“There is the disciple of Shaitan!” the harpy screamed. “The infidel! Look at him, the pork-eater! The brewer of the green manna from hell!” She shuffled into a painful dance, and behind her the crowd growled. They threw stones and sticks at him, but the wall was high and the range was long. The missiles hit the wall and bounced back, clattering in the dusty street.
“What you call the Devil’s manna, is cooked grass and reeds. If you will feed them with it, your children will thrive and regain their health.”
“He lies! These are the falsehoods that the Devil has placed in his mouth. We know you are eating bread and meat, not grass. Within these walls you have dhurra and meat. Give it to us. Give us your animals. Give us the dhurra you have in your warehouse.”
“I have no dhurra.”
“He lies!” screeched the harpy. “Bring fire! We will burn him out of this nest of evil and sacrilege.”
“Wait!” Ryder shouted. “Hear me!”
But the roar of the crowd drowned his voice. One of the women ran up the crowded street. She was carrying a lighted torch, a bundle of rags soaked in pitch tied to a broomstick. A thick black tarry smoke billowed from the flames. She handed the torch to one of the men, , who ran with it to the gate. Ryder glanced down in alarm as he realized how high the rubbish had been piled against the main gates. The man threw the smoking torch on top of the bonfire. It rolled half-way down, then stuck. In the dry desert air the flames caught at once and licked upwards. The gates had stood in the sun for many years. Even though Ryder had his people paint them regularly, the wood dried out and cracked faster than they could repair it, and now the dried paint flared, and the flames shot high. They were almost colourless in the bright sunlight. Ryder considered ordering Bacheet and his men to form a bucket chain to douse the flames before they could burn through the gates, then realized that there were neither enough men nor buckets, that the river and the well were too far, and the flames were already leaping higher than the top of the wall. The heat was intense and drove him off the ladder.
“Bacheet, we could fight them here, but I don’t want any shooting. I don’t want to kill anybody.” .
“It is me that I am worried about, Effendi. I don’t want to be killed either,” Bacheet replied. “These are animals, mad animals.”
“They are starving and they have been driven to this.”
“Should I send one of the men with a message to Gordon to bring the soldiers to drive them away?” Bacheet asked hopefully.
Ryder smiled grimly. “Gordon Pasha is not our friend. He values us only for our dhurra and our camels. If you send one of our men out there the mob will tear him to pieces. I think we will be forced to save ourselves without the help of Gordon Pasha.”
“How will we do that?” Bacheet asked simply.
“We must fall back to the main compound. They will not be able to burn that gate. The fire hose will reach it.” He had to raise his voice above the howls and shouts of the crowd in the street outside and the crackle of the flames. “Come! Follow me!” The paint on the inside of the gate was already charring.
He ran back to the inner gate, and gave orders to have the water pump and fire hose rigged. There was a firing platform along the top of the inner wall, and reluctantly Ryder issued Martini-Henry rifles to those who could handle them. Apart from Rebecca and Jock, he had trained only five of his men, including Bacheet. The Arabs took little interest in musketry and showed even less aptitude for it. Rebecca could outshoot most of them. He left the women and Jock in the blockhouse, guarding the loopholes.
From the firing parapet he watched the main gates sag slowly inwards, then crash to the dusty earth in a final burst of sparks and burning fragments. The mob poured through, leaping and pushing each other over the still flaming remnants of the gates. One of the older women lost her footing and fell into the flames. They caught at once in her voluminous robe. The rest of the crowd ignored her agonized shriek, and within seconds she lay still. The smell of her roasting flesh floated sickeningly to where Ryder stood on the parapet of the inner wall.
Once the leaders were inside, they came up short. They were in unfamiliar territory and they looked about curiously. Then they caught sight of the row of heads above the parapet of the inner wall, and the hunting chorus went up again. They charged straight at the inner gate like a pack of savage hounds. Ryder let them get half-way across, then fired into the hard-packed clay in front of the leaders. The bullet kicked up a spray of dust and gravel, then ricocheted away over their heads. It stopped them short, and they milled indecisively.
“Don’t come closer!” he shouted. “I will kill the next one who comes.” Some turned, and started to creep away. Then the harpy hobbled through to the front. She broke once more into her grotesque dance. From somewhere she had armed herself with a cow tail fly switch. She brandished this as she screeched her threats and curses at the men on the parapet.
“You foul and stupid old woman,” Ryder muttered, in frustration and despair, ‘don’t force me to kill you.” He fired at her feet, and when the bullet kicked up dirt under her, she leapt into the air, flapping the black wings of her robe like an ancient crow taking flight. The crowd howled again. She hit the ground and came straight on towards the inner wall. Ryder levered another round into the breech and fired. Again she jumped high, and the men behind her imitated her, laughing. The sound had a deranged, obscene quality that was as menacing as the shouts of rage had been.
“Stop!” Ryder muttered. “Please stop, you old bitch.” He shot again, but now the mob had realized he would not shoot to kill and lost all fear. They came on after the prancing figure in a swarm. They reached the gate and beat against it with the weapons they carried and their bare hands.
“Wood!” shouted the harpy. “Bring more wood!” They ran to fetch it, and came back to pile it against the gate as they had before.
“Get the pump started!” Ryder shouted, and two men seized the handles and swung them up and down. The empty canvas hose, laid out across the yard, swelled and hardened as the pressure built up and a powerful stream of river water spurted from the nozzle. Two men on the parapet pointed it down on to the kindling below. It struck with such force that the pile tumbled over.
“Aim at her.” Ryder pointed out the harpy. The stream hit her full in the chest and knocked her backwards. She struck the ground on her shoulder-blades and rolled. The hose stream followed her. Every time she regained her feet, it knocked her down again. At last she crawled out of range on hands and knees. Ryder turned the hose on the men in the front of the crowd and they scattered. Then they spread out to search the other buildings of the compound, which lay outside the inner fortifications. Within minutes Ryder heard hammering and banging coming from the direction of his warehouses.
“They are smashing down the doors of the ivory storeroom,” Bacheet shouted. “We must stop them.”
“A thousand of them, and ten of us?” Ryder did not have to say more.
“But the ivory and skins?” Bacheet was entitled to a small share of Ryder’s profits, and now at the thought of his losses his face was a pattern of dismay.
“They can have the elephant teeth and the animal skins, rather than my own teeth and skin,” Ryder said. “Anyway, they cannot eat ivory. Perhaps when they find no dhurra in the stores they will lose interest.”
It was a vain hope, and he knew it. It was not long before the men were streaming back, egged on by the wild ululations of the women. They were carrying some of the largest elephant tusks and bundles of sun-dried animal hides. They piled these at the foot of the wall. Their intention was clear. They were building a ramp to scale the wall. Immediately Ryder ordered the men on the hose to direct the stream on to the pile. The tusks and the heavy bales were much more solid than the rubbish they had used in their first attempt and the hose stream made no impression upon them. Then they tried to drive off the men, but although the hose beat down on them most stayed on their feet and placed more tusks on the growing ramp. When one was knocked down, three others rushed forward to take his place. They kept piling up the heavy material until it reached just below the top of the wall. Then they reassembled in the outer courtyard out of range of the fire hose. The black harpy pranced among them.
“You should have hit her harder,” Bacheet muttered darkly, ‘or, better still, you should have put a bullet through that ugly head. It’s still not too late.” He lifted the Martini-Henry and aimed it over the top of the parapet.
“She is in no danger, with you doing the shooting,” Ryder remarked. Despite the hours of instruction he had lavished on Bacheet he was a long way from mastering the art of musketry. Bacheet looked pained at the insult, but he lowered the rifle. “See? The old witch is picking out the best men to climb the walls.”
Bacheet was right. Somehow she had kept hold of the switch even when the hose had hit her squarely. It
