complete victory had been transformed into defeat and rout by a single stroke of Osman Atalan’s long blade.
Osman rode back to Omdurman with the heads of Emperor John and his generals carried on the lances of his bodyguard. They planted them at the entrance to Khalifat Abdullahi’s palace.
Seven months later Rebecca gave birth to her second child, a girl. Osman was not sufficiently interested in a female to bother himself with a name for her. Rebecca aiamed her Kahruba, which in Arabic means Amber. After some months Osman forgave her for bearing a girl, and resumed their nightly conversations and lovemaking. When Kahruba turned into a pretty little thing with smoked-honey hair, he sometimes stroked her head. Once he even took her up on the front of his saddle and ran al-Buq at full gallop. Kahruba squealed with glee, which caused Osman to remark as he handed her back to Rebecca, “You erred grievously, wife. You should have made her a boy, for she has the heart of one.”
None of his other daughters received any sign of his affection. They were not allowed to speak to him, or to touch him. When Kahruba was six years old, at the feast of Kurban Bairam, she left the women and, with one finger in her mouth, she went to where Osman sat among his aggagiers. He watched her coldly as she approached. Undeterred she scrambled on to his lap.
Osman was flabbergasted. His aggagiers had difficulty in maintaining their sober expressions. Osman scowled at them as though daring any to laugh. Then he deliberately selected a sweetmeat from the bowl in front of him and placed it in the child’s mouth. She retaliated by throwing both arms round his neck. However, this was going too far. Osman replaced her on the ground and slapped her little bottom. “Be off with you, you shameless vixen!” he said.
Mr. Hiram Steven Maxim sat on a low stool in the brilliant sunshine of the Nile delta. In front of him on a steel tripod was an ungainly-looking weapon with a thick water-jacketed barrel. On his left side stood a five-gallon water can, connected to the weapon by a sturdy rubber hose. At his right hand dozens of wooden crates of ammunition were piled high. His three assistants hovered about him. Despite the heat they wore thick tweed jackets and flat cloth caps. Mr. Maxim had stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and his bowler hat was pushed to the back of his head. Since he had come from America to settle in England, he had adopted British ways and dress.
Now he rolled the unlit cigar from one side of his jaw to the other. “Major Ballantyne,” he sang out. His accent still proclaimed that he had been born in Sangerville, Maine. “Would you be good enough to note the time?” At a short distance behind him was a small group of uniformed officers. In the front rank stood the sirdar, General Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a stocky, powerful figure flanked by his staff.
“General, sir?” Penrod glanced at Kitchener for permission to reply.
“Carry on, Ballantyne.” Kitchener nodded.
“Time mark!” Penrod called out. Six hundred yards ahead of the machine-gun, at the foot of a high dun- coloured sand dune, was a line of fifty wooden models of the human form. They were dressed in Dervish jib has and carried wooden spears. Mr. Maxim leant forward and took hold of the firing handles. By squeezing the finger-grips he lifted the safety catch off the firing button.
“Commencing firing, now!” He thrust his thumbs down on the trigger button. The gun shuddered and roared. The separate shots were too rapid for the ear to distinguish. It was a prolonged thunder like a high waterfall in spate. The recoil of each shot kicked back the mechanism, and ejected the spent cartridge cases in a blur of glittering bronze. The forward stroke of the action reloaded the chamber, cocked and fired. It was too fast for the eye to follow the sequence.
Mr. Maxim traversed the barrel. One after another the wooden figures exploded in a storm of splinters. The sands of the dune behind the targets boiled into sheets of dust. He reached the end of the line and traversed back again. The shattered remains of the targets hung from their frames. The returning torrent of bullets blew them to fragments.
The British officers watched in awed silence. The roar of the gun numbed their eardrums. They could not speak. They did not move. Mr. Maxim’s assistants had performed this demonstration numerous times and in many countries. They had been drilled to perfection. As one of the ammunition boxes emptied it was dragged away and a full one substituted. A fresh belt of ammunition was hitched to the end of the previous belt as it was sucked into the breech. There was no check, no jamming of the action, no diminution in the rate of fire. The water in the cooling jacket boiled, but the powerful emission of steam was drawn away through the pliable hose into the can of cold water. It was cooled and condensed. There was no steam cloud to betray the position of the gun to the enemy. The cooled water was recycled through the barrel jacket. The clamour of the gun continued without check. The final belt of ammunition was fed through the breech, and only when the last empty cartridge case was flung clear did silence fall.
“Time check,” Mr. Maxim shouted.
“Three minutes and ten seconds.”
“Two thousand rounds in three minutes,” Mr. Maxim announced proudly. “Almost seven hundred rounds a minute, without a stoppage.”
“No stoppage,” Colonel Adams repeated. “This is the end of cavalry as we know it.”
“It changes the face of warfare,” Penrod agreed. “Just look at the accuracy.” He pointed to the row of targets. Splinters were spread over a wide area. Not even the poles that had supported the targets still stood upright. A thick cloud of dun-coloured dust kicked up by the stream of bullets hung in the air above the dunes.
“Now let the Dervish come!” murmured the sirdar, and his dark moustache seemed to stand erect, like the bristles on the back of an enraged wild boar.
Penrod and Adams rode back to Cairo together. They were both in high spirits, and when a jackal broke from the scrub at the side of the track they drew their sabres and rode it down. Penrod spurted ahead and turned back the drab terrier-like creature. Adams leant low out of the saddle and ran it through between the shoulders, then let its weight swing his blade back until the carcass slipped from the blade, rolled in the dust and at last lay still. “Beats pig-sticking in the Punjab.” He laughed. When they reached the gates of the Gheziera Club, he said, “Do you care for a peg?”
“Not this evening,” replied Penrod. “I have guests from home to entertain.”
“Ah, yes! So I have heard. What does Miss Amber Benbrook think of your new pips?”
Penrod glanced down at the shiny new major’s crowns on his epaulettes.
“If you remember her name, you must have received the invitation to the ball. It is her sixteenth birthday, you know. Will you be attending?”
“The remarkable young lady who wrote Slaves of the MahdiV Adams exclaimed. “I would not miss it for the world. My wife would assassinate me if I so much as contemplated the idea.”
Amber’s birthday ball was held at Shepheard’s Hotel. The band of the new Egyptian army played until dawn. White-robed waiters served silver trays of brimming champagne glasses. Every commissioned officer of the army from the rank of ensign upwards, a hundred and fifteen in all, had accepted the invitation to attend. Their smart new dress uniforms made a handsome foil to the ball gowns of the ladies. Even the sirdar and Sir Evelyn Baring made a brief appearance, and each danced a Vienna waltz with Amber. They both left early, aware that their presence had an inhibiting effect on the festivities.
Ryder and Saffron had made the long circuitous journey down from the highlands of Abyssinia, across the desert by camel, up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal to Alexandria to be there. Saffron’s evening dress caused a mild sensation, even in this glittering company. She was two months pregnant, but of course that was not yet apparent.
At the beginning of the evening, after he had collected Amber and his sister-in-law Jane from the suite they were sharing on the top floor of the hotel, Penrod filled in Amber’s dance card. He reserved fifteen of her twenty dances. She was a little peeved that he had been so restrained. At the stroke of midnight the band broke into a rousing rendition of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. The guests applauded wildly. The champagne flowed like the Nile, and everybody was in jovial, expansive mood.
Penrod climbed the bandstand with Amber on his arm. The band welcomed them with a long drumroll, and Penrod held up his hands for silence. He was only partially successful in achieving it while he proposed the birthday toast. They drank it with gusto, and Ryder Courtney burst into “When You Were Sweet Sixteen’. The band and the rest of the guests picked up the tune. Amber blushed and clung to Penrod’s arm.
At the end of the song he quietened them again. “I have another announcement to make. Thank you!” The uproar subsided to a buzz of interest. “My lords, ladies, and fellow officers, who fall into neither of the first two categories!” They hooted, and again he had to bring them to order. “It gives me ineffable pleasure to inform you
