The Man at the Wheel

WYNDHAM BIMBASHI’S career in Egypt had been a series of mistakes. In the first place, he was opinionated; in the second place, he never seemed to have any luck ; and, worst of all, he had a little habit of doing grave things on his own lightsome responsibility. This last quality was natural to him, but he added to it a supreme contempt for the native mind and an unhealthy scorn of the native official. He never seemed to realize that, after all, the native knows, in one sure way, a good deal more about his country than a foreigner possibly can ; also, that, however corrupt in character Mahommed may be, he is in touch with the mind of his countrymen. But Major Wyndham — which is to say Wyndham Bimbashi — was convinced of the omniscience of the British mind, of its universal superiority. He said as much to Vernet, the French count in the confidence of the Khedive, who had got him his billet at a time when there were scarcely any English officials in Egypt. Vernet chafed, but he had been Wyndham’s guest in Sussex, years before, and he contented himself with a satirical warning. In this he deserved credit, for Wyndham’s manner, with his unimaginative, bullet - headed cocksureness, his yawning indifference, his unpitying endurance of foreigners’ opinions, was provoking, if nothing more.

Bored as he generally was, Wyndham had ideas of reform, — in the army, in the state, everywhere. With all his Englishness, he was for doing what is characteristic of the Frenchman, — transplanting schemes of home government and administration bodily into colonies and spheres of influence. He had not that excellent quality, often found among Englishmen, of working the native up through his own medium, as it were, through his own customs and predispositions, to the soundness of Western administrative methods. Therefore, in due time, he made some bad mistakes, which, in natural sequence, were followed by dangerous mistakes. By virtue of certain high-handed actions he was the cause of several riots in native villages, and he had himself been attacked at more than one village, as he rode between the fields of sugar cane. On these occasions he had behaved very well, — certainly no one could doubt his bravery ; but that was a small offset to the fact that his want of tact and his overbearing manner had been the means of turning the Hadendowa Arabs loose upon the country, raiding and killing.

But he could not, or would not, see his own vain stupidity. The climax came in a foolish sortie against the Hadendowas. In that unauthorized mêlée, in covert disobedience to a general order not to attack unless at advantage, — for the Gippies under him were raw levies, — his troop was diminished by half, and, cut off from the Nile by a flank movement of the Hadendowas, he was obliged to retreat, and take refuge in the wellfortified and walled house of a friendly sheikh, which had previously been a Coptic monastery.

Here, at last, the truth came home to Wyndham Bimbashi. He realized that though in his six years’ residence in the land he had acquired a command of Arabic equal to that of others who had been in the country twice that time, he had acquired little else. He awaked to the fact that in his cocksure schemes for the civil and military life of Egypt there was not one element of sound sense; that he had been all along an egregious failure. It did not come home to him with clear, accurate conviction, — his brain was not a first-rate medium for illumination ; but the facts struck him now with a blind sort of force, and he accepted the blank sensation of failure. Also, he read in the faces of those round him an alien spirit, a chasm which his knowledge of Arabic could never bridge over.

Here he was, shut up with Gippies who had no real faith in him, in the house of a sheikh whose servants would cut his throat on no provocation at all; and not an eighth of a mile away was a horde of Arabs, a circle of death, through which it was impossible to break with the men in his command. They must all die here, if they were not relieved.

The nearest garrison was at Berber, fifty miles away, where five hundred men were stationed. Now that his cup of mistakes was full, Wyndham Bimbashi would willingly have made the attempt to carry word to the garrison there. But he had no right to leave his post. He called for a volunteer. No man replied. Panic was upon the Gippies. Though Wyndham Bimbashi’s heart sickened within him, his lips did not frame a word of reproach ; but a blush of shame came into his face, and crept up to his eyes, dimming them. For there flashed through his mind what men at home would think of him, when this thing, such an end to his whole career, was known. As he stood still, upright and confounded, some one touched his arm.

It was Hassan, his Soudanese servant. Hassan was the one person in Egypt who thoroughly believed in Wyndham Bimbashi. Wyndham was as a god to Hassan, though this same god had given him the taste of a belt more than once. Hassan had not resented the belt, though once, in a moment of affectionate confidence, he had said to Wyndham that when Wyndham got old and died he would be the servant of an American or a missionary, “ who no whack Mahommed.”

It was Hassan that now volunteered to carry word to the garrison at Berber.

“ If I no carry, you whack me with the belt, Pasha,” said Hassan, whose logic and reason were like his master’s, neither better nor worse.

“ If you do, you shall have fifty pounds — and the missionary,” answered Wyndham Bimbashi, his eyes still cloudy and his voice thick; for it touched him in a tender nerve that this one Soudanese boy should believe in him, and do for him what he would give much to do for the men under him. For his own life he did not care, his confusion and shame were so great.

He watched Hassan steal out into the white brilliance of the night.

“ Mind you keep a whole skin, Hassan,” he said, as the slim lad, with the white teeth, oily hair, and legs like ivory, stole along the wall, to drop presently on his belly and make for some palm trees a hundred yards away.

The minutes went by in silence, an hour went by, the whole night went by. Hassan had got beyond the circle of trenchant steel.

They must now abide Hassan’s fate. But another peril was upon them : there was not a goolah of water within the walls.

It was the time of low Nile, when all the land is baked like a crust of bread, when the creaking of the shadoofs and the singing croak of the sakkia are heard all the long night, like untiring crickets with the throats of frogs. It was the time succeeding the khamseen, when the skin dries like slaked lime and the face is forever powdered with dust; and the fellaheen, in the slavery of superstition, strain their eyes day and night for the Sacred Drop, which tells that the flood is flowing fast from the hills of Abyssinia.

It was like the Egyptian that nothing should be said to Wyndham Bimbashi about the dearth of water until it was all gone. The house of the sheikh, and its garden, where were a pool and a fountain, were supplied from the great Persian wheel at the waterside. On this particular sakkia had been wont to sit all day a patient fellah, driving the blindfolded buffaloes in their turn. It was like the patient fellah, when the Arabs in pursuit of Wyndham and his Gippies suddenly cut in between him and the house, to deliver himself over to the conqueror, with his hand upon his head in sign of obedience. It was also like the gentle Egyptian that he eagerly showed the Hadendowas how the water could be cut off from the house by dropping one of the sluice gates; while if another was opened, all the land around the Arab encampments might be well watered, the birkets filled, and the bersim kept green for their horses and camels. Which was the reason that Wyndham Bimbashi and his Gippies, and the sheikh and his household, faced the fact, the morning after Hassan left, that there was not a goolah of water for a hundred burning throats. Wyndham understood now why it was that the Hadendowas sat down and waited, that torture might be added to the oncoming death of the Englishman, his natives, and the “ friendlies.”

All that day terror and a ghastly hate hung like a miasma over the besieged house and garden. Fifty eyes hungered for the blood of Wyndham Bimbashi, — not because he was Wyndham Bimbashi, but because the heathen in these men cried out for sacrifice; and what so agreeable a sacrifice as the Englishman who had led them into this disaster, and would die so well! Had they ever seen an Englishman who did not die well ?

Wyndham Bimbashi was quiet and watchful, and he cudgeled his bullethead and looked down his long nose in meditation all the day, while his tongue became dry and thick, and his throat seemed to crack like roasting leather. At length he worked the problem out; then he took action.

He summoned his troop before him, and said briefly : “ Men, we must have water. The question is, who is going to steal out to the sakkia to-night, to shut the one sluice and open the other ? ”

No one replied. No one understood quite what Wyndham meant. Shutting one sluice and opening the other did not seem to meet the situation. There was the danger of getting to the sakkia, but there was also an after. Would it be possible to shut one sluice and open the other without the man at the wheel knowing ? Suppose you killed the man at the wheel : what then ?

The Gippies and the friendlies scowled, but did not speak. The Bimbashi was responsible for all : he was an Englishman ; let him get water for them, or die like the rest of them, — perhaps before them !

Wyndham Bimbashi could not travel the sinuosities of their minds ; and if he could have done so, it would not have affected his purposes. When no man replied, he simply said : “ All right, men. You shall have water before morning. Try and hold out till then.”

For a long time he walked up and down the garden of straggling limes, apparently listless, and smoking hard. He reckoned in his mind how long it would take Hassan to get to Berber, and how long it would take for relief to come. He was fond of his pipe, and he smoked now as if it were the thing he most enjoyed in the world. He held the bowl in the hollow of his hand almost tenderly. He seemed unconscious of the scowling looks around him. At last he sat down on the ledge of the rude fountain, with his face toward the Gippies and the Arabs squatted on the ground,some playing mankalah, others sucking the dry lime leaves, some smoking apathetically, and others still gasping and staring.

One man, with the flicker of insanity in his eyes, suddenly ran forward and threw himself on the ground before Wyndham Bimbashi.

“ In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful, water ! ” he cried. “ Water ! I am dying, effendi, whom God preserve! ”

“Nile water is sweet: you shall drink it before morning, Mahommed,” said Wyndham quietly. “ God will preserve your life till the Nile water cool your throat.”

“ Before dawn, O effendi ? ” gasped the Arab.

“ Before dawn, by the mercy of God.” answered Wyndham ; and for the first time in his life he had a burst of imagination. The Orient had touched him.

“ Is not the Song of the Sakkia in thine ear, Mahommed ?

Wyndham Bimbashi was learning at last the way to the native mind.

The man rose from his knees. A vision of his home in the Mirkaz of Minieh passed before him. He stretched out his hands, and sang in the vibrating monotone of his people : —

Then he crept back again to the wall of the house, where he huddled between a Berberine playing a darabukkeh and a man of Fayoum who chanted the Fatihah from the Koran.

Wyndham looked at them all, and pondered. “ If those devils out there would only attack us ! ” he said between his teeth. “ Or if we could only attack them! ” he added, and he nervously hastened his footsteps ; for to him this inaction was terrible. “ They ’d forget their thirst if they were fighting,” he muttered, and then he frowned ; for the groans of the horses behind the house came to his ear. In desperation he went inside and climbed to the roof, where he could see the circle of the enemy.

It was no use. They were three to one, and his Gippies were demoralized. It would be a fine bit of pluck to try to cut his way through the Hadendowas to the Nile ; but how many would reach it ?

No, he had made his full measure of mistakes; he would not add to the list. If Hassan got through to Berber, his Gippies here would be relieved ; and there would be no more blood on his head. Relieved ! And when they were relieved, what of himself, Wyndham Bimbashi ? He knew what men would say in Cairo, — what men would say at the War Office in London town, at “ the Rag,” everywhere ! He could not look his future in the face. He felt that every man in Egypt, save himself, had known all along that he was a complete failure. It did not matter while he was not conscious of it; but now that the armor-plate of conceit protecting his honest mind had been torn away on the reefs of foolish deeds, it mattered everything. For when his conceit was peeled away, there was left a crimson cuticle of the Wyndham pride, — of the Wyndham Bimbashi pride ! Certainly he could not attack the Hadendowas : he had had his eternal fill of sorties !

And he could not wait for the relief party, for his Gippies and the friendlies were famishing, dying of thirst. He prayed for night. How slowly the minutes, the hours, passed ; and how bright was the moon when it rose, — brighter, even, than it was when Hassan crept out through the Arab lines !

At midnight Wyndham Bimbashi stole softly out of a gate in the garden wall, and, like Hassan, dropping to the ground, crept toward a patch of maize lying between the house and the river. He was dressed like a fellah, with the long blue yelek and a poor wool fez; and round the fez was a white cloth, as it were to protect his mouth from the night air, after the manner of the peasant.

The fires of the enemy were dying down, and only here and there Arabs gossiped or drank coffee by the embers. At last Wyndham was able to drop into the narrow channel, now dry, through which, when the sluice was open and the sakkia turned, the water flowed to the house. All went well till he was within a hundred yards of the wheel, though now and again he could hear sentries snoring or talking just above him. Suddenly he heard breathing an arm’s length before him ; then a figure raised itself, and a head turned toward him. The Arab had been asleep, but his hand ran to his knife by instinct, — too late, for Wyndham’s fingers were at his throat, and he had neither time nor chance to cry “ Allah ! ” before the breath left him.

Wyndham crept on. The sound of the sakkia was in his ears, — the long, creaking, crying song filling the night. And now there rose the Song of the Sakkia from the man at the wheel: —

. . . The cold white stars, the deep cold blue, the far-off Libyan hills in a gold and opal glow, the smell of the desert, the deep swish of the Nile, the Song of the Sakkia ! . . .

Wyndham Bimbashi’s heart beat faster, his blood flowed quicker, he strangled a sigh in his breast. Here, with death on every hand, with immediate danger and a fearful peril before him, out of the smell of the desert and the ghostly glow of the Libyan hills there came a memory, — a memory of a mistake he had made years before with a woman. She had never forgiven him for the mistake, — he knew that now. He knew that no woman could ever forgive the blunder he had made, — not a blunder of love, but a blunder of self-will and an unmanly, unmannerly conceit. It had nearly wrecked her life : and he only realized it now, in the moment of clear seeing which comes once in this life to every one. Well, it was something to have seen the mistake at all!

He was near the sluice gate now. It was impossible to open it without the fellah on the water wheel seeing him.

There was another way. He crept close and closer to the wheel. The breath of the blindfolded buffalo was in his face ; he drew himself up lightly beside the buffalo, — he was making no blunder now ! The fellah still sang: —

The great jars on the wheel emptied their splashes of water into the trough for the channel.

Suddenly Wyndham Bimbashi leaped from behind the buffalo upon the fellah, and smothered his head and mouth in the white cloth he had brought. There was a moment’s struggle; then, as the wheel went slower and slower, and the patient buffalo stopped, Wyndham Bimbashi dropped the gagged but living fellah into a trench by the sakkia, and, calling to the buffalo, slid over swiftly, opened the sluice gate of the channel which fed the house, and closed that leading to the Arab encampment.

Then he sat down where the fellah had sat, and the sakkia droned its mystic music over the river, the desert, and the plain. But the buffalo moved slowly ; the fellah’s song had been a spur to its travel, as the camel driver’s song is to the caravan in the waste of sands. Wyndham Bimbashi hesitated an instant ; then, as the first trickle of water entered the garden of the house where his Gippies and the friendlies were, his voice rose in the Song of the Sakkia : —

If he had but one hour more, there would be enough water for men and horses for days, — twenty jars of water pouring, pouring all the time !

Now and again a figure came toward the wheel, but not close enough to see that the one sluice gate had been shut and the other opened. One hour passed, an hour and a half, and then the end came.

The gagged fellah had managed to free his mouth, and though his feet were bound also, and he could not loose them at once, he gave a loud call for help. Here and there Arab sentries sprang to their feet with rifles and lances.

Wyndham Bimbashi’s work was done. He leaped from the sakkia, and ran toward the house. Shot after shot was fired at him, lances were thrown, and once an Arab barred his way suddenly. He pistoled him and ran on. A lance caught him in the left arm. He tore it out and pushed forward. Stooping once, he caught up an Arab sword from the ground. When he was within fifty yards of the house, four Hadendowas intercepted him. He slashed through, then turned with his pistol and fired as he ran quickly toward the now open gate. He was within ten yards of it, when a bullet crashed through his jaw.

A dozen Gippies ran out, dragged him in, and closed the gate.

The last thing Wyndham Bimbashi did before he died in the gray of dawn — and this is told of him by the Gippies themselves — was to cough up the bullet from his throat and spit it out upon the ground. The Gippies thought it a miraculous feat, and that he had done it in scorn of the Hadendowas.

Before another sunrise and sunset had come, Wyndham Bimbashi’s men were relieved by the garrison of Berber.

There are Englishmen in Egypt who still speak slightingly of Wyndham Bimbashi : but the British officer who buried him hushed a gossiping dinner party, a few months ago, in Cairo, by saying: —

And he did not apologize for paraphrasing the famous ballad. He has shamed Egypt, at last, into a sort of admiration of Wyndham Bimbashi, to the deep satisfaction of Hassan, the Soudanese boy, who received his fifty pounds, and to this day wears the belt that once kept him in the narrow path of duty.

Gilbert Parker.