“You ought to be dead, you know, would have been dead if it hadn’t been for that man of yours,” with a backward jerk of his head toward the door. “You owe him your life, my friend. You know he came with us that night, borrowed a horse and the burnous you wouldn’t wear, and kept out of sight till the last minute. He was close behind you when we charged, lost you in the mêlée, and found you again just in the nick of time. I was cut off from you myself for the moment, but I saw you wounded, saw him break a way through to you and then saw you both go down. I thought you were done for. It was just then the tide turned in our favour and I managed to reach you, with no hope of finding you alive. I was never more astonished in my life than when I saw that little devil of a Japanese crawl out from under a heap of men and horses dragging you after him. He was bruised and dazed, he didn’t know friend from foe, bu he had enough sense left to know that you were alive and he meant to keep you so. He laid you out on the sand and he sat on you—you can laugh, but it’s true—and blazed away with his revolver at everybody who came near, howling his national war cry till I wept with laughter. And after it was all over he snarled like a panther when I tried to touch you, and, refusing any assistance, carried you back here on the saddle in front of him—and you were no light weight. A man, by Allah!” he concluded enthusiastically. Craven smiled at the Arab’s graphic description, but he found it in his heart to wish that Yoshio’s zeal had not been so forward and so successful. But there were other lives than his that had been involved.
“Omar?” he asked anxiously. The laughter died abruptly from Saïd’s eyes and his face grew grave.
“Dead,” he said briefly; “he did not try to live. Life held nothing for him without Safiya,” he added, with an expressive shrug that was eloquent of his inability to understand such an attitude.
“And she—?”
“Killed herself the night she was taken. Her abductor got no pleasure of her and Omar’s honour was unsmirched—though he never knew it, poor devil. He killed his man,” added Saïd, with a smile of grim satisfaction. “It made no difference, he was renegade, a traitor, ripe for death. The Chief fell to my lot. It was from him I learned about Safiya—he talked before he died.” The short hard laugh that followed the meaning words was pure Arab. He lit another cigarette and for some time sat smoking silently, while Craven lay looking into space trying not to envy the dead man who had found the rest that he himself had been denied.
To curb the trend of his thoughts he turned again to Saïd. Animation had vanished from the Arab’s face, and he was staring gloomily at the strip of carpet on which he squatted. His dejected bearing did not betoken the conqueror he undoubtedly was. That his brother’s death was a deep grief to him Craven knew without telling, but he guessed that something more than regret for Omar was at the bottom of his depression.
“It was decisive, I suppose,” he said, rather vaguely, thinking of the action of four days ago. Saïd nodded. “It was a rout,” he said with a hint of contempt in his voice. “Dogs who could plunder and kill when no resistance was offered, but when it came to a fight they had no stomach for it. Yet they were men once, and, like fools, we thought they were men still. They had talked enough, bragged enough, by Allah! and it is true there were a few who rallied round their Chief. But the rank and file—bah!” He spat his cigarette on to the floor with an air of scorn. “It promised well enough at first,” he grumbled. “I thought we were going to have an opportunity of seeing what stuff my men were made of. But they had no organisation. After the first half hour we did what we liked with them. It was a walk over,” he added in English, about the only words he knew.
Craven laughed at his disgusted tone.
“And you, who were spoiling for a fight! No luck, Sheik.”
Saïd looked up with a grin, but it passed quickly, leaving his face melancholy as before. Craven made a guess at the trouble.
“It will make a difference to you—Omar’s death, I mean,” he suggested.
Saïd gave a little harsh laugh.
“Difference!” he echoed bitterly. “It is the end of everything,” and he made a violent gesture with his hands. “I must give up my regiment,” he went on drearily, “my comrades, my racing stable in France—all I care for and that makes life pleasant to me. For what? To rule a tribe who have become too powerful to have enemies; to listen to interminable tales of theft and disputed inheritances and administer justice to people who swear by the Koran and then lie in your face; to marry a wife and beget sons that the tribe of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah may not die out. Grand Dieu, what a life!” The tragic misery of his voice left no doubt as to his sincerity. And Craven, who knew him, was not inclined to doubt. The expedient that had been adopted in Saïd’s case was justifiable while he remained a younger son with no immediate prospect of succeeding to the leadership of the tribe—there had always been the hope that Omar’s wife would eventually provide an heir—but as events had turned out it had been a mistake, totally unfitting him for the part he was now called upon to play. His innate European tendencies, inexplicable both to himself and to his family, had been developed and strengthened by association with the French officers among whom he had been thrown, and who had welcomed him primarily as the representative of a powerful desert tribe and then, very shortly afterwards, for himself. His personal charm had won their affections and he had very easily become the most popular native officer in the regiment. Courted and feted, shown off, and extolled for his liberality of mind and purse, his own good sense had alone prevented him from becoming completely spoiled. To the impecunious Frenchmen his wealth was a distinct asset in his favour, for racing was the ruling passion in the regiment, and the fine horses he was able to provide insured to them the preservation of the inter-regimental trophy that had for some years past graced their mess table. He had thrown himself into the life whole-heartedly, becoming more and more influenced by western thought and culture, but without losing his own individuality. He had assimilated the best of civilization without acquiring its vices. But the experience was not likely to conduce to his future happiness. Craven thought of the life led by the Spahi in Algiers, and during periods of leave in Paris, and contrasted it with the life that was lying before him, a changed and very different existence. He foresaw the difficulties that would have to be met, the problems that would arise, and above all he understood Saïd’s chief objection—the marriage from which his misogynous soul recoiled. Like himself the Arab was facing a crisis that was momentous. Two widely different cases but analogous nevertheless. While he was working out his salvation in England Saïd would be doing the same in his desert fastness. The thought strengthened his friendship for the despondent young Arab. He would have given much to be able to help him but his natural reserve kept him silent. He had made a sufficient failure of his own life. He did not feel himself competent to offer advice to another.
“It’s a funny world,” he said with a half sigh, “though I suppose it isn’t the world that’s at fault but the people who live in it,” and in his abstraction he spoke in his own language.
“Plait-il?” Saïd’s puzzled face recalled him to himself and he translated, adding: “It’s rotten luck for you, Sheik, but it’s kismet. All things are ordained,” he concluded almost shyly, feeling himself the worst kind of Job’s comforter. The Arab shrugged. “To those who believe,” he repeated gloomily, “and I, my friend, have no beliefs. What would you? All my life I have doubted, I have never been an orthodox Mohammedan—though I have had to keep my ideas to myself bien entendu! And the last few years I have lived among men who have no faith, no god, no thought beyond the world and its pleasures. Islam is nothing to me. ‘The will of Allah—the peace of Allah,’ what are they but words, empty meaningless words! What peace did Allah give to Omar, who was a strict believer? What peace has Allah given to my father, who sits all day in his tent mourning for his first-born? I swear myself by Allah and by the Prophet, but it is from custom, not from any feeling I attach to the terms. I have read a French translation of a life of Mohammed written by an American. I was not impressed. It did not tend to make me look with any more favour on his doctrine. I have my own religion—I do not lie, I do not steal, I do not break my word. Does the devout follower of the Prophet invariably do as much? You know, and I know, that he does not. Wherein then is he a better man than I? And if there be a future life, which I am quite open to admit, I am inclined to think that my qualifications will be as good as any true son of the faith,” he laughed unmirthfully, and swung to his feet.