Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  “There are a good many Englishmen who are asking themselves that question,” remarked Cecil Brown. “It’s my opinion that we have been the policemen of the world long enough. We policed the seas for pirates and slavers. Now we police the land for Dervishes and brigands and every sort of danger to civilisation. There is never a mad priest or a witch doctor, or a firebrand of any sort on this planet, who does not report his appearance by sniping the nearest British officer. One tires of it at last. If a Kurd breaks loose in Asia Minor, the world wants to know why Great Britain does not keep him in order. If there is a military mutiny in Egypt, or a Jehad in the Soudan, it is still Great Britain who has to set it right. And all to an accompaniment of curses such as the policeman gets when he seizes a ruffian among his pals. We get hard knocks and no thanks, and why should we do it? Let Europe do its own dirty work.”

  “Well,” said Colonel Cochrane, crossing his legs and leaning forward with the decision of a man who has definite opinions, “I don’t at all agree with you, Brown, and I think that to advocate such a course is to take a very limited view of our national duties. I think that behind national interests and diplomacy and all that there lies a great guiding force, — a Providence, in fact, — which is for ever getting the best out of each nation and using it for the good of the whole. When a nation ceases to respond, it is time that she went into hospital for a few centuries, like Spain or Greece, — the virtue has gone out of her. A man or a nation is not here upon this earth merely to do what is pleasant and profitable. It is often called upon to carry out what is unpleasant and unprofitable; but if it is obviously right, it is mere shirking not to undertake it.”

  Headingly nodded approvingly.

  “Each has its own mission. Germany is predominant in abstract thought; France in literature, art, and grace. But we and you, — for the English-speakers are all in the same boat, however much the New York Sun may scream over it, — we and you have among our best men a higher conception of moral sense and public duty than is to be found in any other people. Now, these are the two qualities which are needed for directing a weaker race. You can’t help them by abstract thought or by graceful art, but only by that moral sense which will hold the scales of Justice even, and keep itself free from every taint of corruption. That is how we rule India. We came there by a kind of natural law, like air rushing into a vacuum. All over the world, against our direct interests and our deliberate intentions, we are drawn into the same thing. And it will happen to you also. The pressure of destiny will force you to administer the whole of America from Mexico to the Horn.”

  Headingly whistled.

  “Our Jingoes would be pleased to hear you, Colonel Cochrane,” said he. “They’d vote you into our Senate and make you one of the Committee on Foreign Relations.”

  “The world is small, and it grows smaller every day. It’s a single organic body, and one spot of gangrene is enough to vitiate the whole. There’s no room upon it for dishonest, defaulting, tyrannical, irresponsible Governments. As long as they exist they will always be centres of trouble and of danger. But there are many races which appear to be so incapable of improvement that we can never hope to get a good Government out of them. What is to be done, then? The former device of Providence in such a case was extermination by some more virile stock. An Attila or a Tamerlane pruned off the weaker branch. Now, we have a more merciful substitution of rulers, or even of mere advice from a more advanced race. That is the case with the Central Asian Khanates and with the protected States of India. If the work has to be done, and if we are the best fitted for the work, then I think that it would be a cowardice and a crime to shirk it.”

  “But who is to decide whether it is a fitting case for your interference?” objected the American. “A predatory country could grab every other land in the world upon such a pretext.”

  “Events — inexorable, inevitable events — will decide it. Take this Egyptian business as an example. In 1881 there was nothing in this world further from the minds of our people than any interference with Egypt; and yet 1882 left us in possession of the country. There was never any choice in the chain of events. A massacre in the streets of Alexandria, and the mounting of guns to drive out our fleet — which was there, you understand, in fulfilment of solemn treaty obligations — led to the bombardment. The bombardment led to a landing to save the city from destruction. The landing caused an extension of operations — and here we are, with the country upon our hands. At the time of trouble we begged and implored the French or any one else to come and help us to set the thing to rights, but they all deserted us when there was work to be done, though they are ready enough to scold and to impede us now. When we tried to get out of it, up came this wild Dervish movement, and we had to sit tighter than ever. We never wanted the task; but, now that it has come, we must put it through in a workmanlike manner. We’ve brought justice into the country, and purity of administration, and protection for the poor man. It has made more advance in the last twelve years than since the Moslem invasion in the seventh century. Except the pay of a couple of hundred men, who spend their money in the country, England has neither directly nor indirectly made a shilling out of it, and I don’t believe you will find in history a more successful and more disinterested bit of work.”

  Headingly puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette.

  “There is a house near ours, down on the Back Bay at Boston, which just ruins the whole prospect,” said he. “It has old chairs littered about the stoop, and the shingles are loose, and the garden runs wild; but I don’t know that the neighbours are exactly justified in rushing in, and stamping around, and running the thing on their own lines.”

  “Not if it were on fire?” asked the Colonel.

  Headingly laughed, and rose from his camp-stool.

  “Well, it doesn’t come within the provisions of the Monroe Doctrine, Colonel,” said he. “I’m beginning to think, that modern Egypt is every bit as interesting as ancient, and that Rameses the Second wasn’t the last live man in the country.”

  The two Englishmen rose and yawned.

  “Yes, it’s a whimsical freak of fortune which has sent men from a little island in the Atlantic to administer the land of the Pharaohs. We shall pass away and never leave a trace among the successive races who have held the country, for it is an Anglo-Saxon custom to write their deeds upon rocks. I dare say that the remains of a Cairo drainage system will be our most permanent record, unless they prove a thousand years hence that it was the work of the Hyksos kings,” remarked Cecil Brown. “But here is the shore party come back.”

  Down below they could hear the mellow Irish accents of Mrs. Belmont and the deep voice of her husband, the iron-grey rifleshot. Mr. Stuart, the fat Birmingham clergyman, was thrashing out a question of piastres with a noisy donkey-boy, and the others were joining in with chaff and advice. Then the hubbub died away, the party from above came down the ladder, there were “good-nights,” the shutting of doors, and the little steamer lay silent, dark, and motionless in the shadow of the high Haifa bank. And beyond this one point of civilisation and of comfort there lay the limitless, savage, unchangeable desert, straw-coloured and dream-like in the moonlight, mottled over with the black shadows of the hills.

  CHAPTER III

  “Stoppa! Backa!” cried the native pilot to the European engineer.

  The bluff bows of the stern-wheeler had squelched into the soft brown mud, and the current had swept the boat alongside the bank. The long gangway was thrown across, and the six tall soldiers of the Soudanese escort filed along it, their light-blue, gold-trimmed zouave uniforms and their jaunty yellow and red forage caps showing up bravely in the clear morning light.

  Above them, on the top of the bank, was ranged the line of donkeys, and the air was full of the clamour of the boys. In shrill, strident voices each was crying out the virtues of his own beast, and abusing that of his neighbour.

  Colonel Cochrane and Mr. Belmont stood together in the bows, each wearing the broad white pugga
reed hat of the tourist. Miss Adams and her niece leaned against the rail beside them.

  “Sorry your wife isn’t coming, Belmont,” said the Colonel.

  “I think she had a touch of the sun yesterday. Her head aches very badly.”

  His voice was strong and thick like his figure.

  “I should stay to keep her company, Mr. Belmont,” said the little American old maid; “but I learn that Mrs. Shlesinger finds the ride too long for her, and has some letters which she must mail to-day, so Mrs. Belmont will not be lonesome.”

  “You’re very good, Miss Adams. We shall be back, you know, by two o’clock.”

  “Is that certain?”

  “It must be certain, for we are taking no lunch with us, and we shall be famished by then.”

  “Yes, I expect we shall be ready for a hock and seltzer, at any rate,” said the Colonel. “This desert dust gives a flavour to the worst wine.”

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen!” cried Mansoor, the dragoman, moving forward with something of the priest in his flowing garments and smooth, clean-shaven face. “We must start early that we may return before the meridial heat of the weather.” He ran his dark eyes over the little group of his tourists with a paternal expression. “You take your green glasses, Miss Adams, for glare very great out in the desert. Ah, Mr. Stuart, I set aside very fine donkey for you, — prize donkey, sir, always put aside for the gentleman of most weight. Never mind to take your monument ticket to-day. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you please!”

  Like a grotesque frieze the party moved one by one along the plank gangway and up the brown crumbling bank. Mr. Stephens led them, a thin, dry, serious figure, in an English straw hat. His red “Baedeker” gleamed under his arm, and in one hand he held a little paper of notes, as if it were a brief. He took Miss Sadie by one arm and her aunt by the other as they toiled up the bank, and the young girl’s laughter rang frank and clear in the morning air as “Baedeker” came fluttering down at their feet. Mr. Belmont and Colonel Cochrane followed, the brims of their sun-hats touching as they discussed the relative advantages of the Mauser, the Lebel, and the Lee-Metford. Behind them walked Cecil Brown, listless, cynical, self-contained. The fat clergyman puffed slowly up the bank, with many gasping witticisms at his own defects. “I’m one of those men who carry everything before them,” said he, glancing ruefully at his rotundity, and chuckling wheezily at his own little joke. Last of all came Headingly, slight and tall, with the student stoop about his shoulders, and Fardet, the good-natured, fussy, argumentative Parisian.

  “You see we have an escort to-day,” he whispered to his companion.

  “So I observed.”

  “Pah!” cried the Frenchman, throwing out his arms in derision; “as well have an escort from Paris to Versailles. This is all part of the play, Monsieur Headingly. It deceives no one, but it is part of the play.

  Pourquoi ces drôles de militaires, dragoman, hein?”

  It was the dragoman’s rôle to be all things to all men, so he looked cautiously round before he answered to make sure that the English were mounted and out of earshot.

  “C’est ridicule, monsieur!” said he, shrugging his fat shoulders. “Mais que voulez-vous? C’est l’ordre officiel Egyptien.”

  “Egyptien! Pah, Anglais, Anglais — toujours Anglais!” cried the angry Frenchman.

  The frieze now was more grotesque than ever, but had changed suddenly to an equestrian one, sharply outlined against the deep-blue Egyptian sky. Those who have never ridden before have to ride in Egypt, and when the donkeys break into a canter, and the Nile Irregulars are at full charge, such a scene of flying veils, clutching hands, huddled swaying figures, and anxious faces is nowhere to be seen. Belmont, his square figure balanced upon a small white donkey, was waving his hat to his wife, who had come out upon the saloon-deck of the Korosko. Cochrane sat very erect with a stiff military seat, hands low, head high, and heels down, while beside him rode the young Oxford man, looking about him with drooping eyelids as if he thought the desert hardly respectable, and had his doubts about the Universe. Behind them the whole party was strung along the bank in varying stages of jolting and discomfort, a brown-faced, noisy donkey-boy running after each donkey. Looking back, they could see the little lead-coloured stern-wheeler, with the gleam of Mrs. Belmont’s handkerchief from the deck. Beyond ran the broad, brown river, winding down in long curves to where, five miles off, the square, white block-houses upon the black, ragged hills marked the outskirts of Wady Haifa, which had been their starting-point that morning.

  “Isn’t it just too lovely for anything?” cried Sadie, joyously. “I’ve got a donkey that runs on casters, and the saddle is just elegant. Did you ever see anything so cunning as these beads and things round his neck? You must make a memo, re donkey, Mr. Stephens. Isn’t that correct legal English?”

  Stephens looked at the pretty, animated, boyish face looking up at him from under the coquettish straw hat, and he wished that he had the courage to tell her in her own language that she was just too sweet for anything. But he feared above all things lest he should offend her, and so put an end to their present pleasant intimacy. So his compliment dwindled into a smile.

  “You look very happy,” said he.

  “Well, who could help feeling good with this dry, clear air, and the blue sky and the crisp, yellow sand, and a superb donkey to carry you. I’ve just got everything in the world to make me happy.”

  “Everything?”

  “Well, everything that I have any use for just now.”

  “I suppose you never know what it is to be sad?”

  “Oh, when I am miserable I am just too miserable for words. I’ve sat and cried for days and days at Smith’s College, and the other girls were just crazy to know what I was crying about, and guessing what the reason was that I wouldn’t tell, when all the time the real true reason was that I didn’t know myself. You know how it comes like a great dark shadow over you, and you don’t know why or wherefore, but you’ve just got to settle down to it and be miserable.”

  “But you never had any real cause?”

  “No, Mr. Stephens, I’ve had such a good time all my life, that I don’t think, when I look back, that I ever had any real cause for sorrow.”

  “Well, Miss Sadie, I hope with all my heart that you will be able to say the same when you are the same age as your Aunt. Surely I hear her calling!”

  “I wish, Mr. Stephens, you would strike my donkey-boy with your whip if he hits the donkey again,” cried Miss Adams, jogging up on a high, raw-Boned beast. “Hi, dragoman, Mansoor, you tell this boy that I won’t have the animals ill used, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself. Yes, you little rascal, you ought! He’s grinning at me like an advertisement for a tooth paste. Do you think, Mr. Stephens, that if I were to knit that black soldier a pair of woollen stockings he would be allowed to wear them? The poor creature has bandages round his legs.”

  “Those are his putties, Miss Adams,” said Colonel Cochrane, looking back at her. “We have found in India that they are the best support to the leg in marching. They are very much better than any stocking.”

  “Well, you don’t say! They remind me mostly of a sick horse. But it’s elegant to have the soldiers with us, though Monsieur Fardet tells me there’s nothing for us to be scared about.”

  “That is only my opinion, Miss Adams,” said the Frenchman, hastily. “It may be that Colonel Cochrane thinks otherwise.”

  “It is Monsieur Fardet’s opinion against that of the officers who have the responsibility of caring for the safety of the frontier,” said the Colonel, coldly. “At least we will all agree that they have the effect of making the scene very much more picturesque.”

  The desert upon their right lay in long curves of sand, like the dunes which might have fringed some forgotten primeval sea. Topping them they could see the black, craggy summits of the curious volcanic hills which rise upon the Libyan side. On the crest of the low sand-hills they would catch a glimpse every now and
then of a tall, sky-blue soldier, walking swiftly, his rifle at the trail. For a moment the lank, warlike figure would be sharply silhouetted against the sky. Then he would dip into a hollow and disappear, while some hundred yards off another would show for an instant and vanish.

  “Wherever are they raised?” asked Sadie, watching the moving figures. “They look to me just about the same tint as the hotel boys in the States.”

  “I thought some question might arise about them,” said Mr. Stephens, who was never so happy as when he could anticipate some wish of the pretty American. “I made one or two references this morning in the ship’s library. Here it is — re — that’s to say, about black soldiers. I have it on my notes that they are from the 10th Soudanese battalion of the Egyptian army. They are recruited from the Dinkas and the Shilluks — two negroid tribes living to the south of the Dervish country, near the Equator.”

  “How can the recruits come through the Dervishes, then?” asked Headingly, sharply.

  “I dare say there is no such very great difficulty over that,” said Monsieur Fardet, with a wink at the American.

  “The older men are the remains of the old black battalions. Some of them served with Gordon at Khartoum and have his medal to show. The others are many of them deserters from the Mahdi’s army,” said the Colonel.

  “Well, so long as they are not wanted, they look right elegant in those blue jackets,” Miss Adams observed. “But if there was any trouble, I guess we would wish they were less ornamental and a bit whiter.”

  “I am not so sure of that, Miss Adams,” said the Colonel. “I have seen these fellows in the field, and I assure you that I have the utmost confidence in their steadiness.”

  “Well, I’ll take your word without trying,” said Miss Adams, with a decision which made every one smile.

  So far their road had lain along the side of the river, which was swirling down upon their left hand deep and strong from the cataracts above. Here and there the rush of the current was broken by a black shining boulder over which the foam was spouting. Higher up they could see the white gleam of the rapids, and the banks grew into rugged cliffs, which were capped by a peculiar, outstanding, semicircular rock. It did not require the dragoman’s aid to tell the party that this was the famous landmark to which they were bound. A long, level stretch lay before them, and the donkeys took it at a canter. At the farther side were scattered rocks, black upon orange; and in the midst of them rose some broken shafts of pillars and a length of engraved wall, looking in its greyness and its solidity more like some work of Nature than of man. The fat, sleek dragoman had dismounted, and stood waiting in his petticoats and his cover-coat for the stragglers to gather round him.