' On our march! . . Roger exclaimed.' Can you mean . . . ? '
The Corsican nodded. ' Yes. You will speak of this to no one. So far, I have told only Bourrienne and a few members of my personal Staff who will have to make the necessary preparations. If it got about that I mean to retreat, the whole garrison of Acre might sally forth and overwhelm our rearguard. But on the night of the 20th I intend to break off the siege.'
' It was a terrible decision to have to take,' Roger murmured.
'1 had no alternative. Scattered about Egypt we now have only some ten thousand troops, and a despatch from Menou informs me that trouble is brewing there. In high summer, too, conditions will be favourable for an invasion and I cannot doubt that the Turks will despatch a great Army by sea for an attempt to re-conquer the country. If I do not return there all my labours to make it a prosperous French colony will have been in vain and, with the loss of the ports, we would lose our one hope of receiving reinforcements.'
' You think then that there is still a chance that the Directory may send them? '
' One can but hope. The Brest Fleet under Admiral Bruix is still intact. With that of the Spaniards it could form a formidable armament and stand a good chance of bringing troops round to us through the Mediterranean. For months now I have been sending despatch after despatch, urging this course upon the Directors. It may be that they are so eaten up with jealousy of me that, rather than aid me to further triumphs, they would sooner see a French Army founder here. But it may be that I am unjust and that all my despatches have been captured by the accursed English.'
' They have proved a most ugly thorn in our side here,' Roger commented.
' You are right there. Had it not been for them, I should have been in Acre weeks ago and by now halfway to Constantinople. Do you know that the Sheiks have already offered me the keys of Damascus? Could we but advance the whole of Syria and the Lebanon would rise to aid us. But it is not to be. One man has robbed me of my greatest ambition. Nelson did no more than cut us off in Egypt, and there I proved that we could be self-supporting. But this Sir Smith has dealt me a vital blow. To my mind, he far surpasses any other English Commander. He has shown not only the greatest tenacity but the highest intelligence in handling his very limited forces, and in addition he has throughout maintained a most chivalrous attitude towards our wounded and our prisoners. Whatever his future may be he must now go down in history as the man who changed the fate of the whole Eastern world.'
As Roger left the tent with Bonaparte's generous tribute ringing in his ears he could not help recalling the contempt with which the British in Palermo had spoken of Sir Sidney Smith, dubbing him 'The Swedish Knight' and 'The Great Plenip'. He wondered if Nelson was still there, bewitched by Emma and dancing attendance on the despicable King and Queen of the Two Sicilies. But of one thing there could be no question. Sir Sidney had inflicted on Bonaparte his first defeat. Time was to show that on land no other British Commander, with the exception of Wellington, would ever defeat him.
On the following day Roger and Zanthe set off southward. He rode beside her litter, they were escorted by her Mameluke guard who kept in order the prisoners who acted as bearers and the rear was brought up by two camels carrying Zanthe's Arab woman servant and the baggage. That afternoon they crossed the river Kishon and in the evening made camp on the far slope of Mount Carmel. No longer fearing that his actions would be reported to Bonaparte to the detriment of Zanthe's reputation, Roger and his beautiful mistress spent a night of delight together.
During the next three days they followed the coast along the edge of the plain of Sharon, reaching Jaffa on the evening of the 22nd. Roger would have liked to press on, but the bearers were by then in very poor shape. As prisoners, their rations for the past ten days had been barely sufficient to keep life in their bodies. Most of them were suffering from dysentery and three, from complete exhaustion, had already had to be left at the wayside with a flask of water to fend for themselves. Soon after leaving Jaffa they would be entering the hundred miles of almost uninhabited coast with its long stretches of desert, where the going would be hard and water scarce; so before proceeding on this worst part of the journey Roger decided to give his people two days' rest.
While on the march there had always been other little caravans, mostly carrying wounded, within sight and, on the first day they spent in a little camp they made among some palm trees outside the town, the number of these increased considerably. On the second day the advance guard of the retreating Army arrived, and with it Bonaparte.
Food of all kinds had already reached famine prices; but Roger went into the town hoping still to be able to buy with gold some boxes of figs, dates or other preserved foods that would not be affected by the heat. In the muski he ran into Eugene de Beau-harnais, bent on the same errand. That normally cheerful young man was looking exceptionally glum, and Roger soon learned the reason.
There had been only a few sailing boats in which to send off sick and wounded from Haifa, but here there were many more and, with his indefatigable energy, Bonaparte was arranging for his hundreds of casualties to be shipped to Egypt. But it was not that which so perturbed Eugene. His step-father had visited the hospitals, urging everyone there who was capable of standing to get up and go aboard one of the ships in the harbour, rather than remain to be captured by the Turks. He had then gone into the plague ward and had spoken to the poor wretches there. It was a noble gesture but Eugene condemned its rashness, declaring that should his beloved step-father fall a victim to the plague the retreating Army would founder and be lost without his leadership.
Roger agreed with him. Then, during the few minutes that they continued to talk, Eugene urged Roger to set off from Jaffa with as little delay as possible. He said that, as soon as the retreat began, the Nablousian tribesmen had come down from the mountains in hordes, to harass the columns and cut off stragglers. The General-in-Chief had decreed a policy of scorching the earth. Every village and all crops were being burnt, and the wells stopped up, so that the Army would leave a great area of desolation behind it. But it was feared that it would not entirely stop these fierce irregulars and the pursuing Turkish cavalry.
Eugene's warning determined Roger to make a start that evening, but when he got back to his small camp he was met by terrible news. One of the Turkish prisoners had been vomoting and the others declared there could be no doubt that he had caught the plague. He had been carried some distance apart and a friend of his had volunteered to stay behind and do what could be done for him.
But that was not the end of the matter. Zanthe, having been brought up in Constantinople, which was rarely free from cases of plague, knew a certain amount about the disease. She assured Roger that the pestilence was not catching through the breath nor, if care were exercised, through touch, but was conveyed by fleas that lived on animals.
Roger was aware that the Arabs had inherited the knowledge of the ancient civilizations and that, in many respects, their medicine was still in advance of European doctoring. He accepted without question what Zanthe said and, when she insisted that one of their camels must be the carrier and that both of them should be killed, he felt that not to follow her advice would be flying in the face of Providence.