I left her and went down toward the Sepulcher of Wet Bones. Day after dogged day we had pushed on or rested in the shade, night after moonlit night we had followed pilot stars or, in the deep dark, slept; and the long empty miles had fallen away behind us. We did not hurry to my chain, nor did we loiter. But on the day that we saw the plumes of the oasis against the burning sky, Timor drew his camel beside mine, and put his hand in mine. Thus we rode for about a mile. All who saw us wept, even slaves and camel drivers from Baeed whom I had not known till now, but Timor and I were two old hostlers, inured to blown dust and sand, so our eyes stayed dry.
We reached the stockade late in the afternoon, and there was a darkness in my soul that would not pass away, no matter how Isabel's farewell rang in my ears. It seemed more concerned with Sparrow, Kerry, and Holgar Blackburn than with me, and the dream I had dreamed of them was upon me again, just around the corner from my conscious thoughts and fears. The quarry master's scribe came out of the groves to meet us, showed no surprise or hardly interest in my return, and made an entry in his book. At once the smith welded shackles with chains to my wrists and fixed them to the iron rings I wore on my ankles. They were somewhat lighter than before, but that was no comfort to me because it only meant they were shorter, and so I had less arm and leg room. Then a guard I had not seen before led me around the building to look at the iron hook.
I started to ask a question in Arabic-stopped-then asked it anyway. If, after six and half years among the Beni Kabir, I did not confess to speaking their tongue, I would be suspected of some design. My concealing it before, as though it were a tool I had hidden away for some hour of need-seven years of silence depriving me of some little fellowship with the other prisoners-had come to precisely nothing.
"Is this the same hook 1 saw before?" I asked. "It looks like it."
"The same one, although not quite as sharp. But that's no comfort to the meat when it is hung."
In the dusk rose the awful sound of chains clanking in unison, faint at first, but growing louder. Torches flared, and the dust-smeared file trudged through the gate. The fore guard was called Majid, he who had taken Caidu's place after Holgar had danced a dance macabre with his chains; and I hoped to see Ibrim, the least cruel of our wardens, bringing up the rear. Instead I saw a brutal-looking European, his bared chest matted with reddish hair, who had come here since my departure.
Then I must stand with a face of stone while my whole skin prickled and crept. Several of the chained marchers were Negroes, and one, still in deep shadow, had a familiar look. In an instant more I knew. He was James Porter, called 'Giny Jim, and he had come upon evil days, I had not the least doubt that he recognized me, but he made not the slightest sign.
Then the rear guard, whom I took now for a Slovak or a Pole, showing powerfully built and even more brutal-looking in the lamp light, spoke to his fellow and then came up to me, grinning, and asked me if I spoke German.
"No, sir."
"But you're Omar, known as Sittash," the man went on in corrupt Arabic.
"Ah."
"I'm Otto Effendi. I've a little account with you. It's stood on the books before I came here. It appears that on your last day here your workmate, known as Kerry, jumped off the shard dump and killed himself."
"True, he did!"
"He shook hands with you before he jumped and you didn't jerk him back. When it was reported to the quarry master, you were charged with negligence of duty and neglect of property—you could have saved a slave past his prime but still worth a hundred dinars. But the master had already put you in the sheik's care—he did not want to offend his noble guest—so he postponed the punishment until you returned."
"What is it, ff you'll kindly tell me?"
"Not the hook. You're too good a workman. Also, your record had been good as to violations. However, you're to be taught a lesson. Forty blows of the kurbash—twenty on the sole of each foot—with the blunt side. Come with me to the block and I'll give them to you now. They'll be to welcome your return to the Sepulcher of Wet Bones."
In the midst of terror I thought of something, and a wave of happiness washed through me. Isabel had promised to come for me on the new moon of Ramadan, in a little over four months from now. It was possible that unforeseen circumstances would prevent it. Perhaps Jim and I could not do our part—his being chained and no longer having the run of the grounds increased our difficulties and dangers manyfold. Yet I was committed to the attempt, and Jim would go with me. I would go to any lengths not to be taken alive, and Jim would join me. If this, too, failed and we were brought back, we would surely be hung on the iron hook—both of us together, most likely, a sight for the prisoners' sore eyes—for that was the punishment for attempted escape, not to be slacked if the slave were worth a thousand and one dinars.
What did it mean? Why, it meant that in about four months our slavery would end! I would not have to stay the few years remaining of the twenty-year term I had set as the ultimate limit. By a bright road or a dark road, I would go forth. If I took the dark road, Captain Phillips's last command would remain unobeyed, a great wrong to God and man, but I would have done my best and failed, and all the Vindictive's company would be in the same boat.
Yet on the one occasion that Jim lost heart—the night watch had been doubled because of the desperate actions of several prisoners— I did not remind him of this certain outcome, and instead used subtlety to encourage him.
"I wish we could make a good try, when de time come, but it look to me hke we ain't even gwine make a good try," he told me, whispering in the dark.
"I'm not worried about that," I answered. "It's what will happen afterward that worries me."
"What you reckon, Cap'n?"
"Isabel will bring help to us, and we'll do our part. There'll be risk of getting killed, but none of getting caught—and I feel it in my bones that we'll live and go free. But what then, Jim? How are we going to start to obey Cap'n Phillips's orders? Maybe we could do what Sparrow said he could do—run up and kill—but that wasn't what Cap'n said. Two penniless jailbirds against the high and mighty, and a trail fifteen years cold!"
"Cap'n, is 'at what you studyin' about so hard lately?"
"Aye."
"It ain't how we gwine break out?"
"I'm thinking of two or three ways and will choose the best."
"Well, then, I ain't gwine to let it worry my mind no mo'."
"No, don't worry about that."
But in bracing up Jim, it turned out I had not concealed as much as I had revealed. For the first time I had put in words some plain facts that I had long ignored and would continue to ignore until Jim and I were free or until they, too, were shadows. I knew that I had told a truth that had haunted me, under my more urgent anxieties, for many years.
"As for how we gwine go 'bout de duty, I won't study 'bout 'at neither, 'cause I wouldn't get nowhere in fifteen years mo'. All I know is, you got to get high and mighty, too, for a fightin' chance to win."
Jim, too, had spoken truth.
The days crept on, the nights sped by, and the time to strike for freedom grew near. Jim and I had had one strange stroke of fortune in the cruel death of a Negro for the murder of his teammate. His body had been left to hang on the iron hook until it would fall; and as a consequence, all the prisoners had moved the black burnooses on which they slept from that end of the building. In the dead of night in this clear coast, we prepared a means of exit under the wall.