Feversham food could never cheer their hearts with word that Abou Fatma had come back.
'He will never come,' said Trench, in despair.
'Surely he will-if he is alive,' said Feversham. 'But is he alive?'
The seventh month passed, and one morning at the beginning of the eighth there came two of the Khalifa's bodyguard to the prison, who talked with Idris. Idris advanced to the two prisoners.
'Verily God is good to you, you men from the bad world,' he said. 'You are to look upon the countenance of the Khalifa. How happy you should be!'
Trench and Feversham rose up from the ground in no very happy frame of mind. 'What does he want with us? Is this the end?' The questions started up clear in both their minds. They followed the two guards out through the door and up the street towards the Khalifa's house.
'Does it mean death?' said Feversham.
Trench shrugged his shoulders and laughed sourly. 'It is on the cards that Nebbi Khiddr has suggested something of the kind,' he said.
They were led into the great parade-ground before the mosque, and thence into the Khalifa's house, where another white man sat in attendance upon the threshold. Within the Khalifa was seated upon an angareb, and a grey-bearded Greek stood beside him. The Khalifa remarked to them that they were both to be employed upon the manufacture of gunpowder, with which the armies of the Turks were shortly to be overwhelmed.
Feversham was on the point of disclaiming any knowledge of the process, but before he could open his lips he heard Trench declaring in fluent Arabic that there was nothing connected with gunpowder which he did not know about; and upon his words they were both told they were to be employed at the powder factory under the supervision of the Greek.
For that Greek both prisoners will entertain a regard to their dying day. There was in the world a true Samaritan. It was out of sheer pity, knowing the two men to be herded in the House of Stone, that he suggested to the Khalifa their employment, and the same pity taught him to cover the deficiencies of their knowledge.
'I know nothing whatever about the making of gunpowder except that crystals are used,' said Trench. 'But we shall leave the prison each day, and that is something, though we return each night. Who knows when a chance of escape may come?'
The powder factory lay in the northward part of the town, and on the bank of the Nile just beyond the limits of the great mud wall and at the back of the slave market. Every morning the two prisoners were let out from the prison door, they tramped along the river-bank on the outside of the town wall, and came into the powder factory past the storehouses of the Khalifa's bodyguard. Every evening they went back by the same road to the House of Stone. No guard was sent with them, since flight seemed impossible, and each journey that they made they looked anxiously for the man in the blue robe. But the months passed, and May brought with it the summer.
'Something has happened to Abou Fatma,' said Feversham. 'He has been caught at Berber perhaps. In some way he has been delayed.'
'He will not come,' said Trench.
Feversham could no longer pretend to hope that he would. He did not know of a sword-thrust received by Abou Fatma, as he fled through Berber on his return from Omdurman. He had been recognised by one of his old gaolers in that town, and had got cheaply off with the one thrust in his thigh. From that wound he had through the greater part of this year been slowly recovering in the hospital at Assouan. But though Feversham heard nothing of Abou Fatma, towards the end of May he received news that others were working for his escape. As Trench and he passed in the dusk of one evening between the storehouses and the town wall, a man in the shadow of one of the narrow alleys which opened from the storehouses whispered to them to stop. Trench knelt down upon the ground and examined his foot as though a stone had cut it, and as he kneeled the man walked past them and dropped a slip of paper at their feet. He was a Suakin merchant, who had a booth in the grain market of Omdurman. Trench picked up the paper, hid it in his hand and limped on, with Feversham at his side. There was no address or name upon the outside, and as soon as they had left the houses behind, and had only the wall upon their right and the Nile upon their left, Trench sat down again. There was a crowd about the water's edge, men passed up and down between the crowd and them. Trench took his foot into his lap and examined the sole. But at the same time he unfolded the paper in the hollow of his hand and read the contents aloud. He could hardly read them, his voice so trembled. Feversham could hardly hear them, the blood so sang in his ears.
'A man will bring to you a box of matches. When he comes trust him.-Sutch.' And he asked, 'Who is Sutch?'
'A great friend of mine,' said Feversham. 'He is in Egypt, then! Does he say where?'
'No; but since Mohammed Ali, the grain merchant, dropped the paper, we may be sure he is at Suakin. A man with a box of matches! Think, we may meet him to-night!'
But it was a month later when, in the evening, an Arab pushed past them on the river-bank and said: 'I am the man with the matches. To-morrow by the storehouse at this hour.' And as he walked past them he dropped a box of coloured matches on the ground. Feversham stooped instantly.
'Don't touch them,' said Trench, and he pressed the box into the ground with his foot and walked on.
'Sutch!' exclaimed Feversham. 'So he comes to our help! How did he know that I was here?'
Trench fairly shook with excitement as he walked. He did not speak of the great new hope which so suddenly came to them, for he dared not. He tried even to pretend to himself that no message at all had come. He was afraid to let his mind dwell upon the subject. Both men slept brokenly that night, and every time they waked it was with a dim consciousness that something great and wonderful had happened. Feversham, as he lay upon his back and gazed upwards at the stars, had a fancy that he had fallen asleep in the garden of Broad Place, on the Surrey hills, and that he had but to raise his head to see the dark pines upon his right hand and his left, and but to look behind to see the gables of the house against the sky. He fell asleep towards dawn, and within an hour was waked up by a violent shaking. He saw Trench bending over him with a great fear on his face.
'Suppose they keep us in the prison to-day,' he whispered in a shaking voice, plucking at Feversham. 'It has just occurred to me! Suppose they did that!'
'Why should they?' answered Feversham; but the same fear caught hold of him, and they sat dreading the appearance of Idris, lest he should have some such new order to deliver. But Idris crossed the yard and unbolted the prison door without a look at them. Fighting, screaming, jammed together in the entrance, pulled back, thrust forwards, the captives struggled out into the air, and among them was one who ran, foaming at the mouth, and dashed his head against the wall.
'He is mad!' said Trench, as the gaolers secured him; and since Trench was unmanned that morning he began to speak rapidly and almost with incoherence. 'That's what I have feared, Feversham, that I should go mad. To die, even here, one could put up with that without overmuch regret; but to go mad!' and he shivered. 'If this man with the matches proves false to us, Feversham, I shall be near to it-very near to it. A man one day, a raving, foaming idiot the next-a thing to be put away out of sight, out of hearing. God, but that's horrible!' and he dropped his head between his hands, and dared not look up until Idris crossed to them and bade them go about their work. What work they did in the factory that day neither knew. They were only aware that the hours passed with an extraordinary slowness, but the evening came at last.
'Among the storehouses,' said Trench. They dived into the first alley which they passed, and turning a corner saw the man who had brought the matches.
'I am Abdul Kader,' he began at once. 'I have come to arrange for your escape. But at present flight is impossible;' and Trench swayed upon his feet as he heard the word.
'Impossible?' asked Feversham.
'Yes. I brought three camels to Omdurman, of which two have died. The Effendi at Suakin gave me money, but not enough. I could not arrange for relays, but if you will give me a letter to the Effendi telling him to give me two hundred pounds, then I will have everything ready and come again within three months.'
Trench turned his back so that his companion might not see his face. All his spirit had gone from him at this last stroke of fortune. The truth was clear to him, appallingly clear. Abdul Kader was not going to risk his life; he would be the shuttle going backwards and forwards between Omdurman and Suakin as long as Feversham cared to write letters and Sutch to pay money. But the shuttle would do no weaving.
'I have nothing with which to write,' said Feversham, and Abdul Kader produced them.
'Be quick,' he said. 'Write quickly, lest we be discovered.' And Feversham wrote; but though he wrote as Abdul suggested, the futility of his writing was as clear to him as to Trench.
