The just steward

III

The voice of a German officer breaks in, giving a sharp order in Prussian-flavoured Turkish. There is a rush of zabtiehs and postas to the door of the building where the madman is.... As they jostle in the filthy entry, the boots of those who have got in first, thunder on its crazy stairs; and savage shouts and the tumult of a desperate struggle break out in the sordid room where Govan—bleeding from a bullet-wound in the head—but equal to a dozen men in the strength of his insanity—stands over the disfigured corpse laid out upon a dirty sack.

In the mud courtyard below, as Hamid Bey, with the German officers; his following and escort of police are retreating discreetly backwards to the vantage of the courtyard gate—a prisoner with a savage curse, dashes a handful of muddy orange-peel full in the livid face of Hamid. The Bey, smothered with filth and choking with rage, jerks his revolver from its holster, and promptly scatters the offender's brains.

Were the Bey unaccompanied, a volley from the Winchesters of his escort would silence for all time the rioters about him. But the German commander has previously informed him that on the morrow the War prisoners under his jurisdiction at Shechem will be deported for purposes of exchange....

Wild shouts, and British cheers break out.... Old War-slogans are heard again.... There is a furious rush of naked feet, but the Military Police and the postas of the guard beat back the unarmed mutineers with rifle-butts, and drive them back on either side, clubbing and kicking them. But less because of this the tumult is quelled than because a tall, ragged man with long tawny hair and beard has rushed from the archway of one of the Barrack buildings; and bringing, in this desperate hour, the authority of the priest to reinforce the influence of the friend and helper, exhorts, implores, commands the maddened prisoners to submit to the brutal authority they have no power to resist.

They are not cowed, but they obey. The clenched hands drop whatever missiles they have chanced to seize on,—their owners, in a storm of kicks, curses and blows with the rifle-butt, are herded back into the Barracks by their guards.

Barney, the jester, for once at a loss for a gag, huddles on a sack half-filled with straw on one of the wooden platforms,—six feet wide and two above the floor—a couple of which, running parallel, longitudinally divide each room. Divided into sections by upright planks, each section of platform accommodates or discommodes six War Prisoners. Perhaps Barney's room, and others on the upper floors are a thought less vile in flavour than these on the lower storeys. He smokes his last remaining fag, then whistles a dreary ragtime, staring through the barred window in front of him at the unbarred window of a room that is over the courtyard gate....

It is the window of the Commandant's office: the bare, seldom-used room where, on Sundays, as a signal favour,—the priest has been allowed to celebrate Mass and hold a Bible-class, and on rare occasions an impromptu smoking-concert has been given. It is full of Turkish postas in khaki, and the braided blue of the Osmanli gendarmerie. It is at first not possible to get a glimpse of what is going on inside, but in obedience to some order the window is cleared of the bodies blocking it.... Now it can be made out that the officers are Hamid Bey and the German general, seated with the secretary and aide at a table, before which—with two troopers of Mounted Police behind him, stands a tall, pale, emaciated man with long red-gold hair and beard.

The man seems to be answering a series of interrogations. He asserts, he denies emphatically, he pleads, but he does not cringe. Driven to silent frenzy by the difficulty of seeing, and the doubtfulness of the trend of the events that are taking place in the room over the gateway, Barney looks at his neighbour, the Sergeant of the R.F.C.

"Sergeant!"

"Eh?"

The Flight Sergeant's broad hands are sheltering his eyes as he lies on his stomach on the platform. The little folding binoculars that magnify by 20 are solving for their owner the problem of the Commandant's Room.

"D'yer pipe wot's goin' on? In the office over the gytew'y? Where 'Amid, blarst 'im! an' the two German orficers is settin' at the table and the Father standin' up in front? ..."

"Ay. They're playin' a scene out o' the Old Testament!" says the Flight Sergeant, with a sarcastic twitch of a muscle in his thin cheek.

"Wod'jer call it? ..." Barney breathes hard....

"The Scapegoat!"

"The 'ow much? ..."

"The Scapegoat. The beast the ancient Jews burdened with the sins of the congregation—and drove into the Wilderness every year. Only—the Padre's the Scapegoat—in this case."

"'Oo? ... Not Father Forbis?"

"Father Forbis right enough! 'Left—turn. Quick—march. Party—shon!'" mimics the Sergeant, as the high fair head and stern aquiline profile of the priest, with a zabtieh's fezzed head before, and another behind him,—passes across the field of vision limited by the frame of the window, and by the opening of a door an angle of light is thrown on the whitewashed office wall. "Now the sira-châwush is ordering out the Prison Guard escort.... It's all over.... They're taking him away! ..."

"Dismissed after interrygation.... That's all.... Cheero! In a minnit 'e'll come back through the yard-gyte an' go to 'is quarters as gay as a bloomin' bird...."

Barney defends his opinion with desperate optimism. But his heart is sinking leadenly and a lump is in his throat.

"All serene! Have it your own way. You'll see which is right of us!" The Sergeant cautiously raises himself up. "Do you hear the escort's looted British boots trampin' down the stairs? Now they'll either turn in here or march out at the Main Entrance. And if they do that, there'll be no Mass for the Catholics on Sunday morning—and no Prayers for the rest of us when Mass is through. And no one to get us the allowance from the Consul. And a dog's death for the sick, ay! and a dog's burial. There! ... Do you hear? ... That's the outside gate shutting..."

"Yus. O my Gawd! Shall we ever see 'im agyne?"

The inner gate of the Barrack courtyard has not opened. The sentries posted right and left of it maintain their position unmoved. But the groaning of rusty bolts in stone grooves, and the sound of the ponderous outer gate of the Main Entrance opening and slamming, falls, heavy as a clod of churchyard clay, on the hearts of many men.

For their priest, their helper, their counsellor and friend has gone from his place among them, and the blank he leaves is beyond mere words to express. And even worse than the sense of loss is the cruel uncertainty. Wondering, conjecturing, they lie on their verminous benches as the long hot Palestine day creeps to the sunset hour. The prayer-call from the mosques heralds no supper. Prisoners who resent massacre and villainous usage must, in the opinion of the Bey, have been too lavishly fed. The soldiers of the guard divide the beans in oil; and Barney Mossam, tightening his belt, is more than ever certain that Virtue, outside the walls of the T.R. Drury Lane—is not a game that pays....

The breeze freshens, the great bats come out to steal fruit, and the lesser ones to hunt moths and mosquitoes. Night suddenly unfolds her wings—and down comes the Dark. The jackals howl on the confines of the town, and the pariah dogs bay hideously. The Turkish equivalent for Lights Out! is sounded by the prison boruzan. Silver clear, the trumpets and bugles of the German-Turkish garrison challenge the echoes of Ebal and Gerizim. The radiant Hosts of Heaven come forth, and the moon, in her last quarter, hangs over the Hills of Gilead.

Sleep has come to the prisoners. The mud walls shake with their snoring. Only a few are wakeful. The Flight Sergeant is one of these. Towards the middle of the night a 'plane goes over Shechem:

"A raiding or reconnoitring hydro from some carrier in the Mediterranean? No! There's no rattling from the floats. It is a land machine...."

The airman leaves the crowded bench, and steals to the window. In the white effulgence of the moon all objects stand out clear. The German look-out with the telescope on the minaret of the Great Mosque of el Kebir.... The hooded searchlight with its dozing and waking guardians, on the balcony lower down.... A little figure moving on the ragged shoulder of Ebal.... A child? ... No! a woman—scrambling up from limestone terrace to terrace.... He forgets her, for, with the deep, vibrating song that he remembers—into the field of his vision swims The Two-Faced Nightingale....

At about a thousand feet up, she circles smoothly above Shechem. The search-ray from the balcony of the Great Mosque slashes at her viciously. Its fellow from the flank of Gerizim, leaps out, but sinks down again. Her pilot fires an orange light—and the scimitars of radiance from the Mosque and the Mount return to their scabbards; no strings of green rockets explore for the range of her—and no shells from the anti-aircraft guns in the Square of the Khan scream up at her winged shape....

As the biplane hovers against the jewel-bright blue of the Eastern night, the little Zeiss glasses tell their owner that her pilot has a native observer. A big Arab in a striped mantle, and headcloth bound by a rope.... Now her pilot fires a second orange light, drops his weighted despatch-bag, banks and climbs, launching at a dizzy height into a descent of sweeping spirals.... Evidently he is going to land somewhere in the neighbourhood of Shechem....

There is silence as the engine is cut out.... The big 'plane dives out of sight behind the shoulder of Ebal, where the lowest tiers of greyish-yellow limestone terraces are merged in the sandy, rolling plain....

The Flight Sergeant holds his breath and waits, his eyes glued to the binoculars. In a wonderfully short space of time the aëroplane, a powerful tractor biplane of D.H.6 type, climbs into his field of vision,—rises in wide, masterly spirals, banks, turns and flies away Westwards,—leaving the Flight Sergeant wondering with his chin upon the window-sill....

For the Two-Faced Nightingale has shed her observer, the big man in the striped Arab abâyi and roped kuffiyeh. Puzzled, the Flight Sergeant creeps noiselessly back to his place on the wooden platform, and lies awake, chewing the cud of mystery, for the rest of the long miserable night.

IV

Dawn brings surprise to him, and the other War prisoners of the Barracks. After the distribution of the morning half-brick of gritty black bread, they are given a second ration, and told to get ready, as they are all going away.

To this end they are presently mustered in the courtyard, carrying their various packs and bundles. Sick and well, unwashed, haggard, unshorn; on naked feet, or feet that are bandaged with the remnants of puttees. Some in tattered khaki tunics, others in cast-off German or Turkish jackets; many bareheaded, others covered with German military caps or broken sun-helmets,—as sorry a collection of scarecrows as Turco-German neglect and brutality can make of two hundred and twenty brave men.... A Turkish bimbashi of infantry, attended by a châwush, gravely pretends to inspect the French and British prisoners. In the name of his Empire he bids them farewell. Some try to raise a feeble cheer when both sets of big wooden gates are thrown open,—and they see a string of some half-dozen German motor-lorries waiting in the sunny road. Sick and well, they are marched forth under guard and packed into these vehicles,—those unable to stand being carried out by postas. Then, followed by some weeping wives, the Arabs, Jews and Armenians, chained neck to neck in double file,—are led away—a disconsolate procession, bound for no man knows where....

Even as they leave the foul place of their captivity, the Barracks is filled from wall to wall by an entering battalion of Turkish Reservist Rifles, part of a Brigade hastily summoned by Von Kressenstein from the Caucasus, to be launched on the journey to Mespot, and now brought down here. Swarthy, hairy men, armed with the old long Martini, some covered with the fez, others with the drill enverieh, some shod with sandals and leggings, others with German Army boots.

Thus, the Railway-line from Shechem not being available—it was extensively damaged a little while back by British bombing aircraft—and on the repair of it many of these War prisoners have bitterly toiled!—they are bumped over villainously bad roads to railhead at Nakr—en route for the fierce red city of Aleppo, where as they are now aware and Heaven knows how they have got the knowledge!—the sick and disabled are to be picked out for Exchange to England, via Smyrna—and the able-bodied (such as they are!) sent north to Belemkh, a station in the Taurus Mountains, headquarters for gangs of War prisoners working on the rails....

The villainous road that buckjumps through the tumbled Palestine landscape is crowded with Turkish Field, Horse, and Mountain Artillery, conjured back from Mesopotamia by Von Kressenstein, and rushing forward to the defence of Junction Station South. Battery after battery rolls by in the blinding dust; guns and waggons pulled, and riders carried by tough Anatolian horses, bitterly ill-used and evidently poorly fed. But not the roll of iron-shod wheels and the clatter of iron-shod hoofs, nor the roar of human voices talking in many Oriental dialects, nor the curses and jeers and viler things that are hurled at the prisoners in the jolting lorries, can shut out the savage, irregular thudding of Turkish Krupp 75 mms., Turkish Mountain Artillery, and machine-guns; and the steady, dogged slogging of British Royal Garrison Artillery motor-howitzers; British Field Artillery eighteen-pounders; and the clat-clat-clatter of Lewis machine-guns, waging bitter battle in the west and south....

At Nakr, where there is to be a delay of several hours, owing to the detrainment of forces from Mespot, they find a composite train of second and third-class compartments full of Turkish War Prisoner guards and their commanders, and horse-trucks, packed with British officers, waiting under steam for a German Staff Deputy Director of War Prisoners,—and a Controller of Transport,—who are going to Aleppo and thence to Smyrna to arrange the conditions of their exchange. The British officers are the recent captives of the stone-prison and the wired enclosure at Shechem. Very sunburnt are they:—very haggard, weary, thirsty, shabby and ill-shaven, and burdened with tattered valises and heterogeneous odds and ends of personal property, but bright of eye, elastic of bearing—full of the indomitable spirit that from the days of Agincourt and long before them—has been the birthright of their warlike race.

Crowding like schoolboys at the half-doors of the padlocked and guarded horse-trucks, they shout cheery greetings, salutations and scraps of information to the rank-and-file, clustered like swarming bees on the grilling stretch of platform beside the iron track....

"Hear the guns, W. and S.? Putting the wind up Djemal, aren't we?"

"Halloa! Mossam of B—— Company, my late Platoon! I've not seen you since I launched you with a note to the O.C. the water-camels at Rashid.... Have you got hold of a new song, or are you still denying relationship with Potsdam?"

"Aren't you Jollife, you chap with the Turkish fez and your eye in a sling? My Orderly in front of Gaza! What price that leg of roast goat with the skin and hair on? I'll bet you'd tuck into it quick enough now—if you got the chance!"

A graver, older officer leans out and calls to the soldiers:

"Can any of you men give us news of Father Forbis? We've been on the look-out for him since we heard we were to be moved."

"The Padre! ... Where's the Padre? ... What are you shaking your heads about? Damn you, you hairy brute! Why do you savage the man? ... What the hell has he done to you? ..."

Thus the ringing British voice, sharp and acrid with indignation. For Barney Mossam, screwing himself up to answer, has been clubbed by a posta's rifle-butt full in the mouth. He spits out blood and broken teeth, and grins pitiably; and for his sake and his comrades', the officers address them no more. Now the Turkish Station-Master and the German R.T.O. who is his master, appear on the platform, as the Deputy Director of War Prisoners and the Controller of Imperial Transport and their escorts arrive on the scene in German Army motor-cars. They board the dirty first-class compartment specially reserved for them. Their orderlies and servants stow away their luggage, the signal falls—and the train—with a non-commissioned officer on the platform of the corridor-car conveying the German officials—armed with binoculars and sharply on the look-out for British bomb-carrying aircraft, jolts over the warped, unevenly-laid metals for El Fuda Junction and Deraa, the first stages of its journey North....

An Arab horseman, stationary beside the track with two mounted companions, controlling his fiery dapple-grey mare with a master-hand upon her jingling bridle—resplendent with the gold and silver jewellery lavished on horse-furniture by the wealthier Bedwân, gravely salutes with his long lance tufted with sable ostrich feathers, as the composite train jolts out of Nakr. And the Deputy Director of War Prisoners and the Controller of Imperial Transport, sitting opposite one another in their dusty first-class compartment, with tall tumblers of Munich beer, (iced, in this land of dust and drouth) on a table fitted between them ... smoking the fat cigars of Hamburg and discussing German Military Supremacy and German World-politics—gravely finger the brims of their sun-helmets in recognition of the salute....

"Wer ist es! Who now, is that Arab? ..." asks the Controller, whose bulging, light-grey eyes are sharp-sighted behind their tinted glasses. "A personage of some consequence, by the gold embroidery on his burnus judging; the gold twist in his head-rope, the gold-hilted sword in his waist-cloth—and the also-with-precious-metal-enriched trappings of his Blauschimmel mare."

"He," the Deputy Director replies, "is one of the lesser Emirs of the Irregular Cavalry of the King of the Hedjaz, who—as the Herr General Controller knows,—secretly under British leadership—upon the City of Mecca seized in June and annexed Akaba in July."

"And is now wrecking trains on the Hedjaz Rail, containing German Ottoman forces, under the very noses of our Allied patrols,—blowing Turkish Railway-bridges with charges of nitro-glycerine sky-high—and in the North and East our rearguards harassing. Donnerwetter! Why is this rogue of an Arab not in fetters? What makes he, hanging about trains containing military officials of the Fatherland?"

"Because, Herr General, the Emir Fadl Anga and his followers are of those who the solid worth and philanthropic aims of Germany recognise, and scorn the windy emptiness and rapacious greed of England, the Great Swashbuckler.... They what we Germans have done for the Turkish Army also see—and are convinced that under similar auspices, Arabia, hand in hand with Egypt and India, might become a powerful and war-capable State. Emir Fadl Anga estimates the number of his party—headed by a nephew of the Mecca Sherif—as very considerable. 'They are many,' he in his Oriental hyperbole, says, 'as the stars of Heaven, or the Desert sands!' Also, information has by him been supplied, which, had the difference between German and Arabic clock-time at our Shechem Headquarters been better understood—might have resulted in a Handstreich very gratifying to Imperial Majesty at Berlin. The officer guilty of this so gross ignorance was brought to a drumhead Court Martial and degraded, the Herr General will be pleased to hear! However, the Emir's intentions were agreed to be excellent, and he has now brought us a basket of carrier-pigeons from his Chief, the nephew of the Sherif—and the Emir is to convey back with him of these birds a similar basket, trained at the Nazareth Headquarters of the Herr General-in-Chief, Liman von Sanders—as soon as the pigeon-master-Sergeant with them arrives.... Also, this is good beer! What does the Herr General say to another bottle?"

"Ja, ja. Mit Vergnügen. It is hellishly hot! ..."

The Emir Fadl Anga, ingenious purveyor of genuine but post-dated intelligence—salutes gravely, and wheels his dapple-grey about as the composite train bumps out of Nakr. A muscle in his lean, dark cheek jerks, and his thin lips under the Arab beard smile scornfully—as his glance falls on the rank-and-file of the War Prisoners—clustered on the platform beside the iron way....

They are hot, faint and weary under the bite of the sun, amidst this jumble of naked hills, on whose chalk and limestone knees they have driven elaborate systems of trenches for the enemy, under the lash of the loaded hide-whips. But Barney Mossam, with a split top-lip and a scarlet gap where several front teeth are missing, is making a gallant effort to buck the others. In the middle of a spirited rendering of "I HAVEN'T seen the Kaiser for a VERY long time. He's the leader of a German Band, an' he AIN'T no cousin of mine!"—breaks in the fierce interruption of an Arab voice, bitterly abusive:

"You—O you! Sons of farrâshes prostitute concubines!—silence that brother of howling apes!"

Thrusting his lance-butt in the embroidered leathern bucket, Fadl Anga leans low from his saddle—appears to pick up something, no doubt a pebble—rises erect, and hurls the missile savagely into the brown of the crowd of men. It hits Barney, who picks it up, and white teeth flash in the black beards of the other mounted Arabs, and a laugh goes up from the Turkish guards, who are smoking and chatting and eating water-melons, as the supposed emissary of the traitorous nephew of the Sherif of Mecca touches his mare with the sharp edge of the broad copper stirrup—and with a ringing shout of "Allah ho Akbar!" gallops down the rocky road towards Shechem, followed by his two companions, and leaving Barney Mossam gaping—with an embroidered Arab purse—heavy with Turkish silver coins, clutched in his hand....

Long before the composite train went jolting out of Nakr the keen grey eyes under the kuffiyeh of Fadl Anga—eyes less miserable now that by day and night sharp danger gives a spice to life, so empty void of Katharine—have assured their owner, Edward Yaill,—that Julian Forbis is not with the officers in the cattle-trucks any more than he is with the men clustered like swarming bees upon the grilling platform, beside the iron track.

V

The weather changes before dawn. Soggy clouds roll inland from the sea, hide the sky of Eastern azure, blot out the shining faces of the stars and invest the pale beauty of the Queen Planet of Night with the flowing sable veil of a recent War Widow. It has come on to rain—a slashing downpour of Palestinian intensity, under which the wadis speedily become shallow cataracts of khaki water—the trenches slashed in the terraced Judæan Hills, and manned by Turks, Germans, or British Crusaders—mere troughs of sandy or chalky mud.

Sangars ramparted with boulders may offer some practical assurance against shell-splinters or bullets, but against rain like this they offer no security. Bivouacs built of stones, and roofed with ground-sheets may in some degree keep out the rain, but they freely admit the cold. A Scotch mist, clammy, freezing and blinding in its damp opaqueness blankets the Hills of Ephraim, and broods over the Maritime Plain, as on the edge of one of the limestone terraces that fringe the robe of Mount Ebal,—a big, brawny Arab sits—nursing a badly-ricked ankle, and swearing in the fruitiest vernacular of his adopted land.

It is lucky for the Arab in the brown camel-hair shirt, striped abâyi and roped white linen head-cloth, that he has no audience but the scorpions and lizards sheltering from the slashing downpour under the grey-white boulders—as he rocks himself and nurses his ricked ankle—and curses his luck. Presently, as the Scotch mist lifts, and the plain is irradiated by the watery moonlight, he sets his teeth for an effort and crawls to where a bundle tied in native cloth, and a long, metal-tipped Arab walking-staff lie on the chalky, puddled plain where they fell when he dropped them from the machine at the beginning of the volplane, and screwed himself as the plain rushed up, to wait the throttling down of the engine—the long, smooth final glide—the flattening out following the pilot's raising of the lever—and the slight jarring impact of the thick-tyred wheels with the ground....

"Now jump!" the sharp, strident voice of the Egyptian called when the expected shock seemed imminent, and John Hazel set his teeth and jumped promptly. Aware even before he crashed to ground that the word had been given too soon. Even as he sprawled on the chalky plain, with all the wind knocked out of his body—the machine just missed landing on top of him. How he rolled out of the way of the thick squat wheels, and the steel framework of the under-carriage of the biplane, a powerful and heavy machine of D.H.6 type—he does not know now....

Sick, faint and shaken, he picked himself up, but not before Essenian, lithe as an acrobat, freed himself from the safety-belt, jumped out, adjusted the controls, and swung the big propeller. As the engine started he leaped back to his seat, looked round at Hazel, shouted "Good-bye!" and opening the throttle, raced over the plain, and rushed up into the air as though pursued by a fusillade of machine-gun bullets.

"Damn and blast the Egyptian beast!" John snarls, and, as the ricked joint rapidly swells to cricket-ball size, swears again, and thinks as he rubs it, "Might have guessed he was out for some treachery or other. Though how could I?—until he signalled to the enemy over Shechem by firing the Verey light, and gave away the whole show by dropping a message-bag! Making me swear before the start by all we Hazels hold most holy, never by word or sign to let out anything I might see him do. Consequently I'm his confederate—tarred with the same brush. And now I know he murdered Captain Usborn! It was his own revolver-bullet I showed him at the Club. If ever I get out of here I stand some chance of getting shot myself for being back at the Front on the quiet when I'm supposed to be on leave in Alex. But anyhow I hope I'll see Essenian Pasha get his dose of British lead before I do. Unless I get a chance to settle him myself. Wouldn't I let the beggar have it! Right in the neck—where Winnie wore the beads. But what a flier! Holy Smoke! what an A1. flier! Unless he's a devil, which I trend to believe!—there's not a man his match."

The rain that began at two a.m. by his wrist-watch (hidden under a broad band of untanned sheep-leather, laced on John's big wrist by a slender thong) shows no sign of abating. Fitfully and at intervals through the night, those guns in the west and south have held debate. Now they begin again with redoubled energy. John has seen as the D.H.6 travelled through the clear azure Palestine night, how the enemy's line has been thrust back from Gaza towards Jaffa. Now with a great blowing-up of Turco German ammunition-dumps, Junction Station,—key of the northern railway system—announces to the echoing hills the success of British arms.

"Good for us!" John chuckles, rather drearily—as the sullen sky in the south is illuminated by Aurora Borealis-like effects of orange, green and crimson—and Brock-like sheaves of flame spurt from the horizon to descend in gold and silver showers. "Djemal Pasha's Fourth Army Corps seems to be getting it rather badly. We're putting the breeze up Von Kressenstein, unless I much mistake...."

Even as John Hazel hugs the thought, the train containing Djemal Pasha's German Corps Commander is rushing towards Jerusalem. The Turco-German Army, broken in two, is retiring eastwards upon the Holy City and north-west through Ramleh towards Tul Keram. The brigades that rolled into Shechem overnight—rested and fed, are rolling out again. Fresh batteries from the Caucasus, diverted from Mesopotamia, new battalions of infantry of the Redif and Mustafiz, and brigades of irregular Cavalry from Kurdistan and Northern Albania, are swarming down to reinforce the Nizam and its Ikhtiât.

Dawn comes with cessation of the freezing, pelting rain and the sun glows fiery red through the curtain of leaden-coloured mists that yet hang over the Mediterranean. Wounded and stragglers on foot, German Army motor-lorries laden with escaping Teuton officers, begin to arrive at the Holy City. It is whispered in Jerusalem the Weary that the days of Ottoman rule in Palestine are numbered, that the German, Turkish and Austrian officials and residents are even now preparing to quit the town. And indeed German depots are hurriedly emptied; sugar sold as cheap as the dirt that is in it—long held-up flour and cereals disposed of in haste. From the high towers of the City and from the Mount of Olives one can see the roads that are muddy now—and will be dusty presently, crowded with lorries, carts and pack-animals carrying fugitives with their baggage, munitions and essential stores, north to Shechem or east to Jericho....

John, unaware of this, yet senses great happenings, as he stands propped on his Arab staff, cursing the temporary uselessness of a man with a sprained ankle-joint. He must lie up somewhere until the anguish abates and the cricket-ball reduces. A hut—there are clusters of drab-white specks, indicating a village on the northern fringes of the stretch of plain—boulder-strewn, bush-dotted, thinly grassed, thick with tufts of mandrake and tall blue Campanulas, and knee-deep in growth of late-blooming, white and yellow asphodel—on which Essenian elected to come down.... Westwards towards the sea there are other, larger villages. South there is a broad defile, curving east between humpy limestone hills, leading, John knows, to the town of Shechem. Over him rises the huge and bulky Shape of Ebal, three thousand six hundred and ninety feet above sea-level. From terrace to terrace, a path winds up to her towering rounded crest between hedges of tamarisk, broad-leaved grey-green cactus, and prickly pear plentifully laden with knobby red fruit. On her summit the map has shown John the ruins of an ancient fortress. Near the top, on this, the west side—stands a little whitewashed cupola surmounting a wall of mud and stone encircling a Moslem well.

Water is there; and hidden away with his revolver and cartridges on John's big person, is a case of First Aid necessaries, a small flask of brandy and some meat-lozenges in case of need like this. He determines to crawl up to the place of the well, hide, and doctor himself for a day, or even two days until the sprain is reduced, and he can get about.

"Hard luck," he mutters to himself, "but there's no good in grousing.... Now buck up and help me—O all you Big Old Men!"

But the Big Old Men give no sign, and their descendant, shouldering his bundle (to bear out his role of Arab there ought to be a donkey or a woman to carry it), limps, leaning on his staff and sweating with pain, up the narrow pathway leading between the hedges of cactus and prickly pear.

Blood-red, the Sun rises over the distant horizon, the glittering drops upon the leaves, the drying puddles under John's naked, slippered feet are reddened by the reflection. From the broad, prickly leaves the wet begins to steam; the tufts of snapdragon, pink and crimson, white and yellow and orange; and the blue campanulas, growing in the tissues of the rock, stand gallantly upright, refreshed by the dampness; the lily-like asphodel exhales its delicate, characteristic smell.

There are goats on the Mount, John notices, presently. Their droppings are thick upon the path he climbs. He hears them bleating, and sees them, feeding under the ruins of the Fortress. Indeed, the next wind of the path brings him out upon a ledge where a heavy-uddered female is cropping the thyme that grows there, with a jet-black kid nuzzling at her side. If one could catch the mother, thinks John, the question of subsisting here for days would be easily settled. Prickly pears are eatable.... Goat's milk is good.... There were lots of milch-goats in the caves of Sheria, and modern Crusaders, dry with the drouth of battle, and as yet uncertain whether the enemy had not poisoned the wells—milked the goats into their tin hats and other receptacles, and drank and were mightily refreshed. If only—even as John licks his lips, the too-nimble dairy, skipping from ledge to ledge, recedes from view. Bleating, the little black kid scrambles after her—and the Moslem well near the summit of Ebal seems farther off than it did before.

John sees now a path, branching off to his right hand, which may lead to the hut or cave of the goatherd. He strikes out upon it, and makes some progress, until the curve of it, trending southwards, suddenly shows him a narrow road, deeply rutted with broad-tyred wheels, and pitted with hoof-prints, leading up the Mount from its base on the south-eastern side. The erect brown figure of a sentry—reduced by distance to the size of a doll—stands out against the background. A Turkish Artillery waggon is jolting up the steep roadway.... John hears the panting of the toiling horses, the creak of the straining rope traces, the jingle of chains and the cracking of the drivers' thick-lashed whips....

From behind a bush he now looks down into a sangar built of boulders, sheltered at one end with green tarpaulin and full of Turkish machine-guns. The tarpaulin quivers with the snores of sleeping gunners, whose legs project beyond it, and from a nest of camouflage lower down the mountain, the blunt nose of a howitzer snuffs at the sky.

Still farther south a Field battery of Krupps has been posted on the flank of Ebal; the whinnying of horses eager for their morning barley and forage comes from a hollow where the Turks have stabled their teams, the smell of some aromatic burning wood spices the air with sweetness. Blue smoke columns up from fires of hidden bivouacs. There are picquets along the foothills, and on the plain are outposts. The Mount—except on the west and north whence danger is not apprehended—has been converted into a veritable wasps' nest.

Holding his breath, John Hazel turns, and noiselessly retraces his footsteps between the cactus hedges and along the path to where it first branched off. As he sets his lame foot gingerly upon it, he encounters a veiled native woman, toiling upwards, who carries—not an excessive burden in this land of laden women—a bundle of canes, and an empty gourd, and has a coarse jar of red earthenware balanced on her head.

Perhaps the earthen Jar contains water, or milk, or laban, that mixture of excessively sour milk with finely-chopped mint, peculiar to Syria. The bare idea intensifies John's thirst.

"O my mother!" he begins in quite passable Arabic: "In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate—"

"Ai—e!" The woman has started and dropped the gourd, and stands before him trembling, "What—what wouldst thou?"

"Somewhat to wet my throat. Thou lookest on a thirsty man. Hast thou, by any lucky chance, drink in the vessel?"

"The vessel is empty. See you, I have spoken truth!" She takes the jar from her veiled head and turns it upside down, and John's heart sinks to the bottom of his famished stomach. "May God relieve your need! ..."

"Allah favour thee! Black is my fortune. Thou seest," he thrusts out the swollen foot with the bulge at the side of the ankle-joint, "what evil has befallen me through a slip upon the Mountain side."

"It hurts thee? ..." He cannot see the hidden face, but in the faint voice there is a note of pity....

"Wallah! It hurts like very hell! Worse than the hurt is the lameness. Now hear! By the life of my head I say: If thou, being a woman, couldst help it somewhat! ... If thou knewest a place of shelter where I could lie and tend the hurt, and—and—have somewhat to eat and drink while it was mending, for this I would pay thee. By Allah! I am no beggar, I!"

The Fellaha thinks, while a little dusky hand holds the edges of her veil together. Then she says faintly:

"Ala râsi. I have—I know of a place of shelter. It is not very far from here. There thou couldst lie, it is a cave between two boulders and I would bring thee food and drink."

"Allah requite thee, O my sister! ..."

"Come, then, Sidi!" She returns her empty vessel to its place upon her head, with the deft, accustomed swing of the Eastern woman, and moves on before him, striking into another lateral path, a mere goat-track to the unpractised eye, that scores the mountain-side, running north. For perhaps a quarter of a mile her little bending figure hurries along and the tall Arab, leaning on his staff, hobbles painfully after. Where the cave between two boulders is—and less a cave than a hollow under a projecting ledge of nummulite limestone—he finds her waiting him....

"In here, Sidi!"

"Call me not Sidi! I am no person of degree." John thinks it well to try on the woman the story he has invented. "No person of degree am I. Only Ali Zaybak the Bedawi, a man who once had three camels, and ten sheep, and five goats, and a father and two brothers, and a wife also; and now has none; my brothers, my wife and two camels being killed and all the rest lost...."

"May the Dispenser of Mercies atone to thee, O Ali Zaybak!" says the thin faded voice from under the woman's veil. "How came about thy loss? From whom dost thou claim the blood-wreaks?"

"From the Inglizi, (English) the thrice-accursed ones! who came flying over our village—we dwelling in the Shadow of Allah in the caves of the Wadi Sheria—I and my brothers having bought exemption from service with the Army of the Osmanli (Turks) with the savings of all our lives."

"Ay, ay," the thin voice assents, bitterly. "Few and small were the gold and silver coins remaining on thy wife's head-tire, when the Dispensers of Exemption had signed thy card."

"Verily, Allah be my witness! and it is a black shame to take the money that was the woman's marriage-gift. We were then very poor—but we had the three camels and the sheep and the goats also—though the beasts were little and thin. Then came the War, rolling all about us—with marchings and counter-marchings of hosts of men—and we sent my brothers south so that they might sell to the Inglizi soldiers before Gaza, all the olives stored in old oil-tins, and all the oranges, and tobacco, and grape-treacle, and figs of last year, that the Almani and Osmanli had not taken away...." John cannot for the life of him restrain this vitriolic touch. "And they went, and made much money—the Inglizi being fools and wealthy, moreover—as all these sons of Sheitan are. This was in the month Shbât; and coming home my two brothers encountered Fate, in the person of a Commander of the Almani (Germans), who seized upon the young men—they being far from their native village and not having their warakas of Exemption on them—and sent them to dig trenches at the Bir-es Saba Works."

"A bitter tyranny the Most High beheld, and will avenge upon the doer!"

"Then there was fighting at the Wady Sheria—because having taken the strong place of Bir-es Saba, ay! and the ridges down to the sea, the British desired the Place of Good Wells." John is beginning to believe in Ali Zaybak, the Bedawi farmer, to the point of getting hot over that individual's fictitious woes.... "Came they—they came, and were as hornets about us, their killis bursting with stench, and smoke, and ruin—and their Devil-Birds fighting the Devil-Birds of the Almani, and driving them down out of the air. One dropped an egg of Eblis that killed two of our camels, and broke the leg of the third. My father cried out on Allah and fell face downwards.... So my wife cried out and fell, and when I went to lift them, lo!—they were dead.... Yet was there no wound on either.... Wallah! Upon neither was there a wound! ..."

"Well do I believe thee. I have seen Death come after that fashion many times since the beginning of this War. What more, O Ali Zaybak? ..."

"This,—that my goats and sheep being gone from me—for the Osmanli took them when they retired before the Inglizi—I have come to Shechem to seek my brothers, if haply they be alive and there! ..."

"Ay, but why seek them on the Mount of Cursing, and not within the town? ..."

Woman-like, she has put her little wasted, dusky finger on the weak spot in John's trumped-up story. Having done it, she goes on, as he racks his brain for a sufficiently-convincing figment:

"Thou wilt do this to-morrow, O Ali Zaybak the Bedawi, when the swelling of thy joint hath abated and thou art rested and fed. So creep in here between the stones—there is a sheepskin thou canst lie on—and in somewhat less than an hour I will come back to thee with food and drink."

"May Allah prolong thy years, O woman!" says John with the extravagant hyperbole and the sing-song inflection proper to Oriental gratitude. "May thy fortune be doubled upon thee, and, fair as thou art already, may the radiance of thy beauty out-dazzle the full moon!"

She gives a queer little rustling laugh behind the folds of her coarse, yellowish head-cloth.

"Sweet words, sweet words from a widower bereaved in Shbât! Belike," she cackles again, "thou hast come to the Mount of Cursing in search of another bride? Dost thou lust for the Unrevealed? See, then, O Ali Zaybak! what beauty hides behind this screen! ..."

And accompanying the words with a swift revealing movement, she whisks back the heavy veil from that mutilated left side....

"My God!" John very nearly exclaims, bleaching under his natural mahogany-colour, for a man old in War and hardened to the sight of wounded men may yet sicken at the sight of a woman mutilated like this. But he swallows the exclamation, and substitutes:

"I—am sorry! May Allah pity thee, poor soul! ..."

"And increase the wisdom of the Sidi! ..."

The Fellaha is re-veiled and between the pendent linen folds comes her little rustling whisper; chilling the blood of the pretended Ali Zaybak, under the now nearly vertical rays of the blazing Syrian sun....

"Who, desiring Secret Intelligence for his War-Chiefs of the British Army, ventures into the midst of the enemy, disguised as an Arab and alone! ..."

The words drop, coldly as lumps of hail, on the adventurous heart of the man. Discovered, and in the first hour by a Syrian peasant woman.... He forgets his pain, and drawn to his full height, fixes his black eyes threateningly upon her hidden face.

"What sayest thou? Hast thou no fear?"

"None—of a British officer, nor of a British soldier!"

The words, spoken in English with a Syrian-French accent, are such an unexpected shock, that John jolts temporarily back into his own adopted tongue:

"How the hell—ahem! How did you know—I'm—what you say I am?"

"Because" the voice is soft and refined, though it is thin and toneless: "Because—sir!—when I showed you my face—you did not—spit like a Mohammedan, or laugh like a German! And who"—the voice suggests the shadow of a mocking smile—"who but an Englishman would venture here—so ill-disguised and speaking such bad Arabic, and carry himself so confidently as almost to deceive me—in spite of the testimony of my two good ears—and my one very good eye."

The poor face she has shown to John is blind on that shattered left side. He knows a thrill of pity even as he asks:

"You won't give me away? ..."

"If 'give away' means to betray—no, I will not betray you!"

"Thanks. You're out Scouting on your own," says John, "unless I'm very much mistaken?" He adds still in English, as she lets this broad hint pass.... "Since we're to be pals of sorts, do you mind telling me your name? ..."

She gives her faint little whispering laugh.

"Ay, surely. It is Ummshni.... 'Mother Ugly' in your English tongue. In Arabic, 'Mother of Ugliness.' ...!"

"But—but I can't call you that! ..."

"You must. It is my name here. For you I have no other."

"Then shake hands, little Ummshni," John says promptly, and thrusts out his own huge, brown right hand.

"Need we?" She hesitates....

He says, encouragingly:

"Just once. To seal the bargain and show we're pals!"

"Once then...."

She hesitates an instant more. Now from enveloping folds, a small, shrunken, dusky hand steals out, and is engulfed in John's. And then a breathless cry, not loud, nor shrill, but terrible in its dire, agonised intensity bursts from the mouth of the distorted face that is mercifully hidden by the veil....

"God of my fathers! Who art thou?" The gasped-out words are once more Arabic. "From whence didst thou get the Ring of the House of Hazaël? ... Thy face, too.... It is the face of Eli! Thy voice.... Do not deny it! ... Thou art of the Blood! ..."

"Since you know it already I'll tip you the garden truth. I'm John Benn Hazel, old Eli's grandson from London. But who in the name of—wonder—are you? ..."

"Thy—thy unhappy Cousin Esther!" The words come stumblingly, between terrible, dry sobs.... "Oh, do not check me. Let me weep! I have not for so long! ..."

"Now by—the whole blooming, blessed row of Big Old Men, back to the Very Biggest!" John says between his teeth, as leaning on his heavy staff he stands staring blankly down at a little heaving bundle of coarse and common feminine drapery that crouches at his big sandalled feet amidst the short thyme-scented grass, "This is—this is the cherry in the cocktail! Just when I'd begun to think I wouldn't carry through—comes along the very sort of little woman to help me! This isn't Coincidence or anything like it. This is—just—Fate! ..."

"Help thee?" Her sobs have abated, she lifts up her bowed, head. "In what manner can I help thee? I can feed thee, tend thy hurt and hide thee. But there is something more than these.... Tell me what thou wouldst do? ..."

"Save a man!" No one is near, but he whispers it, stooping over the little figure. "A War Prisoner they've got here. Get him out—and get him away! ..."

"Yes—yes! Willingly will I help thee. Hath an Hazaël ever failed to answer to the Call of the Blood?" The little dusky hand clutches at his brawny wrist. She rises, and her eager breath mingles with his, and an eye diamond-bright, black as his own, flashes between her veils.... "What strength I have—what cunning and courage—are thine, to the threshold of Death and beyond it. But—but, John, my cousin! If I help thee to free thy man—thou must needs deliver mine."

"I'm not sweet on conditions—they're things that handicap. Who's your man?" The tone is decidedly gruff.

"He is an English officer.... There is no other in Shechem since the big German petrol lorries rolled out this morning. For the Turks have sent them all away ... I heard, to Aleppo."

"The hell you say! Forgive me, little Esther, but this is—pretty rough! For I'm here—bad Arabic and all—on the track of a British War Prisoner."

"Tell me his name," says the thin rustling voice, shaken still with emotion....

"Julian Forbis.... Father Julian Forbis," John answers, and she falters:

"O my cousin! in thine hour of need and mine the Most High, Blessed be He! hath verily sent thee. For—for—thy man and my man—are one! Come now to the secret place where I dwell alone with my sorrow. There we can talk freely—it is safer than here. Thy hand on my shoulder—what a big hand, like that of our grandfather Eli! ... Lean on thy staff, but on me too. I am stronger than thou wouldst dream...."

VI

The line held yesterday by the Turco-German forces has bent northwards at its western extremity, and southwards at its eastern end. Jaffa, the ancient Port of Jerusalem, has been occupied by Allenby's forces. Junction Station, the key of the north, now being in British hands, the enemy's Army, cut in two, has retired partly east into the mountains towards Jerusalem, and partly northwards along the Coastal Plain. The nearest line upon which its several portions can re-unite is the line Tul-Keram, Shechem. Reports from the Royal Flying Corps indicate the intention of Djemal Pasha and the other Corps Commanders to evacuate Jerusalem and withdraw to organise on the line Tul-Keram, Shechem.

It being vital to obtain a hold of this invaluable artery of thoroughfare, which traverses the Judæan range from north to south from Shechem to Jerusalem,—our Advance has wheeled to the right, and struck into the Hills with the object of wresting from the enemy the Jerusalem-Shechem Road.

At the eastern end of the long fish-shaped valley, whose sides are shagged with olive-woods and running with springs, and in which lies Shechem, is a grassy, level expanse in the shape of an isosceles triangle—one of its longer sides being the road that runs east and west past the new Turkish Barracks, the Arsenal and the Hospital—and the other the road that—north of this—passing the Mohammedan Cemetery and the ancient Tombs that are upon the fringe of the limestone robe of Ebal, runs into an ancient Roman road, that completing the shape of the isosceles, goes north along the eastern flank of Mount Ebal to the little hamlet of Sichar, and south to the Holy City,—leaving on the left a Mohammedan well that has been built over the Tomb of Joseph, and some quarter of a mile farther on, a hillock shaded by mulberries and figs, and covered with ruins, enclosing Bir Samariyeh, or the Samaritan Woman's Well.

The top of the triangular patch of waste ground ends at the very gate of Shechem, being lost in the great mounds of immemorial ashes, brought down in ancient days from the Temple on Mount Gerizim. Wild fig and mulberry, olive and tamarisk—and thickets of the zizyphus set with formidable thorns, that give the tree its name of Spina Christi—make a shabby jungle of the Ash Heaps, haunted by kites, crows and owls, pariah-dogs and jackals, who come to feast where the offal and refuse of the town are thrown. Here, too, lepers congregate; sick animals are thrust to die, dead ones are thrown to bleach and putrefy; and sometimes—even before the War—bodies of people robbed and murdered, or too destitute of friends to be given burial—huddle amongst the rank weeds and tangled undergrowth, or lie stark and dreadful, with blind eyes beaten by the lashing rains of Palestine, or staring at its pitiless sun.

When Allied War Prisoners first came to the town of Shechem, the isosceles triangle of waste ground—its shortest side indicated by the road that runs by the Tomb of Joseph towards the Well of the Samaritaness—was enclosed within a twelve-foot double fence of German barbed-wire, for the keeping of certain French and British officers, who declined to give parole. These lived in Turkish Army tents and messed in a ramshackle wooden hut near the eastern end of the enclosure; their rations, such as they were, being brought from the Turkish Barracks twice a day. Those officers who gave parole, causing less trouble to the authorities—were somewhat better treated, it may be allowed. The old stone prison near the Suk was alloted as their quarters. They were permitted to take exercise within certain bounds, even to visit the Latin Fathers, and the headquarters of the Protestant Mission, and better their diet by making purchases in the town bazar. To-day, Shechem, with her numerous mosques and her flat-brown roofs embowered in orange and pomegranate-trees—is bursting full of Turkish troops, and their German military masters; and destined ere long to rival Tul Keram as an Army H.Q. No British War Prisoners are left in her since the exodus of early morning, save four Berkshire and Devon Yeomen lying desperately sick at the Turkish Hospital—two London Territorials, and three Indian troopers in the charitable care of the Sœurs de la Sainte Croix....

Ah, and the solitary captive of the leaky wooden shanty in the Wired Enclosure, from which the Turkish Army tents have been removed, leaving round yellow patches of parched and trampled grass. Saving the Bey, certain of his German friends, several Mounted Police, and a guard of infantry from the mud Barracks—no other persons in Shechem suspect that Father Julian Forbis did not leave yesterday for Aleppo with the other British officers,—though possibly that dust-like one, the Mother of Ugliness, may have a certain inkling of the truth.

Upon a native anghareb, a short-legged, palm-wood bed-frame with coarse sacking laced upon it, he lies within the hut that used to be the Mess. Although it leaks in the winter rains, its timbers are of solid oak, and its door is heavy, and secured on the outside by a huge wooden lock. A padlocked iron fetter on the priest's ankle is linked to a chain finishing in a ring, running on an iron bar,—the ends of which, being bent, have been driven into the corner-posts at the end of the hut that is farthest from the door. Having thus secured the prisoner, the bash-châwush of Mounted Police went away with his troopers and the escort. That was yesterday morning, possibly in the neighbourhood of nine o'clock. The common watch of gun-metal on the priest's wrist has stopped—as the result of brutal usage.... He can only calculate Time by the prayer-call from the mosques of the town....

No hint of the possible length of his confinement has been given, the bash-châwush being an old hand and quite thoroughly understanding the torture of Uncertainty. No food was brought the prisoner yesterday or to-day; they have not even given him water.... Nothing has passed the man's lips—since on that morning of the Bey's visit he broke fast with the thin boiled wheat-porridge and the black bread on which War Prisoners are fed.

Mere hunger he can endure.... As a Religious of a strict Order he is well inured to fasting. But the thirst, aggravated by mental distress, sleeplessness and anxiety, is torture. His lips are cracked, and his throat and tongue so dried and leathery, that the effort to speak above a whisper would be positive pain.

The two narrow apertures that serve as windows are some eight feet above the floor-level. It is not possible to see out of them. Through chinks and knot-holes in the walls of stout though ancient timbers—it might be possible to get a glimpse through the twelve-foot fence of barbed-wire—out upon the road running east from the gates of the city, and the road running north and east by the Wadi Farab to the Jordan Valley, and southwards from Shechem to Jerusalem.... But the man chained to the iron bar lies in a feverish stupor on the sacking of the anghareb. There are strange noises in his ears like the clamour of voices in many tongues—like the clatter of innumerable hoofs, the rattle of wooden wheels and the vibrating grind and din of heavy motor-traffic; but he is too faint and weary to be curious as to their cause.

We know, that even as reinforcements of Turkish troops of the Redif and Mustaphiz are being rushed from the Caucasus to form reserves upon the fissured Plain of Ephraim—has begun the exodus of such inhabitants of Jerusalem as are not strict Mohammedans—or known to be Turco-German in views and sympathies.... Since the noon prayer-call, vehicles of every type, loaded with fugitives of the better class, have been rolling into Shechem, the roads leading to the town are blocked—a haze of dust envelops everything since the sun dried up the torrents of rain that fell at break of day....

Came yesterday, Von Geierstein, the once famous War Minister—now Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief on Germany's Battle Front in Asia—post haste from his Great Headquarters at the red city of Aleppo. To meet Enver Pasha, Djemal, and the other Turkish Commanders at Jerusalem, harangue the defeated generals, and reorganise the Turco-German War Plan on more successful lines....

Fallen into eclipse at the Court of Berlin as the result of his military failures at Verdun, horribly disconcerted by the disaster of the Vulkan Pass, inexpressibly sickened by the taking of Beersheba, the fall of Gaza and the loss of Junction Station,—the brilliant ex-favourite of Imperial Majesty (whose ambition has had more to do with the kindling of the brand of War than that of any other man in Germany—saving Von Tirpitz)—after warning Enver and Djemal of the uselessness of endeavouring to hold Jerusalem now the Gaza Line has been broken—left the Holy City this morning for Shechem, in his Œstler-Daimler, another with his Staff Officers, following, half his escort of armoured Scheff cars preceding him—the remainder, with his servants, bringing up the rear.

Even as the Governor, Izzet Bey, and Ali Fuad Pasha, Commander of Turkish Forces in the Holy City—issue the proclamations of their masters to the people, our troops are pushing up the passes into the Judæan Highlands; the sound of British guns comes even from the Vale of Sorek, thenceforward the din of battle grows louder hour by hour....

Already in Shechem, in Samaria and in Jericho—whither the Latin, Greek, Armenian and Coptic Patriarchs have been forcibly deported, with other ecclesiastics and notables, and wealthy Zionist Hebrews—the reign of terror that has prevailed in Jerusalem since Turkey joined issues with Germany—has begun. Ten Turkish pounds are asked, and got, by Mohammedan drivers for a seat in a carriage. Large numbers of the wealthier inhabitants, with the remaining chiefs of religious communities, have been warned by the Turkish Police to be in readiness for exile. No more vehicles being available for the transport of the victims, Djemal Pasha—venomous always, seasons the order with the intimation that the deported population will be compelled to travel on foot....

Spies swarm everywhere. Fear presses like a heavy hand upon the public mouth. Arrests, confiscations and requisitions redouble—populations quail under the lash of tyranny. Gallows are set up at the Jaffa Gate—there are hangings and shootings daily. The bodies of the victims of the last battue are left exposed for hours, to impress upon the population that, after four centuries of oppression, the Tartar is not disposed to surrender one of the Holy Cities of the Turkish Caliphate without a final orgie of extortion, brow-beating and blood.

The day wears on, no succour comes, and the priest's stupor of exhaustion deepens. Towards sunset there is a heavy knock upon the door of the hut.

"Come in!"

The captive's first effort to speak aloud results in a croaking whisper. The heavy Turkish lock scroops in its wooden mortice, and something like a smile twitches the lips of Julian Forbis. Is it not the very brutality of irony to knock upon a starving prisoner's door?

Now the door swings inwards, letting in a wedge of noon-tide brightness, but the visitors delay a moment on the threshold. And a strange voice says, as though in answer to a question, speaking in cultured Arabic, softly and melodiously:

"No! Nothing may be done in the Holy City; the influences there are too adverse. But at Banias!—and here on Mount Gerizim—"

Even as the utterance strikes with a strange, premonitory shock and thrill upon the consciousness of the prisoner, the door is pushed open to admit three men.

Two German Staff officers, tall, burly and swaggering, and a slight man, dark-hued as smoke, bearded, and of forbiddingly handsome countenance, arrayed in a dazzlingly white brocaded silk kaftan, girt with a gold embroidered crimson cincture, and a flowing kuffiyeh or head-drapery of the same fierce sanguinary colour, bound with a thick twist of silver and gold cords.

Two German officers of inferior rank, with a lieutenant and sergeant-major of Turkish Mounted Police and several troopers, are seen beyond the threshold. Now the heavy door shuts the four men in together.... The priest lowers his feet to the stamped earth floor and rises to receive the visitors. But so weak is he that he totters, and sways as though about to fall.

His giddiness passing with the dimness of his sight, he discerns that one of his visitors is the tall, sunburned, trap-mouthed German general who visited the Barracks yesterday in company of the Bey, and whose order put the period of a shot from a gendarme's repeating Winchester, to Govan's crazy song.

His companion is a handsome person, as yet in the early fifties, superbly built and of heroic size and stature. The grey-green Field Service dress suits him to admiration; not a button or buckle is out of its true alignment; his gloves, belts, revolver-holsters and boots are of immaculate earthy-brown. His spurs are of steel and gold; his single-breasted Norfolk-shaped Service jacket shows, as does the other man's, the narrow silver lace, the crimson collar-edging and shoulder-cords of the Great General Staff—the Iron Cross dangling at the buttonholes of both by its ribbon of black and white. Both wear the ribbons and brochettes of many decorations. But the taller man displays, in addition to these, the Order of the Prussian Black Eagle with diamond swords, hanging by a swivel under his collar-hook. And noting this distinction, together with the wearer's physical beauty—for he is yellow-haired, blue-eyed, straight-featured, handsome still, as the Viking hero of some old Teutonic Saga—it flashes on the priest as his own blue eyes, set in hollow caves of exhaustion and hunger, encounter the visitor's—that the man can be no other than the fallen favourite of the Emperor of Germany, now Commander-in-Chief of his army in Palestine....

Nor is the priest's conjecture wrong. It is the man, weary and disgruntled, sick with conscious failure, savage at the fancied triumph of old rivals and ancient enemies—wounded in the one vulnerable spot of his hard, vain, shallow heart by the death of his son, a brave young Flying Officer—killed in a duel with a British airman in January, 1915.

He spent last night at the old Army Headquarters, the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives. Ah, with what heartiness has Von Geierstein cursed the Turks as he turned his back upon the Holy City; as his fleet of cars ate distance upon the road to Shechem—where he is to dine, and sleep, if he can. He is keenly alive to their military blunders. For there are good Teutonic brains behind the brilliant eyes that light the handsome face to which he owes his rescue from bankruptcy—and his subsequent promotion from the rank of Chief of the General Staff of the 4th Army Corps, Magdeburg, to the dignity of Prussian War Minister—and the more dubious position of alter ego to William of Hohenzollern.

Over, over, the meteoric and splendid career. Fallen, beaten, ruined. Rich in the world's goods still, but bankrupt in the world's envying admiration. Left by the tide of Success on which he has floated so buoyantly,—he sees himself once more high and dry on the mudbank of Failure—not by the utmost expenditure of cleverness to be floated off again. His magnificent blue eyes are dark with wrath. He grinds his teeth, eminently white, and all his own—as he devotes the Ottoman Allies of Imperial Germany to the uttermost depths of Hell.

Unlucky favourite! never again to draw all eyes in the White Hall of the Imperial Palace at Berlin, while morning sunshine, streaming through the tall windows, shines upon the opening Session of the Reichstag—makes glittering play with the silver livery of Prussian State flunkeys, and strikes multi-coloured sparks of fire from the decorations and military orders of the members of the Federal Council, ranged on the left of the Throne. Never again to stand, the dazzling centre of a blazing constellation of Generals, by the daïs under the black, red and white Canopy—topped with the blazon of that Bird of ill-odour, whose greedy claws and rapacious beak, and insatiate maw are not yet glutted—though twenty millions of men and women have perished to slake its quenchless thirst for human blood.

"The Herr General Von Krafft, that you speak good German has informed me, Reverend Father? ..."

His own English is guttural, but passably decent. The priest, master of several dead, and some half dozen modern tongues, replies as well as his parched throat and palate will allow. His German, the distinguished visitor concedes, is very good for an Englishman....

"Though you belong to a Scotch family, I am given to understand by the Herr General.... I am deeply grieved that your much-desired reunion with your relatives has been farther delayed by your own unfortunate lack of tact. I refer to your regrettably-insolent treatment of the Bey, Our Ottoman Ally, who should command respect."

He is sick to nausea of Germany's Ottoman Ally even as he says it. His handsome lips twist with hatred of all things of the Turk Turkish, under his glittering up-brushed moustache. He is revolted by the fetid, stifling hut, by the pallid prisoner chained to the dirty native bed, but most by the sense of Failure dominating everything....

"Over, over, over!" says the voice that is always in his ears, sounding above the roar of moving Divisions and the crashing of artillery from the workshops of Krupp and Skoda, keeping time with the throbbing of the blood in his temples and the irregular beating of his wearied heart. "Beaten, beaten, beaten! ... Fallen, fallen! ... Total Kaput! ..."

"Sir—"

Not "Your Excellency" or other flattering title. Under his lowered lids, set thickly with dark lashes,—they accused him of using cosmetics, in his younger, more effeminate days,—he looks at the wasted, high-bred face, and meets its pure glance. His dead son, killed at twenty-two in the air battle with the English aviator, had eyes like this man's.

"Sir, an accusation similar to this was brought against me yesterday in the presence of," the blue eyes go dauntlessly to the other German's face, "General Von Krafft. I said then, as I reiterate now—that the charge is without foundation! As a man of honour and a Catholic priest, I deny it absolutely. I can bring creditable witnesses to refute it whenever there is need."

"Kindly name your witnesses. Where are they to be found, sir?"

They have all left for Aleppo, the priest remembers with a shock. He says, with a sinking heart:

"The guards of the Barracks would give evidence in my favour."

"It is they who accuse you! and I myself heard you-with-words-encourage, and saw you by gestures stimulate the mutineers to fresh acts of violence!"

The harsh voice of the Bey's friend, the tall brick-faced General, says this with a rasp of something like ill-will. The priest draws himself proudly up and meets the glance of the false accuser.

"Sir, I can only say that you—are mistaken."