CHAPTER IX
Craven woke to a burning pain in his side, a racking headache and an intolerable thirst. It was not a sudden waking but a gradual dawning consciousness in which time and place as yet meant nothing, and only bodily suffering obtruded on a still partially clouded mind. Fragmentary waves of thought, disconnected and transitory, passed through his brain, leaving no permanent impression, and he made no effort to unravel them. Effort of any kind, mental or physical, seemed for the moment beyond him. He was too tired even to open his eyes, and lay with them closed, wondering feebly at the pain and discomfort of his whole body. He had the sensation of having been battered, he felt bruised from head to foot. Suffering was new to him. He had never been ill in his life, and in all his years of travel and hazardous adventure he had sustained only trivial injuries which had healed readily and been regarded as merely part of the day’s work.
But now, as his mind grew clearer, he realised that some accident must have occurred to induce this pain and lassitude that made him lie like a log with throbbing head and powerless limbs. He pondered it, trying to pierce the fog that dulled his intellect. He had a subconscious impression of some strenuous adventure through which he had passed, but knowledge still hovered on the borderland of fancy and actuality. He had no recollection of the fight or of events preceding it. That he was Barry Craven he knew; but of where he had no idea—nor what his life had been. Of his personality there remained only his name, he was quite sure about that. And out of the past emerged only one clear memory—a woman’s face. And yet as he dwelt on it the image of another woman’s face rose beside it, mingling with and absorbing it until the two faces seemed strangely merged the one into the other, alike and yet wholly different. And the effort to disentangle them and keep them separate was greater than his tired brain could achieve, and made his head ache more violently. Confused, and with a sudden feeling of aversion, he stirred impatiently, and the sharp pain that shot through him brought him abruptly to a sense of his physical state and forced utterance of his greatest need. It had not hitherto occurred to him to wonder whether he were alone, or even where he was. But as he spoke an arm was slipped under him raising him slightly and a cup held to his lips. He drank eagerly and, as he was again lowered gently to the pillow, raised his eyes to the face of the man who bent over him, a puckered yellow face whose imperturbability for once had given place to patent anxiety. Craven stared at it for a few moments in perplexity. Where had he seen it before? Struggling to recall what had happened prior to this curiously obscured awakening there dawned a dim recollection of shattering noise and tumult, of blood and death and fierce unbridled human passion, of a horde of wild-eyed dark-skinned men who surged and struggled round him—and of a yelling Arab on a fiery roan. Memory came in a flash. He gave a weak little croaking laugh. “You damned insubordinate little devil,” he murmured, and drifted once more into unconsciousness. When he woke again it was with complete remembrance of everything that had passed. He felt ridiculously weak, but his head did not ache so badly and his mind was perfectly clear. Only of the time that had elapsed between the moment when he had gone down under the Arabs’ charge and his awakening a little while ago he had no recollection. How long had he been unconscious? He found himself mildly puzzled, but without any great interest as yet. Plenty of time to find out about that and what had befallen Omar and Saïd. It was not that he did not care, but that, for the moment, he was too tired and listless to do more than lie still and endure his own discomfort. His side throbbed painfully and there was something curious about his left arm, a dead feeling of numbness that made him wonder whether it was there at all. He glanced down at it with sudden apprehension—he had no fancy for a maimed existence—and was relieved to find it still in place but bent stiffly across his chest wrapped in a multitude of bandages—broken, presumably. His eyes wandered with growing interest round the little tent where he lay. It was his own, from which he inferred that the fight must have gone in favour of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah’s forces or he would never have been brought back here to it. He glanced from one familiar object to another with a drowsy feeling of contentment.
Presently he became aware that somebody had entered and turning his head he found Yoshio beside him eyeing him with a look in which solicitude, satisfaction, and a faint diffidence struggled for supremacy. Craven guessed the reason of his embarrassment, but he had no mind to refer to an order given, and disobeyed through overzealousness. That, too, could wait—or be forgotten. He contented himself with a single question. “How long?” he asked laconically. With equal brevity the Jap replied: “Two days,” and postponed further inquiries by slipping a clinical thermometer into his master’s mouth. He had always been useful in attending on minor camp accidents, and during the last two years in Central Africa he had picked up a certain amount of rough surgical knowledge which now stood him in good stead, and which he proceeded to put into practice with a gravity of demeanour that made Craven, in his weakened state, want to giggle hysterically. But he suppressed the inclination and held on to the thermometer until Yoshio solemnly removed it, studied it intently, and nodded approval. With the exact attention to detail that was his ruling passion he carefully rinsed the tiny glass instrument and returned it to its case before leaving the tent. He was back again in a few minutes with a bowl of steaming soup, and handling Craven as if he were a child, fed him with the gentleness of a woman. Then he busied himself about the room, tidying it and reducing its confusion to order.
Craven watched him at first idly and then with a more definite desire to know what had occurred. But to the questions he put Yoshio returned evasive answers, and, resuming his professional manner, spoke gravely of the loss of blood Craven had sustained, of the kick on the head from which he had lain two days insensible, and his consequent need of rest and sleep, finally departing as if to remove temptation from him. Craven chafed at the little Jap’s caution and swore at his obstinacy, but a pleasant drowsiness was stealing over him and he surrendered to it without further struggle.