That is often the way with a South African castrol, and I knew it was so with this. We were straining for it, but the snow clogged us, and our enemies were very close behind.
Then I was awakened by a figure at my side. ‘Get ready, my lord,’ it said; ‘it is the hour to ride.’
Like sleep-walkers we moved into the sharp air. Hussin led us out of an old postern and then through a place like an orchard to the shelter of some tall evergreen trees. There horses stood, champing quietly from their nosebags. ‘Good,’ I thought; ‘a feed of oats before a big effort.’
There were nine beasts for nine riders. We mounted without a word and filed through a grove of trees to where a broken paling marked the beginning of cultivated land. There for the matter of twenty minutes Hussin chose to guide us through deep, clogging snow. He wanted to avoid any sound till we were well beyond earshot of the house. Then we struck a by-path which presently merged in a hard highway, running, as I judged, south-west by west. There we delayed no longer, but galloped furiously into the dark.
I had got back all my exhilaration. Indeed I was intoxicated with the movement, and could have laughed out loud and sung. Under the black canopy of the night perils are either forgotten or terribly alive. Mine were forgotten. The darkness I galloped into led me to freedom and friends. Yes, and success, which I had not dared to hope and scarcely even to dream of.
Hussin rode first, with me at his side. I turned my head and saw Blenkiron behind me, evidently mortally unhappy about the pace we set and the mount he sat. He used to say that horse-exercise was good for his liver, but it was a gentle amble and a short gallop that he liked, and not this mad helter-skelter. His thighs were too round to fit a saddle leather. We passed a fire in a hollow, the bivouac of some Turkish unit, and all the horses shied violently. I knew by Blenkiron’s oaths that he had lost his stirrups and was sitting on his horse’s neck.
Beside him rode a tall figure swathed to the eyes in wrappings, and wearing round his neck some kind of shawl whose ends floated behind him. Sandy, of course, had no European ulster, for it was months since he had worn proper clothes. I wanted to speak to him, but somehow I did not dare. His stillness forbade me. He was a wonderful fine horseman, with his firm English hunting seat, and it was as well, for he paid no attention to his beast. His head was still full of unquiet thoughts.
Then the air around me began to smell acrid and raw, and I saw that a fog was winding up from the hollows.
‘Here’s the devil’s own luck,’ I cried to Hussin. ‘Can you guide us in a mist?’
‘I do not know.’ He shook his head. ‘I had counted on seeing the shape of the hills.’
‘We’ve a map and compass, anyhow. But these make slow travelling. Pray God it lifts!’
Presently the black vapour changed to grey, and the day broke. It was little comfort. The fog rolled in waves to the horses’ ears, and riding at the head of the party I could but dimly see the next rank.
‘It is time to leave the road,’ said Hussin, ‘or we may meet inquisitive folk.’
We struck to the left, over ground which was for all the world like a Scotch moor. There were pools of rain on it, and masses of tangled snow-laden junipers, and long reefs of wet slaty stone. It was bad going, and the fog made it hopeless to steer a good course. I had out the map and the compass, and tried to fix our route so as to round the flank of a spur of the mountains which separated us from the valley we were aiming at.
‘There’s a stream ahead of us,’ I said to Hussin. ‘Is it fordable?’
‘It is only a trickle,’ he said, coughing. ‘This accursed mist is from Eblis.’ But I knew long before we reached it that it was no trickle. It was a hill stream coming down in spate, and, as I soon guessed, in a deep ravine. Presently we were at its edge, one long whirl of yeasty falls and brown rapids. We could as soon get horses over it as to the topmost cliffs of the Palantuken.
Hussin stared at it in consternation. ‘May Allah forgive my folly, for I should have known. We must return to the highway and find a bridge. My sorrow, that I should have led my lords so ill.’
Back over that moor we went with my spirits badly damped. We had none too long a start, and Hilda von Einem would rouse heaven and earth to catch us up. Hussin was forcing the pace, for his anxiety was as great as mine.
Before we reached the road the mist blew back and revealed a wedge of country right across to the hills beyond the river. It was a clear view, every object standing out wet and sharp in the light of morning. It showed the bridge with horsemen drawn up across it, and it showed, too, cavalry pickets moving along the road.
They saw us at the same instant. A word was passed down the road, a shrill whistle blew, and the pickets put their horses at the bank and started across the moor.
‘Did I not say this mist was from Eblis?’ growled Hussin, as we swung round and galloped back on our tracks. ‘These cursed Zaptiehs have seen us, and our road is cut.’
I was for trying the stream at all costs, but Hussin pointed out that it would do us no good. The cavalry beyond the bridge was moving up the other bank. ‘There is a path through the hills that I know, but it must be travelled on foot. If we can increase our lead and the mist cloaks us, there is yet a chance.’
It was a weary business plodding up to the skirts of the hills. We had the pursuit behind us now, and that put an edge on every difficulty. There were long banks of broken screes, I remember, where the snow slipped in wreaths from under our feet. Great boulders had to be circumvented, and patches of bog, where the streams from the snows first made contact with the plains, mired us to our girths. Happily the mist was down again, but this, though it hindered the chase, lessened the chances of Hussin finding the path.
He found it nevertheless. There was the gully and the rough mule-track leading upwards. But there also had been a landslip, quite recent from the marks. A large scar of raw earth had broken across the hillside, which with the snow above it looked like a slice cut out of an iced chocolate-cake.
We stared blankly for a second, till we recognized its hopelessness.
‘I’m trying for the crags,’ I said. ‘Where there once was a way another can be found.’
‘And be picked off at their leisure by these marksmen,’ said Hussin grimly. ‘Look!’
The mist had opened again, and a glance behind showed me the pursuit closing up on us. They were now less than three hundred yards off. We turned our horses and made off east-ward along the skirts of the cliffs.
Then Sandy spoke for the first time. ‘I don’t know how you fellows feel, but I’m not going to be taken. There’s nothing much to do except to find a place and put up a fight. We can sell our lives dearly.’
‘That’s about all,’ said Blenkiron cheerfully. He had suffered such tortures on that gallop that he welcomed any kind of stationary fight.
‘Serve out the arms,’ said Sandy.
The Companions all carried rifles slung across their shoulders. Hussin, from a deep saddle-bag, brought out rifles and bandoleers for the rest of us. As I laid mine across my saddle-bow I saw it was a German Mauser of the latest pattern.
‘It’s hell-for-leather till we find a place for a stand,’ said Sandy. ‘The game’s against us this time.’
Once more we entered the mist, and presently found better going on a long stretch of even slope. Then came a rise, and on the crest of it I saw the sun. Presently we dipped into bright daylight and looked down on a broad glen, with a road winding up it to a pass in the range. I had expected this. It was one way to the Palantuken pass, some miles south of the house where we had been lodged.
And then, as I looked southward, I saw what I had been watching for days. A little hill split the valley, and on its top was a kranz of rocks. It was the castrol of my persistent dream.