For Fortune and Glory Part 43

"Know you! Of course I do, just as if you were my brother; but just now I forget whether it is tinned meats or bullocks. By Jove! Is it possible! Harry Forsyth! And how are you, old fellow? One would think Korti was the centre of the world, for every fellow comes here. I say, who was to know you dressed up like that? Well, and what are you up to?

Have you found that will yet?"

"Yes."

"Nonsense! And _got_ it?"

"Yes."

"You must tell me all about that. I was just going to get something to eat; come along and share it. You have fallen upon the right boy for grub, I can tell you; I am in the provisioning department just for the moment, and there is no order against looking after number one."

"And you found your uncle who had turned wild man?" observed Tom Strachan, as the two filled and lit their pipes after a capital repast.

"Yes, poor fellow!" answered Harry. "Without him I don't suppose I should have got the will."

"And where did you run your Egyptian clerk to earth?"

"At El Obeid, and we got it out of him with the kourbash."

"Of course; you know the cynical saying here. As Nature provides an antidote growing in the same district with every poison, all we have to do is to learn how to seek it. So when the Egyptian was placed on the Nile the hippopotamus was created to provide whips to rule him with.

But you must tell your story at greater length to-morrow morning to a friend of mine who is lying wounded here, waiting for a chance to be transported to Cairo. For I have a lot of things to see to; reports to make out--you would never believe; and must run away presently."

Next morning Harry Forsyth called on Strachan at the time and place appointed, and was taken by him to the hospital which had been established near the banks of the river. They found the friend of Strachan's they proposed to visit lying on a bamboo couch under an awning, over which again spread a palm-tree. There was a pleasant view of the river and the country, and altogether it was as cheery a spot as could have been selected.

There was a visitor already with the invalid: a soldier who was standing near, his head leaning on his rifle.

"I tell ye what it is," he was saying; "I'll say nothing about flesh wounds and bullet wounds since it worries ye, but ye have the best luck of it to be wounded at all, in my thinking. Won't ye be getting out of this baste of a country at once, and shan't we poor beggars what's whole and sound have to stop here and stew, and be ate up with the flies entirely? I tell ye so long as ye aint crippled it's the best chance to be a bit hurt, and get away, now there's no more fighting to be done.

And they say there will perhaps be some real fun going on in India, out Afghanistan way, against the Roos.h.i.+ans; and we will be left here with the flies and crocodiles. But here's the officer coming. I'll come and see you again, when I'm off duty."

And Grady stepped briskly away, making the sling of his rifle _tell_ with a smart salute, as he pa.s.sed Strachan. And then Harry Forsyth stepped up to the couch, and found himself looking on the drawn and pain-worn features of Reginald Kavanagh.

"I flatter myself that I have managed that with considerable dramatic talent," said Tom Strachan, as he stood looking at the two, holding each other's hands in silence, and looking into each other's eyes.

"Yes," said Harry Forsyth, answering the question in the other's look; "I have found it, and it is here in my breast, all perfectly right."

"Yes, he has found it," echoed Strachan. "Where there's a will there's a way, and the way in this instance was the kourbash. I hope the fellow got it hot, Harry."

"Pretty fairly; I think Kavanagh would have been satisfied, though he has been disappointed in his desire to wield the lash himself. Don't you remember?"

"Well, all you have got to do now," said Strachan to Kavanagh, "is to get back to England as quick as they will take you, purchase your discharge, and enjoy your _otium c.u.m dignitate_."

"Thank you, sir; if you will kindly say a word for me it will help,"

replied Kavanagh.

The little word _sir_ struck with strange harshness on Harry Forsyth's ears. But, of course, Kavanagh was but a full private, and Strachan was an officer, if he came to think and realise it. He had been about to say:

"Here we three chums have met at last, ever so many miles up the Nile, and I shall believe in presentiments as long as I live;" but he did not like, after that word _sir_, to cla.s.s his two old friends in the same category; it might make an awkwardness, he felt.

"I do not like the idea of quitting the service altogether," said Kavanagh.

"If we have this war with Russia they talk about, and I get well in time, and can qualify, I wonder if I shall have a chance of getting a commission. Surely it will not be so difficult as it was when I tried before, and I nearly qualified. I wonder whether my service in the ranks would be allowed to count in any way."

"It very well might," said Strachan; "for there are all sorts of chances going when good men are really wanted. If not, you must go back into the old Militia Battalion of the Blanks.h.i.+re, as I mean to do when I am shelved; and then we shall get a chance of airing our medals, if they give us any, for one month in the year at any rate."

"And what are your wounds, Kavanagh?" asked Harry presently.

"Sword cuts; one in the body is troublesome, but is getting better since I got away from camel back, though sometimes I feel down-hearted, progress is so slow."

"Oh, you must not give way to that sort of feeling," said Forsyth.

"Why, I lay senseless for months and months from a cut on the head; how long I have no idea yet; I shall have to puzzle it out some day, but at present it is logarithms over again to think of it. I should certainly have died if it had not been for my dear old black nurse, Fatima, the loss of whom is the only thing I shall regret in leaving this part of the world. And if ever I come back, it will be to hunt her out and buy her."

"Fatima! Come, now for a touch of romance, Harry!" cried Strachan, laughing.

"Black as your Sunday hat in London; blubber lips, hair like coa.r.s.e wool; feet like canoes, and the best heart in the world, and--there she is!"

It was true enough; Fatima was searching about, looking for Harry Forsyth, just like a dear, faithful old dog. Ever since the episode of the letter she had thought he wanted to go to his own people, and sought how to aid him; after the fight at Kirbekan she lost him, and made her way down to Korti, as the best place, so far as she could learn, to gain tidings of any Englishman. The delight she expressed on thus unexpectedly seeing him again was touching to a degree.

"You will have some one else to nurse now, Fatima," said Harry in Arabic, pointing to Kavanagh.

"Your brother is my master; I will cure him!" she said, nodding cheerfully to Kavanagh, and showing her white teeth.

"I am afraid Fatima would want to be nurse and doctor all in one, as she was with me," said Harry, "and that would hardly agree with discipline.

But you might do worse than that, I can tell you. Meantime, what am I to do with her, I wonder? Part from her willingly I never will. I tell you, Kavanagh, you would never have had a chance of your money, if I had not fallen into her hands, after I fell for dead in the wilderness; for I should never have pulled through but for her. How astonished my dear old mother and sister will be when I bring them a black servant! But she will soon learn their ways."

"You are my good genius, Forsyth," said Kavanagh; "and if you will call on the Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer, and other great authorities, I have no doubt you will be able to help me to get away the quicker."

"I should like to go home with you," said Forsyth, "and will if I can.

Let us once get to Cairo, and I can raise any necessary money on the strength of this," and he tapped the will on his chest.

"Would it be too great a presumption to ask to see this portentous doc.u.ment?" asked Strachan. "I own to feeling some curiosity about it."

"Not at all." And he unwound it from its wrappings and produced it.

"And because a rascal clerk ran away with that bit of parchment, Kavanagh had to enlist as a private, and you had to go wandering over the world for years, leaving your mother and sister in poverty and anxiety!" said Tom Strachan, meditatively. "People are always talking about red tape in the army; surely there is still more of it in the law."

"Oh, yes, naturally one would expect that."

"Ah, well, I hope he got it hot; I _do_ hope he got it hot! I will introduce you to all the people who can help you, Harry, but I must be off just now."

Forsyth got every a.s.sistance from the authorities to take his wounded friend away. And his old connection with Mr Williams and the English firm at Cairo stood him in good stead; so that he reached Cairo, and embarked for England with Fatima and her patient sooner than he had expected.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

AT SHEEN.

The severity of the May of 1885 had at last abated, and the arrows on the vanes proved that they had not got fixed by rust, as many suspected, in a north-easterly direction, by turning to the south and west, so that those inhabitants of Great Britain who had not succ.u.mbed to pneumonia were able to let their fires out, open their windows, and enjoy out-of- door games with impunity.