by Grant Allen
‘True for you!’ the Irishman put in with reckless bravery. ‘Our niggers are too empty, and too tired to fight anny more. When Wolseley comes, he’ll come to find us all beautiful specimens for the College of Surgeons. I can see meself stuck up in a glass case: “Skeleton of the late Mr. T. A. Considine; typical example of the Black Celts of Ireland”!’
‘And if an assault’s made, what shall you do?’ Linnell asked with scarcely trembling lips.
His cousin looked back at him like an English soldier. ‘Die fighting to the last by Gordon’s side,’ he answered unhesitatingly.
‘Hear, hear!’ the Irishman echoed with martial enthusiasm. ‘The blood of our ancestors spurs us on to action. We’ll be worthy of the fighting Considines of County Cavan.’
Linnell looked them full in the face for one minute in doubt. Then he made up his mind to speak his thought freely. ‘Austen,’ he said, turning round to his kinsman with a frankly cordial air, ‘we’re cousins, after all. Till we came to Khartoum, we never really knew one another. This siege has brought us face to face at last. Here we’ve learned to be brothers at heart, as we ought to be. There were faults on both sides, no doubt — misapprehensions, misconceptions, groundless fears; but we’ve forgotten them all, and corrected our impressions.’
Sir Austen seized his cousin’s hand warmly. ‘Charlie,’ he said— ‘let me call you Charlie — you’re a good fellow, and I know it now. There’s nothing like a siege to make men friends. If ever we two get back to England alive, we’ll stand on very different terms with one another henceforth from any we stood on before we came here.’
‘Very well,’ Linnell went on gravely, returning his grasp. ‘We’ll fight to the last, if you will, with Gordon. But we needn’t make up our minds to die, unless the Mahdi’s people insist upon killing us. For my own part, I’ve reasons for wishing to return. There are other mistakes I feel I should clear up. I’m not a soldier, like you, Austen; but if we must be attacked, I’ll stop at the gate here and fight it out like a man by your side. Still, I want to say one thing to you; and to you, too, Considine, for it’s always well to be prepared against all emergencies. I speak Arabic, and I know the ways and manners of Islam as well as I know the streets of London or Paris. If the worst comes to the worst, as come it will, stick by me, both of you. If we’re all killed, well and good; somebody in England will be all the richer for it. But if by any stroke of luck we should manage to survive, remember, you stand no chance alone; you’re both too obviously and unmistakably Christian to run the gauntlet of the Mahdi’s forces. But by my side, and with my knowledge of Arabic and of Mussulman ways, you may get away safely in spite of everything.’
Sir Austen laid his hand gently on his new friend’s shoulder.
‘My dear fellow,’ he said, in a tone of unwonted kindness and cordiality, ‘for heaven’s sake, don’t deceive yourself about this. Don’t lay that flattering unction to your soul. Make up your mind at once for the worst. Escape or safety is not on the cards. Unless I greatly mistake my man, the Mahdi means to attack us before to-morrow morning; and if he does, before to-morrow night, as sure as fate, we shall be all dead men. In our present condition, resistance is useless. We may sell our lives hard, but that’s all. I can understand that you may want to get away. There may be somebody in England for whose sake you might wish to escape the massacre. That’s natural, quite. But a massacre there’ll be, as certain as death, and not a living soul in Khartoum — of the Christians, at least — will ever escape from it to tell the story. We may die hard, but die we must, in any case; so the best thing for us all to do is to make our minds up to it well beforehand.’
Linnell answered without the faintest display of emotion.
‘Very well; I’m prepared. Gin I mun doy, I mun doy, and there’s no help for it. I’ll stay by your side here and fight it out. But, Austen, one or other of us may happen to escape. If it’s you, take this address I give you; you’ll see whose it is. Write to her that I never forgot her to the last; tell her I began to fear I might somehow have been mistaken; ask her to forgive me for having ever distrusted her.’
Sir Austen took the scrap of paper in the sacred silence with which men receive such things in a great crisis. He folded it up reverently in his pocket-book without looking at it. Then he wrote a few lines in pencil himself, on a page torn out from the notebook at the end, and handed it over to Linnell in return.
‘Charlie,’ he said in a very regretful voice, ‘you’re more likely by far to get away safe through this rabble of insane fanatics than I am. Your Arabic and your local colour may pull you through. I’ve written a word or two there to my wife. I’ve told her how much I mistook your character and conduct till we learned to know one another here. I’ve asked her to look upon you — if I should fall — as the head of the house; you know my meaning. I’ve told her how much your companionship’s been worth to me. If ever you get away clear from this detestable hole — by Jove! how they’re fusillading away at the gate now — tell her I loved her with my last breath, and that my last thoughts were of her only.’
‘Boys,’ Considine said, holding his pistol hard, ‘I’m sorry to be behind ye both in this matter of sentiment. I’ve got no wife, and I’ve got no sweetheart. But it’s not me intention to let meself be killed here for nothing, I tell ye. I shall bowl over as many of these niggers as I can; but when the fun’s all over and done, I mean to walk across Africa on me own legs, till I come out at Cape Town, if need be, before ever I’ll let a nigger put daylight through me. So if ye two have any commands for home, regard me as the post — I’m the man to take them. It’s me firrum intention to be buried at peace in the family vault of all the Considines, in me father’s own place, in dear old County Cavan.’
As they spoke, Sir Austen took out his notebook once more.
‘Charlie,’ he said, scribbling down a few words on a blank page, ‘take that up for me to the palace, to Gordon. The attack, I’m sure, will come from this side. I’ve been watching these fellows, and I see they’re massing their men for the Bourré Gate. We must concentrate all our forces here; and I wish I felt sure of that fellow Faragh.’
Linnell took the note, and turned on his heel, with the quiet, gliding movement of the true Oriental. Considine gazed after him with an approving glance.
‘He’s a good fellow that,’ he said, turning to Sir Austen; ‘and it’s very generous of him to propose to stand by you if we have to make our way out through all these blackguards.’
‘And by you too,’ Sir Austen added quietly.
‘By me! Ah, yes; there’s no reason there. But to help you out of Khartoum, I call really self-sacrificing.’
‘Why so?’ Sir Austen asked, with a faint tinge of distrust in the tone of his voice.
‘Why! Because, me dear sir,’ the Irishman answered, with true Irish bluntness, ‘if you were to be killed, and he were to get away, he’d be a bar’net of the United Kingdom, for he’s next in succession to the Linnell title.’
Sir Austen glanced up at him from his seat on a step with a sudden glance of suspicious doubt.
‘And if he were to be killed,’ he muttered, ‘and I were to get away, I’d be next in succession to a far finer property than ever the Linnells of Thorpe Manor could lay claim to.’
‘Ye mean the pills?’ Considine suggested, with a cautious smile.
‘Ah, you know all about it, then,’ Sir Austen answered, not without some slight symptoms of embarrassment. ‘Yes, I mean the pills, and whatever thereby hangs. Charles Linnell’s a rich man; and his money’d take the mortgages off the Manor without feeling it. But I’ll stand by him still, in spite of that, if he’ll stand by me; for, after all, he’s a rare good fellow. Not that we need either of us trouble ourselves about titles or estates as things go now; for before to-morrow evening, Considine — I tell you the truth — we’ll be all dead men in a heap together. The Mahdi’ll be in possession of Khartoum by that time, and he’ll treat every man-jack of us as he treated Hicks Pasha’s arm
y before us — not a soul will get back alive to England. Don’t buoy yourself up with any false hopes of escape or terms. Khartoum’s doomed, and every European life within it.’
CHAPTER XXI.
AN ANXIOUS MOMENT.
A few hours later, on that terrible Sunday — the last before the final disaster at Khartoum — Sir Austen found himself in the great square of the town, in front of the Governor’s house, where a starving crowd of natives was already gathered, eager to hear the last news of the deliberation going on inside the palace. Sir Austen had been relieved for the time from his dangerous and difficult post at the Bourré Gate, and had strolled into the city to learn for himself what hopes the Governor still had as to their chances of holding out till the army of rescue arrived to reinforce them.
It’s wonderful how callous people get at last to the dangers of a siege, when once they’re in the midst of it. The constant rain of bullets from every side passes absolutely unnoticed. Men cross open spaces under fire without seeming to observe it. Even a shell exploding causes far less commotion than the fall of an omnibus-horse would cause in Regent Street. So Sir Austen strolled on carelessly, undeterred by the distant thud of firing, through those covered streets, overhung with matting to keep off the heat of the mid-day sun, and past the hungry blacks who peered now and again from darkling doorways in the wall, greeting the English officer as he strode by with a military salute in true Soudanese fashion. Sir Austen saluted in return, and stepped on briskly. But the square, when he reached it, was alive with an eager throng of superior natives, both soldiers and civilians in every possible stage of weariness and misery. A long siege had left its mark on all. Famine stared visibly from every face. The gaunt Egyptians looked gaunter than ever: the stalwart negroes were worn to shadows. Among them the officer’s quick eye was not long in picking out once more the still burly figure of his Irish friend Considine.
‘What’s up?’ Sir Austen asked with considerable curiosity, forcing his way not without some difficulty through the buzzing throng. ‘A deputation to Gordon?’
‘Ye’ve hit it,’ Considine answered lightly, with his accustomed easy, devil-may-care expression. ‘The precise game. A dozen of the chief niggers are in conference with the Governor, and they want him to surrender at discretion this very morning. But they don’t know Gordon. And from what I can guess of these fellows’ lingo, I fancy Gordon don’t see it in the same light as they do. They seem to me to be grumbling in their own tongue — which is a grand one for the purpose — and I can certainly answer for it that we’ve all of us got a right to, for we’re confoundedly hungry.’
As he spoke, an Arab a step or two in front turned round to them with an intelligent air and smiled. Considine was the first to recognise who it was among the confused crowd of similar white Oriental dresses.
‘Why, man, hanged if it isn’t your cousin again!’ he cried, with a sudden look at Sir Austen. ‘Ah, but he’s a splendid Arab! The devil himself wouldn’t know him from a born Mussulman. Linnell, ye rascal, come here and tell us what the bother’s all about. Ye can understand these niggers’ unconscionable lingo. Tell us what the dickens the black fellows are haggling over.’
‘Hush!’ Linnell answered, coming over to them with an almost reverential air. ‘Hush! He’s going to speak. Let’s hear what he says. I’ll translate it all for you as well as I can afterwards.’
Something in the tone of his voice compelled attention. Considine and Sir Austen looked up at once, and saw standing on the steps of that whitewashed palace the well-known figure of a tall and commanding-looking man, in white European uniform and dark-red fez, that showed off to the utmost advantage the chastened strength and majesty of his sunburnt face and grizzled gray moustaches. A buzz ran wave-like through the assembled crowd — a whispered buzz of ‘Gordon! Gordon!’ The Governor raised his right hand for a moment, palm outward, as if to bespeak silence; and all at once a sudden stillness fell like magic even upon that motley crowd of noisy, chattering Orientals. One second they surged like a summer sea; then they looked up eagerly. Every man held his face upturned to hear, as Kashim Elmoos, Gordon’s most trusted native officer, called out loudly in Arabic: ‘The Governor will address you.’ But for some minutes the Governor himself only glanced round impressively with his deep-blue eyes: his silence and his look, all pity and resolution, seemed well-nigh as eloquent in their way as his soldierly language.
The crowd waited patiently, hanging upon his lips. Then Gordon, steadying himself with his hand on Kashim Elmoos’s shoulder — for he was ill that day, and had been up all night making the round of the ramparts — gazed about him compassionately on that silent sea of eager black faces, and began to speak in rapid and fluent, but very clear and distinct, Arabic. Neither Sir Austen nor Considine could understand one word he said; but his winning smile, his cheery voice, his resolute manner, his quick cadences of emotion as he passed in turn from chiding to exhortation, made them almost able to follow in rough outline the general sense of what he was driving at. As for the straining mob of terrified Orientals, they hung upon his words in breathless silence, and stroked their chins, muttering now and then in concert, ‘Allah is great. Gordon says well. He has faith to shame us. With Allah’s help we shall hold out yet till hope comes of deliverance.’
But the Governor’s face belied his confidence. As he went on with his speech, even in that dire extremity, some electric spark from the great man’s heart seemed to run now and again through the entire assembly, so wonderfully did he inspire them all with the sense of personal devotion. They thrilled responsive. At one point, the Governor’s voice sank low and musical.
‘What’s he saying to them now?’ Considine asked in an almost inaudible whisper of Linnell, unable any longer to repress his curiosity.
‘He’s telling them he feels it all, not for himself — not for his reputation — not even for England — but for his people’s sake — these poor sheep of Soudanese, whom he has tried so hard to save and to benefit. If all is lost, it is for them that he grieves over it. Four long days and nights he has never slept nor closed his eye; he has gone round the posts incessantly, and personally encouraged his starved and wearied soldiers to stand firm till help arrives from Wolseley. The question of food, he says, has worn him to a shadow. He is hungry for his people. But all will yet go well. If they will but hold out for three days longer, Stewart’s troops will be here: and for his part, come what may, he will never, never, never consent to surrender. They may give up the town if they like; that is their look-out; but he and we and Kashim Elmoos will die fighting to the last for God and duty.’
‘Hooray!’ Considine cried out enthusiastically, at the top of his voice; ‘and so say all of us, too, General. We won’t give way. We’re with you, we’re with you!’
Gordon looked down with a placid, childlike smile in the direction of the suddenly interrupting voice, and added in English loud and clear:
‘My determination is unshaken. I will hold out to the end. England will never allow us to perish. But even if she does, we must do our duty.’
Sir Austen pressed his way up through the surging crowd, now loosed in speech once more, and eagerly discussing this last deliverance of their Governor’s.
‘I have news for him,’ he murmured to Linnell, as they pressed forward together through the wearied throng; ‘I believe help is nearer even than he supposes. We took a man prisoner this morning near the Bourré Gate, trying to make his way as close as he could as a spy. From what Abdul Ahmed, who examined him, tells me, I think he can be relied upon for giving truthful information.’
They reached the steps, and moved slowly up to where Gordon himself had now taken his seat in a wicker-chair on the platform of the palace. Occasional bullets still whizzed past them with a whir; but the Governor nevertheless received his friends with that genial smile which never forsook him even in the last extremity.
‘What goes at the gate, Linnell?’ he asked, grasping Sir Austen’s hand hard, and looking down
into his very soul with those clear blue eyes of his. ‘All well towards Bourré?’
‘All well, as yet, I trust,’ Sir Austen answered, trying his best to imitate his great leader’s cheeriness. ‘But we expect a determined assault to be made before long. We took a dervish prisoner this morning in the outer ditch, attempting, as I believe, to scale the rampart and communicate with Faragh — —’
Gordon’s eyes gleamed steely at the treacherous Pasha’s name.
‘Very likely!’ he answered, with a quietly contemptuous air. ‘Faragh can’t be trusted. I made that man, and I know now, if he dared, he would willingly betray me. He has a cur’s nature, I fear. But I’m not afraid of him. If we die, at least we have done our duty; though, even now, two hundred men would be enough to save us — two hundred Englishmen, of Probyn or Burnaby’s sort. With their help we could hold out for another twelvemonth. Well, how about your prisoner?’
Sir Austen smiled back at that calm, heroic face of a great man struggling with a sea of adversity.
‘My prisoner tells us,’ he went on, in a very quiet voice, ‘that the Mahdi has news of a severe defeat of his northern detachment on Saturday week by Stewart’s troops at Abu Klea. He understands that Stewart himself is wounded or dead, but that his column has succeeded in reaching Metamneh. The dervish tells us that the army of relief made a reconnaissance in force at Metamneh on Wednesday, aided by our four steamers, which he seems to think have effected a junction with them; and he says that in the Mahdi’s camp everyone is of opinion an assault must be made not later than Tuesday on all available points, for fear the army of relief should arrive by Wednesday or Thursday.’
The Governor listened to this exciting news with profound interest.
‘My own information looks the same way,’ he murmured, with that imperturbable calm of a brave spirit. ‘Depend upon it, we are only three or four days off now from our deliverance. I have wrestled with this trouble in prayer, and it is passing away. It is passing away, I feel certain; but which way it will pass away, we can’t tell yet. My grief is all for my poor starved people. I believe our steamers must really have met Stewart’s detachment. But that makes our danger all the greater for the moment. Everything depends upon the next four days. The Mahdi’s too good a strategist, you may be sure, not to know his one chance of success lies in preventing a junction. The nearer help comes to us, the more eager the enemy will be to hasten his assault. He’ll attack us to-night, I believe — he’ll attack before morning. I must see your prisoner, Sir Austen. Where have you left him?’
