulic cement, or plaster of Paris; and they come to life again with furious violence and boiling heat if they are brought into contact with water suddenly; or they regain the living state by slow degrees if they are merely exposed to dampness. The man knew that what hurt him was the battle between forces of nature which was being fought in his flesh, and it was as much more terrible than the mere pain his fleshly nerves actually suffered from it, as real death is more awful than the most tremendous representation of it that ever was shown in a play. Yet a stage tragedy may draw real burning tears of sorrow and sympathy from them that look on.

  The traveller was a modern man of science, and understood these things, but the knowledge of them did not make it easier to bear thirst or to die of hunger.

  Baraka was not thirsty yet, because she had drunk her fill in the morning, and was not used to drink often; it was enough that she could look at the man she loved, for the end would come soon enough without thinking about it. All day long the traveller crouched in the hollow of the ruby cave, and Baraka watched him from her place; when it grew dark the vulture on the pinnacle of rock thrust its ugly head under its wing. As soon as Baraka could not see any more she curled herself up on the white sand like a little wild animal and went to sleep, though she was thirsty.

  It was dawn when she awoke, and her linen garment was damp with the dew, so that the touch of it refreshed her. The traveller had come out and was lying prone on the sand, his face buried against his arm, as soldiers sleep in a bivouac. She could not tell whether he was asleep or not, but she knew that he could not see her, and she cautiously sucked the dew from her garment, drawing it up to her mouth and squeezing it between her lips.

  It was little enough refreshment, but it was something, and she was not afraid, which made a difference. Just as she had drawn the edge of her shift down and round her ankles again, the man turned on his side suddenly, and then rose to his feet. For an instant he glared at her, and she saw that his blue eyes were bloodshot and burning; then he picked up the heavy camel bag, and began to make his way round what had been the beach of the pool, towards the passage through which they had entered, and which was now a dry cave, wide below, narrow at the top, and between six or seven feet high. He trod carefully and tried his way, for he feared the quicksand, but he knew that there was none in the passage, since he had walked through the water and had felt the way hard under his feet. In a few moments he disappeared under the rock.

  Baraka knew what he meant to do; he was going to try to dig through the dam at the entrance to let the water in, even if he could not get out. But she was sure that this would be impossible, for by this time her father and brothers had, no doubt, completely filled the spring with earth and stones, and had turned the water in the other direction. The traveller must have been almost sure of this too, else he would have made the attempt much sooner. It was the despotism of thirst that was driving him to it now, and he had no tool with which to dig — it would be hopeless work with his hands.

  The girl did not move, for in that narrow place and in the dark she could not have helped him. She sat and waited. By and by he would come out, drenched with sweat and yet parching with thirst, and he would glare at her horribly again; perhaps he would be mad when he came out and would kil
l her because she had brought him there.

  After some time she heard a very faint sound overhead, and when she looked up the vulture was gone from his pinnacle. She wondered at this, and her eyes searched every point and crevice of the rock as far as she could see, for she knew that the evil bird could only have been frightened away; and though it fears neither bird nor beast, but only man, she could not believe that any human being could find a foothold near to where it had perched.

  But now she started, and held her breath and steadied herself with one hand on the sand beside her as she leaned back to look up. Something white had flashed in the high sun, far up the precipice, and the sensation the sight left was that of having seen sunshine on a moving white garment.

  For some seconds, perhaps for a whole minute, she saw nothing more, though she gazed up steadily, then there was another flash and a small patch of snowy white was moving slowly on the face of the cliff, at some distance above the place where the vulture had been. She bent her brows in the effort to see more by straining her sight, and meanwhile the patch descended faster than it seemed possible that a man could climb down that perilous steep. Yet it was a man, she knew from the first, and soon she saw him plainly, in his loose shirt and white turban. Baraka thought of a big white moth crawling on a flat wall. She was light of foot and sure of hold herself, and could step securely where few living things could move at all without instant danger, but she held her breath as she watched the climber’s descent towards her. She saw him plainly now, a brown-legged, brown-armed man in a white shirt and a fur cap, and he had a long gun slung across his back. Nearer still, and he was down to the jutting pinnacle where the vulture had sat, and she saw his black beard; still nearer by a few feet and she knew him, and then her glance darted to the mouth of the cave, at the other end of which the man she loved was toiling desperately alone in the dark to pierce the dam of earth and stones. It was only a glance, in a second of time, but when she looked up the black-bearded man had already made another step downwards. Baraka measured the distance. If he spoke loud now she could understand him, and he could hear her answer. He paused and looked down, and he saw her as plainly as she saw him. She knew him well, and she knew why he had come, with his long gun. He was her father’s brother’s son, to whom she was betrothed; he was Saäd, and he was risking his life to come down and kill her and the man whom she had led to the ruby mines for love’s sake.

  He would come down till he was within easy range, and then he would wait till he had a fair chance at them, when they were standing still, and she knew that he was a dead shot. The traveller’s revolver could never carry as far as the long gun, Baraka was sure, and Saäd could come quite near with safety, since he seemed able to climb down the face of a flat rock where there was not foothold for a cat. He was still descending, he was getting very near; if the traveller were not warned he might come out of the cave unsuspiciously and Saäd would shoot him. Saäd would wish to shoot him first, because of his revolver, and then he would kill Baraka at his leisure. If he fired at her first the traveller would have a chance at him while he was reloading his old gun. She understood why he had not killed her yet, if indeed he wanted to, for it was barely possible that he loved her enough to take her alive.

  After hesitating for a few moments, not from fear but in doubt, she gathered herself to spring, and made a dash like an antelope along the sand for the mouth of the cave, for she knew that Saäd would not risk wasting his shot on her while she was running. She stopped just under the shelter of the rock and called inward.

  ‘Saäd is coming down the rock with his gun!’ she cried. ‘Load your weapon!’

  When she had given this warning she went out again and stood before the mouth of the cave with her back to it. Saäd was on the rock, not fifty feet above the ground, at the other side of the natural wall, but looked as if even he could get no farther down. He was standing with both his heels on a ledge so narrow that more than half the length of his brown feet stood over it; he was leaning back, flat against the sloping cliff, and he had his gun before him, for he was just able to use both his hands without falling. He pointed the gun at her and spoke.

  ‘Where is the man?’

  ‘He is dead,’ Baraka answered without hesitation.

  ‘Dead? Already?’

  ‘I killed him in his sleep,’ she said, ‘and I dragged his body into the cave for fear of the vulture, and buried it in the sand. Be not angry, Saäd, though he was my father’s guest. Come down hither and I will tell all. Then you shall shoot me or take me home to be your wife, as you will, for I am quite innocent.’

  She meant to entice him within range of the stranger’s weapon.

  ‘There is no foothold whereby to get lower,’ he answered, but he rested the stock of his gun on the narrow ledge behind him.

  ‘Drag out the man’s body, that I may see it.’

  ‘I tell you I buried it. I killed him the night before last; I cannot dig him up now.’

  ‘Why did you run to the mouth of the cave when you saw me, if the man is dead?’

  ‘Because at first I was afraid you would shoot me from above, therefore I took shelter.’

  ‘Why did you come out again, if you were in fear?’

  ‘After I had run in I was ashamed, for I felt sure that you would not kill me without hearing the truth. So I came out to speak with you. Get down, and I will show you the man’s grave.’

  ‘Have I wings? I cannot come down. It is impossible.’

  Baraka felt a puff of hot air pass her, just above her right ankle, and at the same instant she heard a sharp report, not very loud, and more like the snapping of a strong but very dry stick than the explosion of firearms. She instinctively sprang to the left, keeping her eyes on Saäd.

  For a moment he did not move. But he was already dead as he slowly bent forward from the rock, making a deep obeisance with both arms hanging down before him, so that his body shot down perpendicularly to the sand, where it struck head first, rolled over and lay motionless in a heap. The traveller’s was a Mauser pistol that would have killed as surely at five hundred yards as fifty; and the bullet had gone through the Tartar’s brain.

  Baraka sprang up the sandy slope and ran along the narrow beach to the body. In an instant she had detached the large brown water-gourd from the thong by which it had hung over Saäd’s shoulder, and she felt that it was full. Without a thought for herself she hastened back to the mouth of the cave where the traveller was now standing. His face was dripping with perspiration that ran down into his matted golden beard, his eyes were wild, his hands were bleeding.

  ‘Drink!’ cried Baraka joyfully, and she gave him the gourd.

  He gripped it as a greedy dog snaps at a bit of meat, and pulling out the wooden plug he set the gourd to his lips, with an expression of beatitude. But he was an old traveller and only drank a little, knowing that his life might depend on making the small supply last. A gourd of water was worth more than many rubies just then.

  ‘Are you very thirsty yet?’ he asked in a harsh voice.

  ‘No,’ answered Baraka bravely; ‘keep it for yourself.’

  His hand closed round the neck of the gourd and he looked up towards the rocks above. The vulture had come back and was circling slowly down.

  ‘You had better bury the body, while I go on working,’ said the traveller, turning back into the cave and taking the gourd with him.

  Baraka had marked the place where he had tried to dig for water and had almost disappeared in the quicksand. She took from the body the wallet, in which were dates and some half-dry bread, and then dragged and pushed, and rolled the dead man from the place where he had fallen. The vulture sat on the lowest ledge where his claws could find a hold, and though he watched her with horrible red eyes while she robbed him of his prey, he did not dare go nearer.

  The body sank into the moving sand, and Baraka had to roll herself back to firmer ground in haste to escape being swallowed up with the dead man. The last she saw of him was one brown
foot sticking up. It sank slowly out of sight, and then she went to the hollow where the ruby mine was and took up a piece of the broken crust, full of precious stones, and threw it at the vulture as hard as she could. It did not hit him, but he at once tumbled off the ledge into the air, opened his queer, bedraggled wings and struck upwards.

  Then Baraka sat down in the shade and slowly brushed away the dry sand that had got into the folds of her linen garment, and looked steadily at the mouth of the cave and tried not to realise that her throat was parched and her lips almost cracking with thirst, and that the traveller had a gourd almost full of water with him. For she loved him, and was willing to die that he might live a little longer; besides, if he succeeded in digging his way out, there would be plenty to drink, and when he was free she was sure that he would love her because she had made him so rich.

  The sun rose higher and at last shone down to the bottom of the chasm, and she sat in the narrow strip of shade, where she had passed most of the previous day. She was very thirsty and feverish, and felt tired, and wished she could sleep, but could not. Still the traveller toiled in the darkness, and from time to time she heard sounds from far away as of stones and loose earth falling. He was still working hard, for he was very strong and he was desperate.