I turned then and ran down the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’ Julie cried out.
I didn’t answer her. I think I was too scared of what I knew had to be done to say anything. But she seemed to sense what was in my mind, for she came after me. ‘No, Philip. No.’ She caught hold of my arm. ‘Please.’
Bilvidic met me at the foot of the stairs. His face looked very pale and he had his gun in his hand. ‘You can give the American back his gun,’ he said.
‘You know that sound then?’
‘I know what it means — yes. But it is the first time I have heard it.’ He smiled a little wryly. ‘Get your men down here. The ladies should remain upstairs. We may beat back the first rush. After that…’ He shrugged his shoulders. Ed came down the stairs then, his face very pale under the blood-stained bandage. Bilvidic made no attempt to blame him for what was going to happen.
I stared out of the window at the gathering men standing silent, staring at the door. That throbbing, tongued cry of the women seemed to fill the air. ‘You understand mobs,’ I said, turning to Bilvidic. ‘There must be something that would stop them?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his pale eyes staring into mine. ‘If I went out there and faced them and told them why their men had been killed in the gorge — that would stop them.’
‘Then why don’t you do it?’ Julie said quickly, breathlessly.
, ‘Because, mademoiselle, I do not speak Berber, only Arab, and the mass of them would not understand that.’ His eyes came back to me and I knew he was thinking that I must speak Berber since I’d been a missionary at Enfida.
‘That’s what I thought you’d say.’ I turned and walked towards the door.
But Julie caught hold of my arm. ‘Not alone. Not like that.’
‘I must.’ I was trembling and my stomach felt cold and empty.
‘I won’t let you.’ She was dragging at my arm.
‘Let me go!‘I cried.
‘I won’t.’ Her face was white and her dark eyes looked at me with a steady gaze. ‘I love you, Philip.’
I stared at her and a sudden glow of warmth filled me. It was as though her declaration had set light to something inside me. I felt suddenly calm and at peace. Gently I released her fingers from my arm. ‘You’d better have this,’ I said, and handed her Legard’s pistol. And then I walked to the door and opened it and went out into the hard sunlight and the noise to face the stare of a thousand hostile, half-animal eyes.
They were bunched out fifty feet back from the house, a compact, solid mass of men that thinned out towards the edges, spreading in a crescent round the house as though formed by instinct into some old order of battle. I was not conscious of their individual faces. They were just a blur in the hot sunlight, a solid mass of flowing robes that ranged from white to brown and matched the arid sand. I was only conscious that they were of this naked land, a living and integral part of it, and that I was an alien.
I tried to marshal my thoughts, but my mind was a blank as I walked out towards them. I couldn’t even pray. And they watched me walk out to them like a herd of animals, pressed shoulder to shoulder; and there wasn’t a single individual among them — they were a mass and they felt as a mass, not thinking, only feeling. That mass feeling seemed to hang in the air. I sensed it physically, the way you can smell something mad. And behind it all, behind the evil expression of their mass feeling, was that damned female noise, that many-tongued liquid, frenzy-making sound, beating at my brain, thrumming through it until I could feel it against the raw ends of my nerves, stretching them beyond the limits of strain.
And I was afraid; desperately, horribly afraid. My mouth felt dry and there was a weakness in the marrow of my bones. I prayed God to stop me being afraid. But the prayer was not a real prayer and I stopped and looked at the sea of faces, that blur of figures, and I was afraid then that they would know I was afraid.
For a moment I could say nothing. I could think of nothing. I stood there twenty paces from them and stared at them. And they stared back at me, silent and motionless, but strong in the strength of their mass feeling. And behind them was that sound that seemed an expression of the very wildness and primitiveness of the land.
And suddenly it maddened me. I was angry, with myself and with them, and my anger killed my fear. I found my voice then and heard myself shout at them for silence in their own language. I shouted several times for the women to be quiet and gradually the sound lessened and died away. Abruptly the silence was complete, the whole crowd of them so still that I could hear the small sound of the breeze blowing through the dark green sprays of the tamarisks that acted as a windbreak for the house.
I had them then, I could have talked to them. But my eye was caught by an individual face. It was the bearded, wild-eyed face of the man who had fired into the study. He was standing right in front of me and as our eyes met, I was conscious of the hatred and violence that seethed inside him, and it appalled me. He had his gun clutched in his left hand and with his right he pointed a finger at me. He cursed me in the name of Allah. ‘You have killed my son and my brother and my brother’s son,’ he accused me.
‘I have not killed anyone,’ I said. ‘The men who came to Kasbah Foum died because of Ali d’Es-Skhira.’
My voice was steady and it gave me confidence. I began to tell them exactly what had happened there in the gorge. But in spite of myself I found I was speaking to this one man and not to the whole crowd of them, and I saw his face become set and wooden as he made himself deaf to what I was saying.
Slowly he shifted the gun to his right hand and slowly he raised it to his shoulder, moving it slightly so that the long, heavy barrel pointed straight at me. I tried to ignore him. I tried to look at the sea of faces, to talk to them as one composite individual. But my eyes were fascinated by the round hole of that barrel. It didn’t waver and it pointed straight into my eyes and I heard my voice falter and slow. His eyes were looking straight at me along the barrel. They glinted with sudden triumph, and in that instant I knew he was going to fire.
I ducked, flinging myself sideways. There was a report and the bullet hit my shoulder, spinning me round. Somehow I kept my feet. Pain shot through my arm and my whole body seemed to grow numb with the shock. I could feel the blood flowing. I could feel, too, the blood lust of that crowd growing.
What came to me then, I don’t know. I would like to think that it was courage. But it may only have been the instinct of survival, the knowledge that if I failed to face them now, they would charge and trample me underfoot. I felt suddenly quite cool and a little light-headed, and I was walking towards them.
I walked straight towards the man who had fired at me, never shifting my gaze from his face. His eyes stared back at me for a moment and then I saw guilt and fear in them and he looked down, shuffling his feet and beginning to back away from me. The crowd opened up, so that a narrow gully formed in the mass of it. I walked straight into it. They could have killed me then with their bare hands, but nobody moved, and I felt the power of dominating them, of holding their attention with what I was doing.
The man backed until he could retreat no farther. He was held there by the weight of people behind him. I walked straight up to him and took the gun from him. I didn’t say anything to him. I just turned my back and walked out till I was clear of them. The concrete signpost stood at the entrance to the house. I swung the gun by the barrel and brought the breech down across the post, using all the strength of my sound arm, and the stock splintered and broke off. I tossed the useless thing on the sand and walked down the path and in through the open door of the house.
In the sudden shade of the room I could see nothing. I felt my brain reeling. I heard a murmur like surf as the crowd gave voice to its reaction and the door closed, shutting it out. A hand touched mine. I heard a sob. And then my legs gave under me and I passed out.