THE PAGAN SPIRIT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22108, 14 May 1935, Page 15

THE PAGAN SPIRIT

By H. C. MAYDON

CHAPTER Xl.—(Continued) There was a lull down in the valley, a thousand yards below us, where slowly the rays of the rising sun penetrated . James had broken the enemy's line, encircling the approach to the crater, and now held the flat-topped mound beyond them, and for the time seemed to be in an impregnable position. But he was in a far worse position than before the attack, for without water and supplies he could not hold out for long. The enemy were now all round him and he was cut off from us and the barricade at the rift. In spite of the surprise attack, the enemv had not broken and bolted, but had enveloped him by power of numbers, and there was no sign of James' main army, which he had hoped to join. Worse still, it seemed te me from mv vantage point, that the enemy were preparing another attack on the mound. James' onslaught had split their force into two, which now massed on both sides of the mound, north and south. Eastward was the sharp declivity from Crater Mountain, westward was the open, sandy desert. On th« 3 enemy's southern attack I reckoned nothing, since it must be visible to James and he would be prepared. But the attack from the north looked dangerous. They had a covered approach across broken ground, and they seemed to be preparing an old Arab subterfuge. That is, to drive a large herd of camels, mules and donkeys as a screen in front of the 'spearmen, when the attack is launched. They looked very strong in numbers, and in that broken ground the preparations would be concealed from James. , . Powerless to warn hinu I waited, for the result. , But- at that moment help came irom the blue. . , , From out of the scrub on the right that clothed the foot of our mountain, and from the Mareb direction, rode a thin line of men. There could not ha\e been more than a hundred of them, while behind followed pehaps an equal number of footmen, running. or a minute or two I thought they must be fresh Debrocliari enemies bent on some new manoeuvre, until I heard Sabah El Kheir's shout. "Abu Taaban," (father of snakes, and the name by which Pedro was commonly called). "El Hamdu lillah. Then I understood. It was Pedro and the lost army, or what was left ot it. But it was the maddest, bravest venture that 1 have ever seen. Apparently Pedro had no supports, no backing,'just his two hundred men, and he was charging an army of two thousand! At the beginning this counter-attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that it ' nearly carried through to the hill which I James defended. We could see Debroi charis on the northern side break and scatter in «v*ry direction. Pedro s double line never paused. I p the slope ! they pounded, until the> seemed to crash on top of the dense mass of ! encmv who had formed for attack be- | hind the screen of pack animals. ! The latter part of the charge must I have been invisible to James on the crest of the mound, but no doubt he could hazard a good guess of what had happened. Reckless as Pedro himself, be gathered his men on the top and charged down hill tc make common cause with his subordinate. All this was clear enough through my field-glasses, which 1 selfishly monopolised. 1 even had time to note two other points. That James had left a few riflemen on the crest to hold j this vital rallying point. That the j enemv's left wing on the southern side of the hill was uneasy and undecided. ! It wa3 obvious that their view of the i northern side was masked by the hill and tha 4 -. they had not seen Pedro's charge. All they knew was that a sudden unexpected attack had come from somewhere. At this critical moment Joan qualified for the V.G. With a shout of "Comt on." she clambered over the ledge and began to scramble and run down the steep slope toward the fight. Mad with excitement Sabah El Kheir and the escort followed her, and a girl and twenty-six men launched themselves straight for the battle. Fadla Mulla and I were left alone to hold the fort*

1 did try to scramble down and follow Joan, who, by now, you may have guessed, was my most precious thought, but I was too weak and shaky, and I crashed ignominiously a few hundred yards down Fadla Mulla had a brain-wave, and seeing a huge boulder that stood tottering on the brink of a steep incline, flotsam of the recent avalanche, he gave a mighty push and sent it hurtling down to gather force and fury and many a tottering rock in its rush. Strange how small things achieve great results. 1 believe that that afterthought of Fadla Mulla's was the unsuspected means of saving our broken fortunes.

For the enemy's left wing, which was alr?ady beginning to crowd round to see what was happening on the north of the hill, suddenly came tinder rapid fire from Sabah El Kheir's party, all staunch and steady shots, and next moment a lesser avalanche broke on them from above. They were not trained men, they probably lacked a leader, and I suspect that they had experienced the full fury of one avalanche already. They did not want another. For all they knew, it was another trap. They broke and fled back to cover.

The next thing 1 saw was -Tames himself and a pitifully small number of his men straggling up the slope toward the escort. James must have been hurt, for he was being dragged back by two sturdy men and he seemed to be resisting stoutly.

Joan's little rescue force was extended in line half-way down the slope and six or seven hundred yards from the mound. The lucky chance of such a tempting target as the enemy's left wing, as they had crowded over toward the right, had restrained that cunning old veteran, Sabah I'll Kheir, from involving himself in the general melee. He had thus, unwittingly perhaps. formed of his own weak troop a stepping-stone to safety for the survivors of .James' force.

What had happened at the mound, or rather, on its northern shoulder, had happened so suddenly that it was not till afterwards and in response to many questions, that I was able to reconstruct the action.

Almost out of the jaws of certain disaster, Pedro had succeeded in snatching his beloved master. Their all too scanty and depleted forces united in a seething mass of panic-stricken Debrocharis; it iiad seemed for one fleeting moment as if it might have been possible for both leaders and their men to escape up the crater incline to the rift.

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AN INTRIGUING STORY OF LOVE AND ROMANCE

But here the reckless spirit of James Barr had scorned to find safety in retreat. It may have been the thought of the men he had left to hold the

mound, or more likely his blind lust to kill now that he found himself in the midst of his enemies.

In any case, instead of leading a retreat toward the rift, he had hurled himself at the thickest mass of the Debrocharis. He was wounded again and again, and finally struck down for good. By this time the enemy, recovering from their panic, had rallied and were swarming forward to make an end. Pedro, whose plan was made, never faltered. Ordering the remnants of James' force to retire up Crater Mountain to the rift, carrying the body of their leader, he and his own men acted as rearguard and prepared to sacrifice themselves to ensure the safety of their chief.

As the threatening mob of hostile spearmen closed round them, they fought they way, step by step, to the top of the mound. And here, like a wounded leopard, they turned at bay and fought it out to the end. This heroic action of Pedro, the halfcaste Portuguese, undoubtedly saved James' life. The certain jov of spearing a trapped enemy, in spite of his still snapping jaws, appealed more to the Debrocharis than of following the refugees up the mountainside into the teeth of the steady fire and unknown numbers of the escort, backed by the terror of another avalanche.

As James' indomitable spirit broke, and he sank, half-insensible, into his sister's arms, the surge of Debrochari spearmen round the mound at last reached the top. Like breakers on a rock they hurled themselves forward at that narrow ring of steel, only to break and recoil; until at last a wave greater than the rest swamped everything, flooded the top and boiling broadly hither and thither, broke victoriously over and beyond.

The spirit of Pedro had passed; his Kismet fulfilled.

CHAPTER XII HOW JAMF.3 BARR RESIGNED HIS KINGDOM Once more we were back within the walls of the crater, with scarce a hundred men of all James' army. James himself was like a man demented. Wounded and gashed in a dozen places, broken in mind and body, his one idea and grief was his desertion of. Pedro. Besides his natural repugnance that another man should have given his life for him, he was still under the delusion that the fight might have been won had he himself not been dragged out of the battle, willy-nilly. That was Pedro's own order as we learnt from several of his men. who had escaped the last stand and had joined James' party to retire up to the crater barricade.

Pedro, we learnt, had found the relics of the raiding army —some three hundred men —hidden in the bush and still loyal to their Ras, but too weak in numbers to act alone against the Debrochari main army. The rest had deserted and either gone off looting with their Dankali allies, or returned to their homes in the plains. Pedro, unable to communicate with James, save by the ■ mountain tops, a track which be alone could dare, and unwilling to leave his wavering forces without a leader, had moved his men up through the scrub as nearly opposite the rift as he dared and there had waited an opportunity. His plan had been to try and reach the barricade one dark night, and to re-join James. Then, that fatal morning, he had heard the clamour of the dawn attack and had seen James' predicament on the mound.

Immediately he had decided that James was doomed, unless he, Pedro, could pull him out of it. His men were staunch enough, as much from hatred of the Debrocharis as from devotion to James. They agreed to the desperate effort. Knowing James' obstinacy, Pedro detailed a dozen of his best men to make it their duty to seize James bodily and to carry him out of the fight'and up the hill to safety. With his small force, partly mounted on the mules of the raiding party, Pedro had counted on causing enough of a diversion to enable James' force to escape. A plan which had succeeded, as we had seen.

The survivors told us that James' and Pedro's forces Lad actually effected to join on the hidden slope of the mound. The Debrocharis' screen of packanfmals had panicked backwards on to the ranks of their own side, causing dire confusion. James had fought like a lion, and for a moment it had seemed as if the enemy on that flank were broken. But Pedro must have foreseen that the success could only be momentary. When James was struck down in the 'fight, and for the time hors de combat, Pedro had ordered the remains of James' force to retire up the incline to the barricade, carrying the body or their leader, while Pedro himself and his men occupied the mound to hold the enemy. There they bad fought it out to the bitter end, but had achieved their object and saved their leader.

It was a fitting and splendid end for the last descendant of old Pedro Leon. The enemy, meanwhile, seemed content to sit as before at the bottom of the mountain and wait for the eagle to die. James himself, maimed in mind and body, appeared satisfied to sit in his hut in the crater and wait for the end.

The uneventful defence of the rift had devolved on Sabah El Kheir, a fierce and reliable leader.

Meantime, Joan and I were not idle. We were quite convinced now that our onlv hope of escaj>e was to find the subterranean passage from the temple; and there we worked and searched every day. Fadla Mulla, Bongo and several of the escort always accompanied us, although we felt safe enough from the enemy while we were inside the crater walls. Although our prvings and searching® were disappointing and wearisome enough to us two, bent on nothing short of a way of escape from the trap, they would have been wildly interesting to any archaeologist. It was not what we found, but what we might have found had we possessed the knowledge. For. although this spot had neither the history nor the antiquity of ancient Egypt, yet it had lain untouched and unspoilt" by the hand of man for three or four thousand years. Although it had probably only been a small and temporary colony of the great, Power that had been, and passed away, yet in some way, from its very forgotten aloofness, it seemed to bring a nearer picture of its mysterious past. Its very setting, beneath those abrupt and towering precipices, on a natural terrace, hidden and secluded by a belt of forest and a, sea of tall grass, and all enclosed by the forbidding walls of that cloomv crater, lent mvstery, undiscovered and unspoilt. The double temple, divided by the entry to the interior galleries, was built of huge slabs and squares of shiny black rock. It was square-roofed and paved with the same black stone. Inside were arches and pillars, forming colonnades and alcoves. At the far end of each temple were altars of black stone ornamented with goldThe walls were decorated with coloured pictures, as in the ancient tombs of Egypt. On plinths along the sides stood statues of gods or kings. (To be continued daily >