Читать книгу A Son of the Sahara - Louise Gerard - Страница 9

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When the skirmish was over, Barclay and his junior, with half a dozen Hausas and a lantern or two, made a round of the compound, counting the dead and attending to the wounded.

His own garrison was practically unscathed, but his guns had played grim havoc with the attacking party; fully fifty dead and wounded lay within the stockade.

Barclay went about his task cautiously. He knew Arabs and their little ways. Giving no quarter themselves, they expected none, and would sham death and then stab those who came to succour them.

Among the prisoners was a lean, lithe man of about forty, who appeared more stunned than hurt from a bullet that had grazed his forehead. Barclay came across the wounded man just when the latter was coming back to consciousness. Although in dress he differed in no way from the rest of his following, the knives in his belt were heavily jewelled, and gems flashed on his brown fingers.

By the light of a lantern the Englishman scanned him, noting his array of jewels and his cruel, arrogant, commanding face, the face of a savage leader.

"My son," he said to the subaltern, "I believe your joke has come to pass."

"My joke!" the youngster repeated blankly.

Then the light of understanding came to his face.

"You don't mean to say this cruel-looking cuss is the Sultan Casim Ammeh!"

"I'd be surprised to hear he wasn't," Barclay responded.

Suspicious of his man, and knowing him to be no more than stunned, the captain had him handcuffed and locked up in one of the inner rooms of the fort.

When the wounded had been attended to they were left in the guardroom, and the little garrison retired once more within the fort.

The enemy had had such a thorough beating that Barclay did not expect another attack. For all that, he was taking no risks.

Just before daybreak, when the world was a place of curling white mist and greyness, there came a stampede of horses. And, above the thunder of hoofs, the wild Mohammedan war-cry.

"Deen! Deen Muhammed!"

That wild swoop and yell was the Sultan's usual way of attacking.

"It seems we didn't get our man last night," Barclay remarked, as the guns were trained in the direction of the sound. "According to report, this is his usual method of attack."

Out of the greyness of approaching morning a mêlée of wild horsemen appeared. Their leader was hardly the man Barclay had pictured to himself as the blood-stained Arab chief, but a smooth-faced youth in white burnoose, mounted on a huge black stallion.

More than this Barclay did not wait to see. He opened fire on the massed horsemen, his guns playing deadly havoc. Within a few minutes their ranks broke. In wild disorder they turned and stampeded back, soon to be lost in the screening mist.

"I don't think they'll face another dose," the junior remarked.

However, he was wrong.

Presently from out of the fog came the same wild war-cry and the thunder of hoofs. There was another charge with sadly depleted numbers.

For reckless courage Barclay had never seen anything to equal their youthful leader. Again and again he rallied his men and brought them on, until finally, with only about a dozen men, he swept through the deadly zone and on towards the fort.

In the very teeth of the Maxims his black horse literally flew over the high stockade. But the youngster was the only one who faced the guns. His following broke up and turned back under the fierce fusillade.

Although the leader got over the stockade alive, his horse did not. It crashed and fell dead beneath him. With a quick side spring—a marvellous piece of horsemanship—he avoided injury and, with drawn sword, rushed on towards the little fort.

The Hausas would have shot down the reckless youngster, but Barclay stopped them.

"We don't make war on children," he said in their dialect.

A closer inspection showed the leader of the Arab horde to be hardly more than a child; a handsome boy of about fourteen who, suddenly, realising that his followers had deserted him, now stood gazing round in a fierce, thwarted fashion.

On finding he was alone he did not retreat, although Barclay gave him every opportunity. Instead, he stood his ground and hurled a challenge in Arabic at the men clustered on the top of the fort.

Since there was no reply to that, he shouted again, this time in French.

"Who and what is the youngster?" Barclay asked. "He doesn't look any more Arabian than I do. And now he's yelling at us in pure Parisian French."

However, nobody could find any reply. So Barclay descended alone to interview the one remaining member of the Sultan Casim's forces.

He was hardly out in the compound before he wished he had not gone.

He had just time to draw his sword when the boy fell upon him.

Barclay was a skilled duellist, but in this wild youth from the desert he met his match.

For all his finesse and superior height and weight, the Englishman had his cheek laid open and his arm ripped up in the course of a minute. Things would have gone badly with him, except that a shot from his junior put the boy's sword arm out of action.

With a rattle his weapon fell to the ground, his arm useless at his side.

But, even then, there was no plea for mercy. With a proud gesture he threw up his head, facing his enemy in arrogant fashion.

"Kill me," he said in French, "but let my father live."

"Who is your father?" Barclay asked, as with a handkerchief he tried to stop the blood gushing from his cheek.

"The Sultan Casim Ammeh," the boy answered proudly.

The reply told Barclay that the man he had under lock and key really was the marauding Arab chief.

He scanned the boy closely.

Except for his coal-black hair and eyes and fierce, arrogant expression, there was no resemblance between father and son. If he had not heard to the contrary, he would have said the boy was as French as the language he spoke.

"I've no intention of killing you," Barclay remarked. "On the contrary, young man, I'm going to have your arm set and bound up before you bleed to death."

The blood was dripping from the boy's fingers, making a pool on the ground. But he paid no heed to his own hurt. All his thoughts were for the Sultan Casim.

"I'm not asking mercy for myself, but for my father," he said haughtily.

"I'm afraid that's useless, considering two Governments have condemned him."

"You will dare to kill him?"

Barclay said nothing. But his very silence was ominous.

A dazed, incredulous look crossed the boy's face.

As the Englishman watched him it seemed that, blood-stained murderer as the Sultan was, at least this big, handsome son of his loved him.

Like one stunned, the youngster submitted to being led into the fort, where his arm was set and his wounds bound up.

When this was done he said to Barclay:

"I'll give you wealth in jewels that will amount to three hundred thousand francs in French money if you will let my father go free and take my life instead."

Barclay made no reply.

"You will murder my father?" the boy went on, dreading the worst from Barclay's silence.

The word made the Englishman wince. For it did seem like murder with this fierce, handsome boy pleading desperately for his father's life.

Again he said nothing.

To escape from the sight of the pain and anguish his silent verdict had aroused, Barclay went from the room, leaving the youngster in the charge of a couple of soldiers.

About noon that day, at the hands of the British Government, the Sultan Casim Ammeh met a well-deserved end. He met it bravely, (refusing to be blindfolded), with a slight, cruel smile facing the guns levelled at him.

It was evening before Barclay summoned up enough courage to meet his youthful prisoner. And when he did, it seemed he had never seen so much concentrated hatred on any face.

"So, you shot my father?" the boy said in a slow, savage manner.

Barclay had not come to discuss the dead malefactor. He wanted to learn more about the son—where he had learnt his excellent French; how he came to differ so in appearance from the Arab chief and his wild following.

"Your father has paid the penalty of his crimes," he said quietly.

"And you shall pay the penalty of yours!" the boy cried passionately; "for I shall kill you as you have killed my father. Your daughters I shall sell as slaves. Your sons shall toil in chains in my city. Your wives shall become the bondswomen of my servants. Remember, white man, for I do not speak lightly. I will be avenged. I, Casim Ammeh, whose father you have thought well to murder!"

The savage threats of a wild, heart-broken boy did not trouble George Barclay much. But his mind did go to his tiny four-year-old daughter, and he was glad she was safe in England and not within reach of this savage lad.

At that moment he was more worried about his youthful captive than the latter's wild threats.

He did not want to make a criminal of the boy; for, obviously, whatever wrong he had done was done under the influence of his savage father. And there looked to be the makings of a fine man in him, if only he had good guidance.

Barclay decided to put the case before the French Government, together with a suggestion of his own—that the youngster should be sent somewhere where he could be brought up to be of use to the country, not a constant thorn in its flesh, as his father had been.

But Captain Barclay need not have troubled himself with making plans for the future of the youthful Sultan of El-Ammeh, for that night the boy escaped, and his future was left in his own hands.