Chapter XXVIII — Plans of Escape
For three days Feversham rambled and wandered in his talk, and for three days Trench fetched him water from the Nile, shared his food with him, and ministered to his wants; for three nights, too, he stood with Ibrahim and fought in front of Feversham in the House of Stone. But on the fourth morning Feversham waked to his senses and, looking up, with his own eyes saw bending over him the face of Trench. At first the face seemed part of his delirium. It was one of those nightmare faces which had used to grow big and had come so horribly close to him in the dark nights of his boyhood as he lay in bed. He put out a weak arm and thrust it aside. But he gazed about him. He was lying in the shadow of the prison house, and the hard blue sky above him, the brown bare trampled soil on which he lay, and the figures of his fellow-prisoners dragging their chains or lying prone upon the ground in some extremity of sickness gradually conveyed their meaning to him. He turned to Trench, caught at him as if he feared the next moment would snatch him out of reach, and then he smiled.
"I am in the prison at Omdurman," he said, "actually in the prison! This is Umm Hagar, the House of Stone. It seems too good to be true."
He leaned back against the wall with an air of extreme relief. To Trench the words, the tone of satisfaction in which they were uttered, sounded like some sardonic piece of irony. A man who plumed himself upon indifference to pain and pleasure-who posed as a being of so much experience that joy and trouble could no longer stir a pulse or cause a frown, and who carried his pose to perfection-such a man, thought Trench, might have uttered Feversham's words in Feversham's voice. But Feversham was not that man; his delirium had proved it. The satisfaction, then, was genuine, the words sincere. The peril of Dongola was past, he had found Trench, he was in Omdurman. That prison house was his longed-for goal, and he had reached it. He might have been dangling on a gibbet hundreds of miles away down the stream of the Nile with the vultures perched upon his shoulders, the purpose for which he lived quite unfulfilled. But he was in the enclosure of the House of Stone in Omdurman.
"You have been here a long while," he said.
"Three years."
Feversham looked round the zareeba. "Three years of it," he murmured. "I was afraid that I might not find you alive."
Trench nodded.
"The nights are the worst, the nights in there. It's a wonder any man lives through a week of them, yet I have lived through a thousand nights." And even to him who had endured them his endurance seemed incredible. "A thousand nights of the House of Stone!" he exclaimed.
"But we may go down to the Nile by daytime," said Feversham, and he started up with alarm as he gazed at the thorn zareeba. "Surely we are allowed so much liberty. I was told so. An Arab at Wadi Halfa told me."
"And it's true," returned Trench. "Look!" He pointed to the earthen bowl of water at his side. "I filled that at the Nile this morning."
"I must go," said Feversham, and he lifted himself up from the ground. "I must go this morning," and since he spoke with a raised voice and a manner of excitement, Trench whispered to him: "Hush. There are many prisoners here, and among them many tale-bearers."
Feversham sank back on to the ground as much from weakness as in obedience to Trench's warning.
"But they cannot understand what we say," he objected in a voice from which the excitement had suddenly gone.
"They can see that we talk together and earnestly. Idris would know of it within the hour, the Khalifa before sunset. There would be heavier fetters and the courbatch if we spoke at all. Lie still. You are weak, and I too am very tired. We will sleep, and later in the day we will go together down to the Nile."
Trench lay down beside Feversham and in a moment was asleep. Feversham watched him, and saw, now that his features were relaxed, the marks of those three years very plainly in his face. It was towards noon before he awoke.
"There is no one to bring you food?" he asked, and Feversham answered: "Yes. A boy should come. He should bring news as well."
They waited until the gate of the zareeba was opened and the friends or wives of the prisoners entered. At once that enclosure became a cage of wild beasts. The gaolers took their dole at the outset. Little more of the "aseeda"-that moist and pounded cake of dhurra which was the staple diet of the town-than was sufficient to support life was allowed to reach the prisoners, and even for that the strong fought with the weak, and the group of four did battle with the group of three. From every corner men gaunt and thin as skeletons hopped and leaped as quickly as the weight of their chains would allow them towards the entrance. Here one weak with starvation tripped and fell, and once fallen lay prone in a stolid despair, knowing that for him there would be no meal that day. Others seized upon the messengers who brought the food, and tore it from their hands, though the whips of the gaolers laid their backs open. There were thirty gaolers to guard that enclosure, each armed with his rhinoceros-hide courbatch, but this was the one moment in each day when the courbatch was neither feared, nor, as it seemed, felt.
Among the food-bearers a boy sheltered himself behind the rest and gazed irresolutely about the zareeba. It was not long, however, before he was detected. He was knocked down, and his food snatched from his hands; but the boy had his lungs, and his screams brought Idris-es-Saier himself upon the three men who had attacked him.
"For whom do you come?" asked Idris, as he thrust the prisoners aside.
"For Joseppi, the Greek," answered the boy, and Idris pointed to the corner where Feversham lay. The boy advanced, holding out his empty hands as though explaining how it was that he brought no food. But he came quite close, and squatting at Feversham's side continued to explain with words. And as he spoke he loosed a gazelle skin which was fastened about his waist beneath his jibbeh, and he let it fall by Feversham's side. The gazelle skin contained a chicken, and upon that Feversham and Trench breakfasted and dined and supped. An hour later they were allowed to pass out of the zareeba and make their way to the Nile. They walked slowly and with many halts, and during one of these Trench said: "We can talk here."
Below them, at the water's edge, some of the prisoners were unloading dhows, others were paddling knee-deep in the muddy water. The shore was crowded with men screaming and shouting and excited for no reason whatever. The gaolers were within view, but not within ear-shot.
"Yes, we can talk here. Why have you come?"
"I was captured in the desert, on the Arbain road," said Feversham, slowly.
"Yes, masquerading as a lunatic musician who had wandered out of Wadi Halfa with a zither. I know. But you were captured by your own deliberate wish. You came to join me in Omdurman. I know."
"How do you know?"
"You told me. During the last three days you have told me much," and Feversham looked about him suddenly in alarm, "Very much," continued Trench. "You came to join me because five years ago I sent you a white feather."
"And was that all I told you?" asked Feversham, anxiously.
"No," Trench replied, and he dragged out the word. He sat up while Feversham lay on his side, and he looked towards the Nile in front of him, holding his head between his hands, so that he could not see or be seen by Feversham. "No, that was not all-you spoke of a girl, the same girl of whom you spoke when Willoughby and Durrance and I dined with you in London a long while ago. I know her name now-her Christian name. She was with you when the feathers came. I had not thought of that possibility. She gave you a fourth feather to add to our three. I am sorry."