"
The pale face lighted. "So many! I would not have put the estimate half
so high. Not bad for a dark race fighting for they know not what!"
"They know that all right; they are fighting for you, Saadat."
David seemed not to hear. "Five hundred--so many, and the enemy so near,
the temptation so great."
"The deserters are all gone to Ali Wad Hei, Saadat. For a month there
have been only the deserted."
A hardness crept into the dark eyes. "Only the deserted!" He looked out
to where the Nile lost itself in the northern distance. "I asked Nahoum
for one thousand men, I asked England for the word which would send them.
I asked for a thousand, but even two hundred would turn the scale--the
sign that the Inglesi had behind him Cairo and London. Twenty weeks, and
nothing comes!"
He got to his feet slowly and walked up and down the room for a moment,
glancing out occasionally towards the clump of palms which marked the
disappearance of the Nile into the desert beyond his vision. At intervals
a cannon-shot crashed upon the rarefied air, as scores of thousands had
done for months past, torturing to ear and sense and nerve.
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