and broken my power; it must be peace, my friend, tell me it must be peace!”
If he said it once he said it a dozen times, but there was no re assuring him. In the pavilion lamplight the handsome face was tired and haggard; he’d aged a year in a few days, and I’ll swear his hair was even greyer. Strange, there was nothing mad about him now, just a flat sober certainty in his words when Meshisha, his executioner, who’d been in charge of taking the cattle down to our lines, came back after dark to report that they’d been turned back by Speedy; the mention of that name struck Theodore like a blow.
“The
You can always tell when something is coming to an end. You know, by the way events are shaping, that it can’t last much longer, but you think there are still a few days or weeks to go… and that’s the moment when it finishes with a sudden bang that you didn’t expect. Come to think of it, that’s probably true of life, or so it strikes me at the age of ninety—but I don’t expect it to happen before tea. Yet one of these days the muffins will grow cold and the tea-cakes congeal as they summon the lads from belowstairs to cart the old cadaver up to the best bedroom. And if I’ve a moment before the light fades, I’ll be able to cry, “Sold, Starnberg and Ignatieff and Iron Eyes and Gul Shah and Charity Spring and all the rest of you bastards who tried to do for old Flashy, ’cos he’s going out on his own, and be damned to you!”
This cheery reflection is brought on by my memories of that Easter Sunday night, when I knew the curtain must soon come down on Magdala, perhaps in a day or two… and ’twas all over, receipted and filed before Monday sunset. It happened so quickly that I can remember only the vital moments; the hours between have faded. (Mind you, a shell splinter in the leg is no help to leisurely observation; we’ll come to that presently.)
But I’m clear enough about the almighty row that broke when Theodore summoned his chiefs and told ’em it was time to cut and run, that they must be off before dawn, making for Lake Tana where Napier could never follow them. They shouted him down, swearing they could never assemble their families and goods in such short time, and demanding that he make peace. He cussed them for dis loyal cowards and they heaped reproaches on him.
“If you had not released the captives we could have made terms with the
“And if they had refused we could have cut the white dogs’ throats and made the hearts of their countrymen smart!”
“Aye, at least we could have been revenged! As it is, we have no choice but to make peace!”
“We are your men to the end, but only if you make terms. If you will not, you are alone.”
He might have read the end of his rule in the scowls on their black faces, but he still couldn’t bring himself to surrender. He told Damash to start dragging guns and mortars from Islamgee up the rocky track to Magdala, and Engedda, the firebrand, thinking this meant a last stand, swore to stand by him, but the rest dispersed in sullen silence, and it was from that moment that the desertions began in earnest. Scores of warriors and their families left their posts on Selassie and Fala, and only a few hundred were prepared to help Damash move the guns, while Theodore struck his camp below Selassie. Then we must all retire across the Islamgee plain in the gathering dark, Flashy aboard a mule with his heart in his boots, for like Engedda I assumed that his fickle majesty had changed his mind yet again, and was determined to fight it out. I was mistaken, but before I come to that I must tell you how the land lay in the closing act of our Abyssinian drama.
From the deserted village market-place at the far end of the Islamgee plain, Magdala rock rose three hundred feet sheer, with only one way up: a narrow track that was really no more than a ledge running steeply up the cliff- face. Near the top it turned sharply to the right towards Magdala’s first gate, the Kobet Bar, flanked by a high wall and stockade reinforced by thorn bushes. The gate was massive, with supporting towers and a sloping roof like that of a lych-gate. Fifty yards behind it was a second gate, and beyond that lay the Magdala plateau proper with its little township of houses and churches and the palace, big thatched buildings of typical Ab design.
One thing was plain: given a few decent guns, the Salvation Army could have held Magdala against anyone, Napier included, and if Theodore had got his cannon up to command that narrow track, there would have been no shifting him until his water ran out. But he didn’t, thanks be; and once he and I and his immediate following had struggled up past the gun-teams sweating and blaspheming in the dark, and reached the Kobet Bar Gate, he realised their task was hopeless, and there was nothing for it but flight or surrender.
There must have been about twenty of us in the little guard tower flanking the gate, waiting breathless on the word of that haggard figure standing with his head bowed in thought. I remember Engedda grim-faced, and little tubby Damash exhausted after his gun-dragging exertions; Hasani, the Magdala commander, Wald Gabr the valet and gun-bearer, and others whose anxious black faces I can still see in the flickering torchlight but whose names I never knew. At last Theodore lifted his head, and the old barmy light was back in his eyes.
“Warriors who love me, gird yourselves!” cries he, and shook his spear. “Leave everything behind but your arms, and follow me! Hasani, assemble them and those others who remain true at the upper gate! Away!” And as they trooped out, he turned to me. “Dear friend, we part here. You can serve me no longer. I go now beyond your army’s vengeance, and you and I will never meet again.” He seized my hand in both of his. “Farewell, British soldier! Think kindly of Theodore who is your friend! If you should hear of my death at the hands of my foes, do not grieve. My destiny is my destiny!”
He strode out with a flourish worthy of Macbeth, and I heard him bawling orders to Hasani. I was left, mighty relieved and quite used up, with a couple of Ab artillerymen for company; the rest were lying tuckered out, down the track by their abandoned guns; there was no point in my moving, with Islamgee crawling with confused and disgruntled warriors who mightn’t take kindly to a stray
I wasn’t, of course. He was back at dawn with his fretful fol lowers, several hundred of ’em; they’d tried to break out of Magdala by the back door, which would have meant a terrifying descent of the Sangalat cliffs in pitch darkness, if they’d been mad enough to attempt it. They’d been discouraged by the presence of Gallas who were waiting for them at the foot of the precipice chanting, “Come down, beloved, oh come down!” I must say I liked the Gallas’ style.
With his retreat cut off and the greater part of his army milling about down on Islamgee, waiting to surrender, I was sure he must call it a day. But even now he couldn’t bear to submit. He told his little band of loyalists that they and any others on the plateau were free to go, and if he was disheartened at the stampede down to Islamgee, he didn’t show it. With the few score who remained he made a last futile attempt to bring the guns and mortars up the track, and when that failed he had them piling rocks behind the wings of the Kobet Bar Gate, lifting and carrying himself and shouting encouragement.
It wouldn’t have been tactful to stand watching while they laboured away, so I waited until the gate tower was empty, pur loined Theodore’s telescope which he had left with his baggage, and withdrew along the inside of the wall to a spot where I could take survey of the Islamgee plain. There were a few folk in the market-place at the foot of the track, children playing on the guns which had been left behind by Damash’s crew, but farther along the plain there were great multitudes of Abs of every sort, civilian and military, stirring in a confused way but going nowhere—waiting for the invaders to arrive, in fact. They were thick on the slope of Selassie, a bare mile from my perch, and farther off I could see them on Fala; there must have been a good twenty or thirty thou-i sand of them.
How long I sat watching I’m not sure, but the sun was well up and disappearing behind dark rain clouds when I heard a faint distant sound that had me on my feet and put an abrupt end to the barrier-building at the gate—the whisper of a bugle far off beyond Fala, and now the mass of folk on Islamgee were moving off towards the sound, and streaming down the Selassie slope to the gap leading to Arogee. There was sudden activity at Kobet Bar, men moving down the track to the guns which Damash had been able to get part way up; I saw Theodore ordering them as they tailed on the tackles, trying to haul the heavy pieces up the steep incline but making poor work of it. There was a great murmur from the moving throng on the plain, and then another faraway sound rising above it, stirring and shrill, and I found myself whispering “Oh, oh, the dandy oh!', for I knew it of old, the music of the Sherwood Foresters, and it couldn’t be more than a couple of miles away, beyond the Fala saddle, growing louder by the minute, and now the movement of the crowds was becoming a flood, and damned if I wasn’t doing a Theodore myself, brushing the tears from my cheeks, and mut tering about the young May moon a-beaming love, the glow- worm’s lamp a-gleaming love, and even exclaiming aloud, “Good for you, old Bughunter, that’s your sort!', for here
