Elbee, now clearly convinced of Roger's bona fides, replied to his enquiries as well as he was able, and gave him an account of the Syrian campaign to date. The Army had had a terrible time while crossing the barren territory of Sinai, but the spirit of the men had revived again on seeing the wooded hills and fertile plains of Syria. Before El Arish had been taken there had been a fierce encounter with what remained of Ibrahim Bey's Mamelukes, in which Reynier's Division had suffered heavily, but that of Kleber had come to his rescue and had turned a possible defeat into victory. The taking of Jaffa had been a most bloody business. The dauntless Lannes led the final assault that had broken the resistance of the garrison; then, as the city had refused terms, it was put to the sack. Consumed by thirst and half starving, the troops looted, slew and raped without pause for twenty-four hours.
Roger broke in to say that he had been told about the massacre of the prisoners and had been greatly shocked by it, but Elbee sprang instantly to his General-in-Chief's defence.
'What other course was open to him? ' he demanded. 'I am told that he nearly took the heads off the two officers who accepted the surrender of the troops who had broken their parole, because it forced this awful decision on him. For two whole days he wrestled with this problem and twice called a conference of all his Generals to debate it with them. There was not enough food to fill the bellies of our own men, let alone these two thousand prisoners. They could not be sent back by ship to Egypt because of the British, and escorts to march them back overland could not possibly be spared. If they had been released they would have made their way up here to St. Jean d'Acre, and many of them would for the third time have taken French lives. The opinion of the conference of Generals was unanimous. The poor wretches had to be taken out and shot.'
With subtle intent Roger said, ' But, surely, the Army is not so reduced in numbers that a few hundred men could not have been spared to march the captives back to Egypt? '
Elbee shrugged and supplied the desired information. ' I can give you only rough figures, but I cannot be far out if I say that General Desaix has been left with at least ten thousand men to hold Egypt. With the casualties we have suffered in the past eight months that cannot leave many more than twelve thousand of the original expeditionary force, and we have not received a single reinforcement. In any case, only four Divisions entered Syria: those of Kleber, Reynier, Bon and Lannes, plus the cavalry under Murat. All of them are far below strength; and now, to the terror of us all, they are being further reduced by plague.'
'That,' said Roger, 'is by far the worst news you have given me. Has the infection become serious? '
The Captain sighed. ' I am told that a few cases occurred while General Kleber's troops were still in Alexandria, but there was no serious outbreak until his Division reached Jaffa. He then lost some two hundred men in the course of a few days, and it is said to be spreading in an alarming fashion. My own men, thank God, have remained free from infection. But, to be honest, we all now refrain from shaking hands with any man from another unit, for fear that we may contract the pestilence.'
It was now about ten o'clock. Except for the sentries, the troops had wrapped themselves in their cloaks and gone to sleep. Roger and his host decided to do likewise. Having dug holes for their hips in the soft sand, they settled down. As Roger spread his handkerchief on a mound of sand that he had scooped up to make a pillow, he was aglow with satisfaction. Without even going to Bonaparte's headquarters he had learned the basic facts of the situation. The French were approximately twelve thousand strong; he knew the names of the Generals who were commanding the Divisions, and had also learned that the Army was existing on a minimum of rations and that it was now being scourged by the plague.
That information was all Sir Sidney had asked him to supply. With a clear conscience he could give it and require in return that he should be given a passage home. All he had now to do was to set out next day, ostensibly for Bonaparte's headquarters, rid himself somehow of the guide he would be given and, the following night, bribe an Arab fisherman to take him off to a British warship. With this happy prospect in mind, he fell asleep.
Soon after one o'clock in the morning the sound of a single warning shot pierced his dormant brain. He started up, wide awake. Next minute he heard the thunder of horses' hooves. Elbee sprang up beside him and they drew their swords. There was no moon so it was almost dark but, above the ridge, against the night sky, they glimpsed a formidable mass of cavalry charging down the slope.
They had hardly time to draw breath before Djezzar's yelling horsemen were upon them. Roger never knew what happened to Elbee. He was assailed simultaneously by two mounted men, clad in flowing robes and wearing large turbans. He thrust upward with his sword at the one on his right. The point of the sword pierced the man's side and he gave a hideous howl. But at the same instant he had struck at Roger with his scimitar, and the side of the blade caught Roger on the head, knocking him half unconscious. As he staggered back, the man on his left grabbed him by the hair, dragged him off his feet and, exerting terrific strength, hauled him up across his saddle-bow.
His senses whirling, amidst a babel of shots, screams and curses, Roger was carried off into the darkness. After galloping for a mile or more his captor reined in. By then Roger had recovered sufficiently to struggle. Holding him down, the man who had taken him prisoner thrust a cord with a slip knot over his left wrist, then pulled it tight and thrust him off, so that he fell to the ground.
For a few moments he lay there, bruised and panting. A pull on the stout cord jerked him to his knees. The light was just sufficient for him to see that he was among a body of horsemen. To his right he glimpsed another prisoner in a similar situation to his own. A command rang out in Turkish. The body of cavalry began to move forward at a trot. The pull on his wrist yanked him to his feet. Still half dazed, he found himself running, jumping, staggering breathlessly over rough ground, in a desperate endeavour to keep himself from falling and being dragged face downward across it.
Bemused by pain and terror as he was, he was still capable of realizing the awful thing that had happened to him. He could now no longer hope for a swift completion of his mission and a passage home. Instead, he was a captive and being taken to Acre. There the odds were that Djezzar Pasha, with his notorious lust for cruelty, would put him to death in some hideous fashion. At the very best he would become a slave. Only that evening he had amused himself by describing to Captain Elbee the imaginary miseries he had suffered as a slave in Tripoli. He had little thought then that they might actually be inflicted on him before another day had passed.
The Siege of Acre
Gasping for breath, his feet hardly touching the ground, Roger blundered on. His left wrist was already galled to bleeding point by the cord looped round it, he was blinded by the sand kicked up by the hooves of the horses and, from the pull his captor had extered on his hair, his head burned as though vitriol had been poured upon it. Unaided, he could never have run so far at such a pace. The cord drew him on, relieving him of any effort to force his body forward, but the strain of keeping upright was appalling. How long his ordeal lasted he had no idea, but it seemed to him that he had been running with bursting lungs for hours on end before the cord at last slackened. Streaming with sweat, coated with sand and with agony in every limb, he fell to the ground and fainted.
When he came to he was again lying face down across his captor's saddle-bow. After a few minutes the clatter of the horses' hooves on cobbles told him that they had entered the city. Ten minutes later they halted, he was thrust from the saddle and came down in a heap on stone paving. His body was so racked with pain that he hardly felt the thump on his backside and squirmed up into a sitting position. His view was partially obscured by a forest of horses' legs and those of their riders, who were now dismounting; but he could see enough to know that he was in a large courtyard lit by men holding smoking torches.