The Triumph Of The Sun

“You have until the middle of January next year and then I want you here in Cairo. Adams will go over the details with you. You are dismissed.” His uneven gaze dropped back to the papers on the desk in front of him.

As he and Adams went down the steps of the headquarters building to where the grooms were holding their horses, Penrod said, “He wastes little time.”

“Not a second,” Adams agreed. “Not a single bloody second.”

Before he rode back to Alexandria to rejoin the Singapore, Penrod went to the telegraph office and sent a wire to Sebastian Hardy, David Benbrook’s lawyer, at his chambers in Lincolns Inn Fields. It was a lengthy message and cost Penrod two pounds, nine shillings and fourpence.

Hardy came from London by train to meet the ship when she docked at Southampton. In appearance he reminded Penrod and Amber of Charles Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick. However, behind his pince-nez he had a shrewd and calculating eye. He travelled back to London with them.

“The press has got wind of your escape from Omdurman, and your arrival in this country,” he told them. “They are agog. I have no doubt they will be waiting at Waterloo station to pounce upon you.”

“How can they know what train we will arrive on?” Amber asked.

“I dropped a little hint,” Hardy admitted. “What I would refer to as pre-baiting the waters. Now, may I read this manuscript?”

Amber looked to Penrod for guidance, and he nodded. “I think you should trust Mr. Hardy. Your father did.”

Hardy skimmed through the thick sheaf of papers so rapidly that Amber doubted he was reading it. She voiced her concern, and Hardy answered, without looking up, “Trained eye, my dear young lady.”

As the carriage ran in through the suburbs he shuffled the papers together. “I think we have something here. Will you allow me to keep this for a week? I know a man in Bloomsbury who would like to read it.”

Five journalists were waiting on the platform, including one from The Times and another from the Telegraph. When they saw the handsome, highly decorated hero of El Obeid and Abu Klea, with the young beauty on his arm, they knew they had a story that would electrify the whole country. They barked hysterically as a pack of mongrels who had chased a squirrel up a tree. Hardy gave them a tantalizing statement about the horrifying ordeal the couple had survived, mentioning Gordon, the Mahdi and Khartoum more than once, all evocative names. Then he sent the press away and led the couple out to a cab he had waiting at the station entrance.

The cabbie whipped up his horse and they clattered through the foggy city to the hotel in Charles Street where Hardy had booked a room for Amber. Once she was installed they went on to the hotel in Dover Street where Penrod would stay.

“Never do for the two of you to frequent the same lodging. From now on you will be under a magnifying lens.”

Four days later Sebastian Hardy summoned them to his office. He was beaming pinkly through his pince-nez. “Macmillan and Company want to publish. You know they did Sir Samuel White Baker’s book on the Nile tributaries of Abyssinia? Your book is caviar and champagne to them.”

“What can the Benbrook sisters expect to receive? You know that Miss Amber wishes any proceeds to be shared equally between them, following the example their father set in his will?”

Hardy sobered and looked apologetic. He removed his reading glasses and polished them with the tail of his shirt. ‘I pressed them as hard as I could, but they would not budge beyond ten thousand pounds.”

“Ten thousand pounds!” Amber shrieked. “I did not know there was that much money outside the Bank of England.”

“You will also receive twelve and a half per cent of the profits. I doubt this will amount to much more than seventy-five thousand pounds.”

They gaped at him in silence. Placed in consols, irredeemable government treasury bonds, that sum would bring in almost three and a half thousand pounds per annum in perpetuity. They would never have to worry about money.

In the event, Hardy’s estimate erred on the side of caution. Months before Christmas Slaves of the Mahdi was all the rage. Hatchard’s in Piccadilly was unable to keep copies on its shelves for more than an hour. Irate customers vied with each other to snatch them and carry them triumphantly to the till.

In the House of Commons the opposition seized on the book as a weapon with which to belabour the government. The whole sorry business of Mr. Gladstone abandoning Chinese Gordon to his fate was resuscitated. Saffron Benbrook’s harrowing painting depicting the death of the general, to which she had been an eye-witness, formed the book’s frontispiece. It was reported in a leading article in The Times that women wept and strong men raged as they looked at it. The British people had tried to forget the humiliation and loss of prestige they had suffered at the hands of the Mad Mahdi, but now the half-healed wound was ripped wide open. A popular campaign for the reoccupation of the Sudan swept the country. The book sold and sold.

Amber and Penrod were invited to all the great houses, and were surrounded by admirers wherever they went. London cabbies greeted them by name, and strangers accosted them in Piccadilly and Hyde Park. Hundreds of letters from readers were forwarded to them by the publishers. There was even a short note of congratulation from the sirdar, Kitchener, in Cairo.

“That will do my new career no harm at all,” Penrod told Amber, as they rode together down Rotten Row, acknowledging waves.

The book sold a quarter of a million copies in the first six weeks, and the printing presses roared night and day churning out fresh copies. They were unable to keep up with the demand. Putnam’s of 70 Fifth Avenue, New York, brought out an American edition, which piqued the interest of readers who had never heard of the Sudan. Slaves of the Mahdi outsold Mr. Stanley’s account of his search for Dr. Livingstone by three to one.

The French, true to the national character, added their own fanciful illustrations to the Paris edition. Rebecca Benbrook was depicted with her bodice torn open by the evil Mahdi as he prepared to ravish her as she courageously sheltered her beautiful, terrified little sister Amber. The indomitable thrust of her bare bosom declared her defiance in the face of a fate worse than death. Copies were smuggled across the Channel and sold at a premium on stalls in the streets of Soho. Even after the payment of income tax at sixpence in the pound, by Christmas the book had earned royalties little short of two hundred thousand pounds. Amber, at the suggestion of Penrod Ballantyne, instructed Mr. Hardy to place this in a trust fund for the three sisters.

Amber and Penrod celebrated Christmas at Clercastle. They walked and rode together every day. When the house-party went out to shoot Sir Peter’s high-flying pheasant, Amber stood in the line of guns beside

Penrod and, thanks to her father’s training, acquitted herself so gracefully and skilfully that the head keeper came to her after the last drive, tugged at the peak of his cap and mumbled, “It was a joy to watch you shoot, Miss Amber.”

January came too soon. Penrod had to take up his post in Cairo. Amber, chaperoned by Penrod’s sister-in-law Jane, went to see him off from Waterloo station on the boat train. With Jane’s assistance, Amber had spent the previous week shopping for the correct attire at such a momentous parting. Of course, price was now of little consequence.

She settled on a dove-grey jacket, trimmed with sable fur, worn over ankle-length skirts and a fashionable bustle. Her high-heeled boots buckled up the sides and peeped out from under the sweeping skirts. The artful cut of the material emphasized her tiny waist. Her wide-brimmed hat was crowned with a wave of ostrich feathers. She wore the amber necklace and earrings that he had given her on the road outside Gallabat.

“When will we see each other again?” Amber was trying desperately but unsuccessfully to hold back her tears until after the train had departed.

“That I cannot say.” Penrod had determined never to lie to her, unless it was absolutely necessary. The tears broke over Amber’s lower lids. She tried to sniff them back, and Penrod hurried on: “Perhaps you and Jane could come out to Cairo to spend your sixteenth birthday at Shepheard’s Hotel. Jane has never been there and you might show her the pyramids.”

“Oh, can we do that, Jane? Please?”

“I will speak to my husband,” Jane promised. She was about the same age as Rebecca, and in the few weeks that Amber had lived at Clercastle they had become as close as sisters. “I can see no possible reason why Peter should object. It will be the height of the grouse-shooting season and he will be much occupied elsewhere. He will hardly miss us.”

Sam Adams came down from Cairo to meet Penrod when his ship docked in Alexandria. Almost his first words were “We have all read the book. The sirdar is as pleased as a cat with a saucer of cream. London was starting to have second thoughts about rebuilding the army. Gladstone and those other idiots were dithering with the idea of using the money to build a bloody great dam on the Nile instead of giving it to us. Miss Benbrook’s book created such a rumpus in the House that they changed their dim minds sharpish. Kitchener has another million pounds, and to the devil with the dam. Now we will certainly have new Maxim guns. As for myself, well, we desperately need a good number two if we’re to have any chance of retaining the Nile Cup this year.”

“After my brief meeting with the sirdar, I estimate that he is not likely to set aside much time for polo.”

Adams’s wife had found and rented a comfortable house for Penrod on the bank of the river, close to army headquarters and the Gheziera Club. When Penrod climbed the steps to the shady veranda, a figure in a plain white jibba and turban rose from his seat beside the front door and made a deep salaam.

“Effendi, the heart of the faithful Yakub has pined for you as the night awaits the dawn.”

The next morning Penrod found out what Kitchener and Adams had in store for him. He was to recruit and train three companies of camel cavalry to travel far and fast, and fight hard. “I want men from the desert tribes,” he told Adams. “They make the best soldiers. Abdullahi has driven many of the Ashraf out of Sudan, emirs of the Jaalin and the Hadendowa. I want to go after them. Hatred makes a man fight harder. I believe I shall be able to turn them against their former masters.”

“Find them,” Adams ordered.

Penrod and Yakub took the steamer to Aswan. Here they waited thirty-six hours for the sailing of another boat that would carry them up beyond the first cataract, as far as Wadi Haifa. Penrod left Yakub at the dock to guard the baggage, and went alone to the gate at the end of the narrow, winding alley. When old Liala heard his voice she flung open the gate and collapsed in a heap of faded robes and veils, wailing pitifully. “Effendi, why have you come back? You should have spared my mistress. You should never have returned here.”

Penrod lifted her to her feet. “Take me to her.”

“She will not see you, Effendi.”

“She must tell me that herself. Go to her, Liala. Tell her I am here.” Sobbing pitifully, the old woman left him beside the fountain in the courtyard and tottered into the back quarters. She was gone a long time. Penrod picked tiny green flies from the flowering fuchsias and dropped them into the pool. The perch rose to the surface and gulped them down.

Liala returned at last. She had stopped weeping. “She will see you.” She led him to the bead screen. “Go in.”

Bakhita sat on a silk rug on the far side of the well-remembered room. He knew it was her by her perfume. She was heavily veiled. “My heart fills with joy to see you safe and well, my lord.”

Her soft, sweet voice tugged at his heart. “Without you, Bakhita, that would not have been possible. Yakub has told me of the part you played in bringing me to safety. I have come to thank you.”

“And the English girl’s Arabic name is al-Zahra. I am told that she is young and very beautiful. Is that so, my lord?”

“It is so, Bakhita.” He was not surprised that she knew. Bakhita knew everything.

“Then she is the one we spoke of. The girl of your own people who will be your wife. I am happy for you.”

“We will still be friends, you and I.”

“Friends and more than that,” she said softly. “Whenever there is something that you should know I will write to you.”

“I will come to see you.”

“Perhaps.”

“May I see your face once more before I go, Bakhita?”

“It would not be wise.”

He went to her and knelt in front of her. “I want to see your lovely face again, to look into your eyes and to kiss your lips one last time.”

“I beg of you, lord of my heart, spare me this thing.”

He reached out and touched her veil. “May I lift it?”

She was silent for a while. Then she sighed. “Perhaps, after all, it would be easier this way,” she said.

He lifted the veil and stared at her. Slowly she watched the horror dawn in his eyes.

“Bakhita, oh, my dear heart, what has happened to you?” His voice trembled with pity.

“It was the smallpox. Allah has punished me for loving you.” The pockmarks were still fresh and livid. Her luminous eyes shone in the ruins of the face that had once been so lovely. “Remember me as I once was,” she pleaded.

“I will remember only your courage and your kindness, and that you are my friend,” he whispered, and bent forward to kiss her lips.

“It is you who are kind,” she replied. Then she reached up and covered her face with the veil. “Now you must leave me.”

He stood up. “I shall return.”

“Perhaps you will, Effendi.”

But they both knew he never would.

The aggagiers found the corpse of Kabel al-Din lying in the courtyard beside the abandoned yoke of the shebba. Osman Atalan called all his men to horse and for many days they scoured both banks of the river. Osman was in a murderous mood when at last he returned to Omdurman without having found any trace of the fugitive. This was a bad time for the women to come to him and tell him that al-Zahra was also missing.

“How long has she been gone?” he demanded.

“Eight days, exalted Khalif.”

“The same time as Abadan Riji,” he exclaimed. “What of the woman al-Jamal?”

“She is still in the zenana, mighty Atalan.”

“Bring her to me, and her servant also.”

They dragged in the two women and flung them at his feet.

“Where is your sister?”

“Lord, I do not know,” Rebecca replied.

Osman looked at al-Noor. “Beat her,” he ordered. “Beat her until she answers truthfully.”

“Mighty Khalif!” Nazeera cried. “If you beat her she will lose your child. It may be a son. A son with golden hair like his mother and the lion heart of his sire.” Osman looked startled. He hesitated, staring at Rebecca’s belly. Then he snarled at his aggagiers, “Leave us. Do not return until I call you.”

They hurried out of the room, relieved to be sent away, for when a khalif and emir of the Beja is angry all men around him are in jeopardy.

“Disrobe,” he ordered. Rebecca rose to her feet and let her robe drop to her feet. Osman stared at her white, protruding belly. Then he went to her and placed his hand upon it.

Move! Please, my darling, move! Rebecca begged silently, and the foetus kicked.

Osman jerked away his hand and jumped back.

“In God’s Name, it is alive.” He stared in awe at the bulge. “Cover yourself!”

While Nazeera helped her to dress, Osman tugged furiously in his beard as he considered his dilemma. Suddenly he let out another angry shout and his aggagiers trooped back into the room. “This woman.” He pointed at Nazeera. “Beat her until al-Jamal tells us the whereabouts of her sister.”

Two of them held Nazeera’s arms and Mooman Digna grabbed the cloth at the back of her neck and ripped it open to the knees. Al-Noor hefted the kurbash in his right hand. The first blow raised a red stripe across her shoulder-blades.

“Yi! Yi!” screeched Nazeera, and tried to throw herself flat, but the aggagiers held her.

“Yi!” she howled.

“Wait, Lord. I will tell you everything.” Rebecca could bear it no longer.

“Stop!” Osman ordered. “Tell me.”

“A stranger came and led al-Zahra away,” Rebecca gabbled. “I think they went north towards Metemma and Egypt, but I cannot be certain of it. Nazeera had nothing to do with this.”

“Why did you not go with them?”

“You are my master, and the father of my son,” Rebecca replied. “I will leave you only when you kill me or send me away.”

“Beat the old whore again.” Osman waved to assuage his fury without endangering the well-being of the son who might have blue eyes and golden hair.

Rebecca clutched her belly with both hands and cried, “I can feel the distress of my son within me. If you beat this woman, who is as my own mother, I shall not be able to hold the boy longer in my womb.”

“Hold!” Osman shouted. He was torn. He wanted to see blood. He drew his sword and Nazeera quailed under his gaze. Then he rushed at the stone column in the centre of the room and struck it with such force that sparks showered from the steel.

“Take these two women to the mosque at the oasis of Gedda.” It was a lonely place run by a few old mullahs fifty leagues out in the desert, a religious retreat for the devout, and for students of the Noble Koran. “If the child that al-Jamal brings forth is a female, kill all three of them. If it is a son, bring them back to me and make certain they remain alive, especially my son.”

Five months later, lying on a rug spread on the floor of her cell at Gedda, while Nazeera attended her and the mullahs waited at the door, Rebecca gave birth to her first child. As soon as she felt the slippery burden she had carried for so long rush out of her, she struggled up on her elbows. Nazeera held the infant in her arms, all shiny with blood and mucus, still bound to Rebecca by the thick cord.

“What is it?” Rebecca gasped. “Is it a boy? Sweet God, let it be a boy.” Nazeera cackled like a broody hen and presented the child for her inspection. “This one is a little stallion.” With her forefinger she tickled the baby’s tiny penis. “See how hard he stands already. You could crack an egg on the end of it. Beware anyone in skirts who stands in this one’s way.”

The mullahs of Gedda sent word to Omdurman, and within days twenty aggagiers headed by al-Noor came to escort them back to the Holy City. When they reached the gates of Osman Atalan’s palace, he was waiting to meet them. During the past five months his fury had had time to abate. However, he was trying not to appear too benign, and stood with one hand on the hilt of his sword, scowling hideously.

Al-Noor dismounted and took the child from Rebecca’s arms. He was wrapped in cotton swaddling clothes and his face was covered to protect him from the sunlight and the dust. “Mighty Atalan, behold your son!”

Osman glared at al-Noor. “This I must see for myself.”

He took the bundle and placed it in the crook of his left arm. With his right hand he unwrapped it. He stared at the tiny creature. His head was bald, except for a single copper-tinted quiff. His skin was the colour of goat’s milk with a splash of coffee added to it. His eyes were the colour of the waters of the Bahr al-Azrek, the Blue Nile. Osman opened the lower folds of his covering, and his scowl slipped, hovered on the verge of a smile.

The infant felt the cool river breeze fan his genitals, and let fly a yellow stream that splashed down his father’s brightly patched jibba.

Osman let forth a startled roar of laughter. “Behold! This is my son. As he pisses on me, so he shall piss on my enemies.” He held the child high, and he said, “This is my son, Ahmed Habib abd Atalan. Approach and show him respect.” One after another his aggagiers came forward and, with a full salaam, greeted Ahmed, who kicked and gurgled with amusement. Osman had not glanced in the direction of the two waiting women, but now he handed the infant to al-Noor, and said offhandedly, “Give the child to his mother, and tell her that she will return to her quarters in the harem, and there await my pleasure.”

Over the following eighteen months Rebecca saw Osman only three or four times, and then at a distance as he came and went on affairs of war and state. Whenever he returned he would send al-Noor to fetch Ahmed, and would keep the child away for hours on end, until it was time for him to be fed.

The child flourished. Rebecca fancied that she saw in him a resemblance to her own father, and to Amber, which made her loneliness more acute. She had only Nazeera and the baby: the other women of the harem were silly, scatter-brained creatures. She missed her sisters,

and thought of them when she awoke to another empty day, and when she composed herself to sleep with Ahmed at her bosom.

Then, slowly, she became aware that she wanted Osman Atalan to send for her. Her body had recovered from the damage of childbirth, except for the stretch marks across her belly and the soft sag of her breasts. Sometimes when she awoke in the night and could not sleep again she thought of the men she had known, but her mind returned variably to Osman. She needed somebody to talk to, somebody to be with, somebody to make love to her, and nobody had done that with the same skill as Osman Atalan.

Then the rumour in the harem was that there was to be a great new jihad, a war against the Christian infidels of Abyssinia. Osman Atalan would lead the army, and Allah would go with him. Ahmed was now toddling and talking. She hoped that Osman would take them with him. She remembered how it had been at Gallabat when she had conceived. She thought about that a great deal. She had vivid dreams about it, of how he had looked and how he had felt inside her. Her loneliness was an ache deep within her. She devoted herself entirely to the child, but the nights were long.

Then the news ran through the harem. Osman was taking three wives and eight concubines with him to the jihad; Rebecca was chosen as one of the eight. Ahmed and Nazeera would go with her, but none of Osman’s other children. She understood that he was interested solely in the child, and that she and Nazeera were merely Ahmed’s nursemaids. Her empty body ached.

They rode to the Abyssinian border forty thousand strong, a mighty warlike array. Osman left Rebecca and his other women at Gallabat. He rushed into Abyssinia and struck with all his cavalry at the passes.

The Abyssinians were also a warlike nation, and warriors to the blood. Although they had been alerted by Ryder Courtney’s warning, even they could not stand before the ferocity of Osman Atalan’s attack. He drove hard for the mountain passes at Minkti and Atbara, and seized them against desperate and courageous resistance. He slaughtered all the Abyssinian prisoners that he took, and led his army into the Minkti pass. They toiled up through bitter cold.

Ras Adal, the Abyssinian general, had not expected them to come so high and he made the mistake of allowing them to debouch unopposed on to the plain of Debra Sin before he attacked them.

The battle was fierce and bloody, but at last Ras Adal broke before the savagery of Osman’s assault. He and all his army were driven into the river at their backs and most of them drowned. The entire province of Amhara fell to Osman, and he was able to advance unopposed to capture Gondar, the ancient capital of Abyssinia.

Gondar was the city in which Osman intended to set up his own capital, but he had never experienced a winter in the Abyssinian highlands. His Beja were men of the sands and deserts: they shivered, sickened and died. Osman abandoned his conquests, sacked and burned Gondar and led his men back to Gallabat. He arrived on a litter, drawn by his own warhorse, al-Buq. The cold of the mountains had entered his lungs and he was a sick man. They laid him on his angareb and waited for him to die.

Osman wheezed for breath. He choked and hawked and spat up slugs of greenish-yellow phlegm, “Send for al-Jamal,” he ordered.

Rebecca came to his bedside and nursed him. She dosed him with a brew of selected herbs and roots that Nazeera prepared, and sweated him with hot stones. When his crisis came she brought Ahmed to him. “You cannot die, mighty Atalan. Your son needs his father.”

It took several weeks, but at last Osman was on the road to recovery. During his convalescence he sent for Rebecca on most evenings and resumed the long conversations with her as though they had never ceased. Rebecca was lonely no more.

As he grew stronger, he made love to her again, possessing her masterfully and completely, filling the aching emptiness deep inside her. He declared Ahmed his heir and, in the unpredictable fashion in which he often did things, sent for the mullah and made Rebecca his wife.

It was only when she lay beside him on the first night as his wife that she could bring herself to face the truth squarely. He had made her his slave, in body and in heart. He had snuffed out the last spark of her once indomitable spirit. The suffering he inflicted upon her so casually had become a drug that she could not live without. In a bizarre and unnatural way he had forced her to love him. She knew she could never be without him now.

Emperor John and all his subjects were infuriated by the capture of the province of Amhara and the sack of Gondar. With an army of more than a hundred thousand behind him he came down upon Gallabat to take his revenge. He sent a warning to Osman Atalan that he was coming, so he might not be seen as a sneaking coward. Osman decapitated his messenger and sent the man’s head back to him. Heavily outnumbered, Osman transformed the town into a huge defensive zareba. He placed the women and children in the centre, and stood to meet the Abyssinian fury. It burst upon him. Al-Noor’s division of four thousand men was almost wiped out, and al-Noor himself was gravely wounded. The exultant Abyssinians broke into the centre of the zareba where the women were, and the rape and slaughter began.

When Osman realized the day was lost, he leapt on to al-Buq, and spurred him forward, going for the head of the serpent. The Emperor had once been a legendary warrior, but he was a young man no longer. In his leopard skins bronze cuirassier and the gold crown of the Negus on his head, he was tall and regal but his beard was more silver than black. He drew his sword when he saw Osman charging at him through the carnage. The Dervish commander cut down the bodyguard that tried to interpose themselves. He had learnt from Penrod Ballantyne, and he never took his eye from the Emperor’s blade. His riposte was like a bolt of silver lightning.

“The Emperor is dead. The Negus has gone!” The cry went up from the Abyssinian host. The moment of complete victory had been transformed into defeat and rout by a single stroke of Osman Atalan’s long blade.

Osman rode back to Omdurman with the heads of Emperor John and his generals carried on the lances of his bodyguard. They planted them at the entrance to Khalifat Abdullahi’s palace.

Seven months later Rebecca gave birth to her second child, a girl. Osman was not sufficiently interested in a female to bother himself with a name for her. Rebecca aiamed her Kahruba, which in Arabic means Amber. After some months Osman forgave her for bearing a girl, and resumed their nightly conversations and lovemaking. When Kahruba turned into a pretty little thing with smoked-honey hair, he sometimes stroked her head. Once he even took her up on the front of his saddle and ran al-Buq at full gallop. Kahruba squealed with glee, which caused Osman to remark as he handed her back to Rebecca, “You erred grievously, wife. You should have made her a boy, for she has the heart of one.”

None of his other daughters received any sign of his affection. They were not allowed to speak to him, or to touch him. When Kahruba was six years old, at the feast of Kurban Bairam, she left the women and, with one finger in her mouth, she went to where Osman sat among his aggagiers. He watched her coldly as she approached. Undeterred she scrambled on to his lap.

Osman was flabbergasted. His aggagiers had difficulty in maintaining their sober expressions. Osman scowled at them as though daring any to laugh. Then he deliberately selected a sweetmeat from the bowl in front of him and placed it in the child’s mouth. She retaliated by throwing both arms round his neck. However, this was going too far. Osman replaced her on the ground and slapped her little bottom. “Be off with you, you shameless vixen!” he said.

Mr. Hiram Steven Maxim sat on a low stool in the brilliant sunshine of the Nile delta. In front of him on a steel tripod was an ungainly-looking weapon with a thick water-jacketed barrel. On his left side stood a five-gallon water can, connected to the weapon by a sturdy rubber hose. At his right hand dozens of wooden crates of ammunition were piled high. His three assistants hovered about him. Despite the heat they wore thick tweed jackets and flat cloth caps. Mr. Maxim had stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and his bowler hat was pushed to the back of his head. Since he had come from America to settle in England, he had adopted British ways and dress.

Now he rolled the unlit cigar from one side of his jaw to the other. “Major Ballantyne,” he sang out. His accent still proclaimed that he had been born in Sangerville, Maine. “Would you be good enough to note the time?” At a short distance behind him was a small group of uniformed officers. In the front rank stood the sirdar, General Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a stocky, powerful figure flanked by his staff.

“General, sir?” Penrod glanced at Kitchener for permission to reply.

“Carry on, Ballantyne.” Kitchener nodded.

“Time mark!” Penrod called out. Six hundred yards ahead of the machine-gun, at the foot of a high dun-coloured sand dune, was a line of fifty wooden models of the human form. They were dressed in Dervish jib has and carried wooden spears. Mr. Maxim leant forward and took hold of the firing handles. By squeezing the finger-grips he lifted the safety catch off the firing button.

“Commencing firing, now!” He thrust his thumbs down on the trigger button. The gun shuddered and roared. The separate shots were too rapid for the ear to distinguish. It was a prolonged thunder like a high waterfall in spate. The recoil of each shot kicked back the mechanism, and ejected the spent cartridge cases in a blur of glittering bronze. The forward stroke of the action reloaded the chamber, cocked and fired. It was too fast for the eye to follow the sequence.

Mr. Maxim traversed the barrel. One after another the wooden figures exploded in a storm of splinters. The sands of the dune behind the targets boiled into sheets of dust. He reached the end of the line and traversed back again. The shattered remains of the targets hung from their frames. The returning torrent of bullets blew them to fragments.

The British officers watched in awed silence. The roar of the gun numbed their eardrums. They could not speak. They did not move. Mr. Maxim’s assistants had performed this demonstration numerous times and in many countries. They had been drilled to perfection. As one of the ammunition boxes emptied it was dragged away and a full one substituted. A fresh belt of ammunition was hitched to the end of the previous belt as it was sucked into the breech. There was no check, no jamming of the action, no diminution in the rate of fire. The water in the cooling jacket boiled, but the powerful emission of steam was drawn away through the pliable hose into the can of cold water. It was cooled and condensed. There was no steam cloud to betray the position of the gun to the enemy. The cooled water was recycled through the barrel jacket. The clamour of the gun continued without check. The final belt of ammunition was fed through the breech, and only when the last empty cartridge case was flung clear did silence fall.

“Time check,” Mr. Maxim shouted.

“Three minutes and ten seconds.”

“Two thousand rounds in three minutes,” Mr. Maxim announced proudly. “Almost seven hundred rounds a minute, without a stoppage.”

“No stoppage,” Colonel Adams repeated. “This is the end of cavalry as we know it.”

“It changes the face of warfare,” Penrod agreed. “Just look at the accuracy.” He pointed to the row of targets. Splinters were spread over a wide area. Not even the poles that had supported the targets still stood upright. A thick cloud of dun-coloured dust kicked up by the stream of bullets hung in the air above the dunes.

“Now let the Dervish come!” murmured the sirdar, and his dark moustache seemed to stand erect, like the bristles on the back of an enraged wild boar.

Penrod and Adams rode back to Cairo together. They were both in high spirits, and when a jackal broke from the scrub at the side of the track they drew their sabres and rode it down. Penrod spurted ahead and turned back the drab terrier-like creature. Adams leant low out of the saddle and ran it through between the shoulders, then let its weight swing his blade back until the carcass slipped from the blade, rolled in the dust and at last lay still. “Beats pig-sticking in the Punjab.” He laughed. When they reached the gates of the Gheziera Club, he said, “Do you care for a peg?”

“Not this evening,” replied Penrod. “I have guests from home to entertain.”

“Ah, yes! So I have heard. What does Miss Amber Benbrook think of your new pips?”

Penrod glanced down at the shiny new major’s crowns on his epaulettes.

“If you remember her name, you must have received the invitation to the ball. It is her sixteenth birthday, you know. Will you be attending?”

“The remarkable young lady who wrote Slaves of the MahdiV Adams exclaimed. “I would not miss it for the world. My wife would assassinate me if I so much as contemplated the idea.”

Amber’s birthday ball was held at Shepheard’s Hotel. The band of the new Egyptian army played until dawn. White-robed waiters served silver trays of brimming champagne glasses. Every commissioned officer of the army from the rank of ensign upwards, a hundred and fifteen in all, had accepted the invitation to attend. Their smart new dress uniforms made a handsome foil to the ball gowns of the ladies. Even the sirdar and Sir Evelyn Baring made a brief appearance, and each danced a Vienna waltz with Amber. They both left early, aware that their presence had an inhibiting effect on the festivities.

Ryder and Saffron had made the long circuitous journey down from the highlands of Abyssinia, across the desert by camel, up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal to Alexandria to be there. Saffron’s evening dress caused a mild sensation, even in this glittering company. She was two months pregnant, but of course that was not yet apparent.

At the beginning of the evening, after he had collected Amber and his sister-in-law Jane from the suite they were sharing on the top floor of the hotel, Penrod filled in Amber’s dance card. He reserved fifteen of her twenty dances. She was a little peeved that he had been so restrained. At the stroke of midnight the band broke into a rousing rendition of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. The guests applauded wildly. The champagne flowed like the Nile, and everybody was in jovial, expansive mood.

Penrod climbed the bandstand with Amber on his arm. The band welcomed them with a long drumroll, and Penrod held up his hands for silence. He was only partially successful in achieving it while he proposed the birthday toast. They drank it with gusto, and Ryder Courtney burst into “When You Were Sweet Sixteen’. The band and the rest of the guests picked up the tune. Amber blushed and clung to Penrod’s arm.

At the end of the song he quietened them again. “I have another announcement to make. Thank you!” The uproar subsided to a buzz of interest. “My lords, ladies, and fellow officers, who fall into neither of the first two categories!” They hooted, and again he had to bring them to order. “It gives me ineffable pleasure to inform you that Miss Amber Benbrook has consented to become my wife, and in so doing she has made me the happiest man in creation.”

A little later Colonel Sam Adams was smoking a quiet cigarette on the darkened terrace when he overheard the conversation of two young subalterns who had imbibed copious quantities of champagne.

“They say she has made herself a flash hundred thousand iron men from the book. Happiest man in creation? Ballantyne has that great gong stuck on his chest, pips on his shoulders, his own battalion, and to top it all the lucky blighter has dug himself a gold mine with his pork shovel. Why shouldn’t he be happy?”

“Lieutenant Stuttaford.” A cold, familiar voice spoke from the shadows close at hand.

Pale with shock, Stuttaford came unsteadily to attention. “Colonel Adams, sir!”

“Kindly present yourself at my office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

By noon the next day Lieutenant Stuttaford, still suffering from a vile hangover, found himself packing for immediate departure to the desert outpost at Suakiri”, one of the most desolate and dreary postings in the Empire.

The Egyptian army has always been considered a music-hall turn, the Gilbert and Sullivan opera of the Nile. The standing army at home, and those in the Indian Service snigger when they speak our name,” Penrod told the other members of the party. He and Ryder lolled against the transom of the felucca. Jane Ballantyne, Saffron and Amber sat on gaily-coloured cushions on the deck. They were sailing upstream in the hired felucca to climb to the summit of the pyramid of Cheops at Giza, and afterwards to picnic in the shadow of the Sphinx.

“How vulgar and silly of them.” Amber came immediately to his defence.

“In all truth they had good reason at one time,” Penrod admitted, ‘but that was the old army, in the bad old days. Now the men are paid. The officers do not steal their rations, and turn tail and run at the first shot. The men are not beaten when they fall sick, but are sent to the doctor and the hospital. All of you must come to the review on Monday. You will see some parading and drilling that will astonish you.”

“My father was a colonel in the Black Watch, as you know, Penrod,” said Jane. “I cannot claim to be a great expert, but I have read something of military affairs. Papa saw to that. As soon as we knew that we were coming to Cairo, Amber and I read every book about Egypt on the shelves of the library at Clercastle, as well as Sir Alfred Mimer’s excellent England in Egypt. Nowhere have I heard it suggested that the Egyptian fellahin are good soldierly material.”

“What you say is true. It was always unlikely that the rich and fertile delta, with its enervating climate, would produce warriors. The fellahin may be cruel and callous, but they are not fierce and bloodthirsty. On the other hand, they are stoic and strong. They meet pain and hardship with indifference. Theirs is a kind of docile courage that we more warlike peoples can only admire. They are obedient and honest, quick to learn and, above all, strong. What they lack in nerve they make up for in muscle.”

“Pen darling, that is all well and good about the Egyptians but tell us about your Arabs,” Amber interjected.

“Ah, but you know them well, my heart.” Penrod smiled tenderly at her. “If the Egyptian fellahin are mastiffs, then the Arabs are Jack Russell terriers. They are intelligent and quick. They are venal and excitable. They do not lend themselves willingly to discipline. You can never trust them entirely, but their courage is daunting. At Abu Klea they came against the square as if they gloried in death. If they give you their loyalty, and they seldom do, it is a link of steel that binds them to you. War is their way of life. They are warriors, and I respect them. Some I have learnt to love. Yakub is one of those.”

“Nazeera is another,” Amber agreed.

“Oh, I wonder what has become of her, and of our dear sister Rebecca.” Saffron shook her head sorrowfully. “I dream of her most nights. Is there nobody in Military Intelligence who can discover this for us?”

“Believe me, I have tried diligently to find news of Rebecca. However, the Sudan is closed off from the world, as though in a steel casket. It slumbers in its own nightmare. Would that one day we have the will and the way to end the horror and set her people free. Rebecca is the first of those we would liberate.”

Rebecca sat with the other wives in the cloister of the inner courtyard of the palace of Ostnan Atalan. It was the cool of the evening and Osman was demonstrating to his followers the courage of his blue-eyed son. For many months Rebecca had known that her son faced this ordeal. She covered her face with her veil so that none of the other women would know of her fear.

Only three months previously Ahmed Habib abd Atalan had been circumcised. Rebecca had wept as she dressed his mutilated penis, but Nazeera had rebuked her: “Ahmed is a man now. Be proud for him, al-Jamal. Your tears will unman him.”

Now Ahmed stood before his father, trying to be brave. His head was bare and his fists were clenched at his side.

“Open your eyes, my son.” Osman’s voice crackled. He tossed his sword into the air and it spun like a cartwheel before the hilt dropped back into his hand. “Open your eyes. I want Allah and all the world to know that you are a man. I want you to show me, your father, your courage.”

Ahmed opened his eyes. They were no longer milky, but a dark blue like the African sky when storm clouds gather. His lower lip quivered and tiny droplets of perspiration de wed the upper. Osman flourished the long blade and cut at the side of his head with such force that the steel hummed in the air. The stroke could have bisected a grown man at the trunk. It swept past Ahmed’s temple. His unruly coppery hair fluttered in the wind of its passage. The watching aggagiers growled with admiration. Ahmed swayed on his feet.

“You are my son,” Osman whispered. “Hold fast!” He stroked the tip of his son’s ear with the flat of the blade. Ahmed shrank away from the cool touch of steel.

“Do not move,” Osman warned him, “Or I will cut it off.”

Ahmed leant forward and vomited on the ground at his feet.

An expression of contempt and shame crossed Osman’s face, and was smoothed away immediately. “Go back to your mother,” he said softly.

Ahmed tried to choke back his sobs. “I do not feel well,” he murmured hopelessly, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

Osman stepped back and glared at him. “Go and sit with the women,” he ordered.

Ahmed ran to his mother and buried his face in Rebecca’s skirt.

A tense silence held the watchers. Nobody spoke and nobody moved.

They were barely able to draw breath. Osman was turning away when a small, delicate figure rose to her feet from among the ranks of seated women. Rebecca tried to hold her back, but Kahruba pushed away her hand and went to her father. He grounded the point of his blade and watched her stop in front of him. He studied her face, then demanded ominously, “What disrespect is this? Why do you pester me so?”

“My father, I want to show you and Allah my courage,” said the child. She removed her head cloth and shook out her tawny hair.

“Go back to your mother. This is no childish game.”

“Exalted father, I do not wish to play games.” She looked straight into his eyes.

He raised the sword and stepped towards her, like a leopard stalking a gazelle. She stood her ground. Suddenly he cut, forehanded, at her face. The blade flashed inches from her eyes. She blinked, but stood like a statue.

He cut again, backhanded. A curl dropped from the loose mop of her hair, and floated to the ground at her bare feet. Behind her Rebecca cried out, “Oh, my darling!”

Kahruba ignored her, and held her father’s eyes steadfastly.

“You provoke me,” he said, and slowly traced the outline of her body with the blade. Never further than a finger’s breadth from her flesh, the scalpel-sharp edge moved up from the outside of one knee, over her thigh, round the curve of her hip, along her arm and shoulder to the side of her neck. He touched her and she closed her eyes, then opened them as she felt the steel on her cheek. It moved up over the top of her head and down again to her other knee. She did not flinch.

Osman narrowed his eyes and brought the blade back along the same route, but faster, and then again, even faster. The steel dissolved into a silver blur. It danced in front of the child’s eyes like a dragonfly. It hummed and whispered in her ears as it passed close to her tender skin. Rebecca was weeping silently, and Nazeera held her hand hard, but she, too, was close to tears. “Do not make a sound,” she whispered. “If Kahruba moves, she is dead.”

The dancing blade held Kahruba in a cage of light. Then, abruptly, it stopped, pointing at her right eye from the distance of an inch. The point advanced slowly, until it touched her lower lashes. The child blinked but did not pull away.

“Enough!” said Osman, and stepped back. He threw the sword to al-Noor, who snatched it out of the air. Then Osman stooped and picked up his daughter. He held her close to his chest, and looked around at their taut expressions. “In this one, at least, my blood has bred true,” he told them. Then he tossed her high in the air, caught her as she fell back and carried her to Rebecca. “Breed me another like this one,” he ordered, ‘but, wife, this time make certain it is a boy.”

Later that evening Rebecca lay sprawled on his angareb. She still felt devastated by the events of the day and by the controlled fury of his lovemaking, which had ended only minutes before. She had watched her daughter come close to death under the dancing silver blade, while she herself seemed to have come even closer.

She was stark naked, a vessel overflowing with his fresh seed, aching pleasurably where he had been deep inside her. The lovemaking had rendered her ha from unclean in the eyes of God. She should cover herself, or go immediately to bathe and cleanse her body, but she felt languorous and wanton. She opened her eyes and found that he had come back from the bedroom window and was standing over her. He was still half erect, his glans glistening with the juices of her body. As she studied him she felt herself becoming aroused once more. She knew, with sure feminine instinct, that he had just impregnated her again, and that she would be forced to many months of abstinence until she was delivered of the infant. She wanted him, but saw that now his seed was spent his restless mind had moved on to other concerns.

“There is aught that troubles you, my husband.” She sat up and covered herself with the light bed cloth

“We spoke once of the steamer that runs on land, that travels on ribbons of steel,” he said.

“I recall that, my lord, but it was many years ago.”

“I wish to discuss this machine again. What was the name you gave it?”

“Railway engine,” she enunciated slowly and clearly.

He imitated her, but he lisped and garbled the sounds. He saw in her eyes that he had not succeeded. “It is too difficult, this language of yours.” He shook his head angrily, hating to fail in anything he attempted. “I shall call it the land steamer.”

“I shall understand what you mean. It is a better name than mine, more powerful and descriptive.” At times he was like a small boy and must be jollied along.

“How many men can travel upon this machine. Ten? Twenty? Surely not fifty?” he asked hopefully.

“If the land over which it passes is levelled it can carry many hundreds of men, perhaps as many as a thousand, perhaps many thousands.”

Osman looked alarmed. “How far can this thing travel?”

“To the end of its lines.”

“But surely it cannot cross a great river like the Atbara? It must stop there.”

“It can, my lord.”

“I do not believe it. The Atbara is deep and wide. How is that possible?”

“They have men they call engineers who have the skills to build a bridge over it.”

“The Atbara? They cannot build over a river so wide.” He was trying desperately to convince himself. “Where will they find tree trunks long and strong enough to span the Atbara?”

“They will make the bridge of steel, like the rails it runs upon. Like the blade of your sword,” Rebecca explained. “But why do you ask these questions, my husband?”

“My spies in the north have sent a message that these God-cursed Englishmen have begun to lay these steel ribbons from Wadi Haifa south across the great bight of the river, towards Metemma and the Atbara.” Then, suddenly, his temper flared. “They are devils, these infidel tribesmen of yours,” he shouted.

“They are no longer my tribesmen, exalted husband. Now I am of your tribe and no other.”

His anger subsided as suddenly as it had arisen.

“I am leaving at dawn tomorrow to go to the north and see this monstrosity with my own eyes,” he told her.

She dropped her eyes sadly: she would be alone again. Without him she was incomplete.

The year 1895 dawned and events were put in train that would change the history and face of Africa. British South Africa’s conquests were consolidated under the new nation of Rhodesia, and almost immediately the predatory men who had brought it into existence attacked the Boer nation of the Transvaal, their neighbours to the south. It was a puny invasion under Dr. Starr Jamieson that was immediately dubbed the Jamieson Raid. They had been promised support by their countrymen on the Witwatersrand gold fields which never materialized, and the tiny band of aggressors capitulated to the Boers without firing a shot. However, the raid presaged the conflict between Boer and Briton that, only a few years later, would cost hundreds of thousands of lives, before the Transvaal and its fabulously rich gold fields came under the sway of Empire.

In England the Liberal Party of Gladstone and Lord Rosebery was ousted by a Conservative and Unionist administration under the Marquess of Salisbury. In opposition they had always been vociferously opposed to Gladstone’s Egyptian policies. Now they had a massive majority in the House of Commons, and were in a position to change the direction of affairs in that crucial corner of the African continent.

The nation still smarted from the humiliation of Khartoum and the murder of General Gordon. Books such as Slaves of the Mahdi had set the mood for exonerating Gordon of shame. In the new Egypt, which was now virtually a colony of Great Britain, the tool was at hand in the shape of the new Egyptian army, reorganized, trained and equipped as no army in Africa before. The man to lead it was already at its helm in the person of Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Great Britain contemplated the prospect of repossessing the Sudan with increasing pleasure and enthusiasm.

By the beginning of 1896 Britain was ready to act. It needed only a spark to set off the conflagration. On 2 March, at the battle of Adowa, the Abyssinians inflicted a crushing defeat on Italy. Another European power had been thrashed by an African kingdom. This sent a clarion call to all colonial possessions. Almost immediately the gloomy forebodings of rebellion were fulfilled. The Dervish Khalifat Abdullahi threatened Kassala and raided Wadi Haifa. Reports reached Cairo of the gathering of a great Dervish army in Omdurman. Added to this, the French made covert hostile moves towards British possessions in Africa, especially in southern Sudan.

Thus a number of concurrent events had cast Great Britain in the role of far-seeing saviour of the world from anarchy, the avenger of Khartoum and Gordon, the protector of the Egyptian state. The honour and pride of the Empire must be preserved.

The order went out from London to General Kitchener. He was to recapture the Sudan. He was to do it swiftly and, above all, cheaply. The attempts to rescue Gordon and destroy the Mahdi had cost Britain thirteen million pounds: defeat is always more costly than victory. Kitchener was allowed a little over one million pounds to succeed in the job that, thirteen years before, had been botched.

Kitchener summoned his senior officers and told them the momentous news. They were ecstatic. This was the culmination of years of gruelling training and desert skirmishes, and the laurels were at last within their reach. “There will be more sweat and blisters than glory,” the sirdar cautioned them. Never one to seek popularity, he preferred to be feared rather than liked. “From the twenty-second to the sixteenth parallel of north latitude we are faced with waterless desert. We will go to capture the Nile, but we cannot use that river as a means of access. The cataracts stand in our way. The only route open to us is the railway we will build to carry us overland into battle. We can use the river only in the final stage of our advance.” He regarded them with his cold misanthropic stare. “There are no mountains to cross, the desert is level and good going. It will not be a matter so much of engineering technique as of hard work. We will not rely on private contractors. Our own engineers will do the job.”

“What about the Atbara river, sir? At its confluence with the Nile it is almost a thousand yards wide,” said Colonel Sam Adams.

“I have already called for tenders to supply the components for a bridge to be manufactured in sections that can be taken up on the railway trucks. Another call for tenders will soon be going out for the supply of steel-hulled river gunboats. They will be sent up by rail to the clear water above the fifth cataract. There, they will be reassembled and launched.”

The Egyptian officer corps was immediately plunged into a hurly-burly of planning and action.

There was only one respect in which the times and circumstances were not propitious. The delta of Egypt had been the bread basket of the Mediterranean since the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ. For the first time in a hundred years the abundant fertility of its black alluvial soils had failed. The production of wheat and dhurra had fallen short of the needs of the civilian population, let alone those of a great expeditionary army.

“We are short of at least five thousand tons of the flour needed for the primary stage of the campaign,” the quartermaster general told the sirdar. “After the first three months, we will require an additional fifteen hundred tons per month for the duration of hostilities.”

Kitchener frowned. Bread, the staple of any modern army made from wholesome clean grain, and not too much hard biscuit ensured the health of the troops. Now they were telling him that he did not have it.

“Come back tomorrow,” he told his quartermaster.

He went immediately to see Sir Evelyn Baring at the British Agency it would have been political suicide for anybody to call it Government House, but that was what it was. Baring had championed Kitchener’s appointment to commander-in-chief above the claims of better qualified men. Although they were not friends, they thought alike. Baring listened, then said, “I think I know the man who can get your bread for you. He provisioned Gordon in Khartoum during the siege. Most fortuitously, he is in Cairo at this very moment.”

Within two hours a mystified Ryder Courtney found himself under Kitchener’s reptilian stare.

“Can you do it?” Kitchener asked.

Ryder’s business instincts clicked into place. “Yes, I can. However, I will need four per cent commission for myself, General.”

“That is known as profiteering, Mr. Courtney. I can offer you two and a half.”

“That is known as highway robbery, General,” Ryder replied.

Kitchener blinked. He was unaccustomed to being addressed in that fashion.

Ryder went on smoothly, “However, in the name of patriotism I will accept your offer. On the condition that the army provides a suitable home in Cairo for me and my family, in addition to a stipend of two hundred pounds a month to cover my immediate expenses.”

Ryder rode back to Penrod’s riverside home where he and Saffron had been guests since their arrival in Cairo. He was in jubilant mood. Saffron had been agitating: rather than return to Abyssinia, she wanted to remain in this civilized, salubrious city, where she could be close to Amber. When Saffron agitated it was much like living on the slopes of an active volcano. Now her power to persuade was even more formidable than usual as she was pregnant again. Ryder had seen no good commercial sense in setting up business in Egypt, but Herbert Kitchener had just changed that.

Ryder left his horse with the groom in the stables and went down to the lawns above the riverbank. Jane Ballantyne, Amber and Saffron were taking tea in the summer-house. They were rereading and animatedly discussing the letter from Sebastian Hardy, which had arrived on the mail ship from England and had been delivered to Amber’s suite at Shepheard’s Hotel that morning.

Mr. Hardy took great pleasure in informing Miss Amber Benbrook of the recent resuscitation of public interest in her book Slaves of the Mahdi, owing to the prospect of war against the evil Dervish Empire in Omdurman. The amounts paid by Macmillan Publishers in respect of royalties earned over the past three months amounted to 56,483 10s. 6d. In addition, Mr. Hardy begged to inform her and the other beneficiaries that the investments he had made on behalf of the Benbrook family trust had been most favourably affected by the same considerations as the book. He had placed large sums in the common stock of the Vickers Company, which had purchased Mr. Maxim’s patent in his machine-gun. This investment had almost doubled in value. The value of assets of the trust now amounted to a little over three hundred thousand pounds. In addition Macmillan were eager to publish Amber’s new manuscript, provisionally entitled African Dreams and Nightmares.

Ryder strode down the lawns, but the twins were so excited by Mr. Hardy’s good tidings that they were oblivious to his presence until his shadow fell over the tea-table. They looked up. “What is all this laughter and high jinks?” he demanded. “You know I cannot bear to see anybody having so much fun.”

Saffron jumped to her feet, a little ungainly under her maternal burden, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him. “You will never guess what,” she whispered in his ear. “You are married to a rich woman.”

“Indeed, I am married to a rich woman who resides permanently in Cairo, in a house paid for by General Kitchener and the Egyptian army.”

She leant back, holding him at arm’s length, and stared at him in astonishment and delight. “If this is another of your atrocious jokes, Ryder Courtney, I will…” She searched for a suitable threat. “I will throw you into the Nile.”

He grinned complacently. “Too early for a swim. Besides, you and I cannot waste precious time. We have to go hunting for our new home.”

He would tell her later that he must leave within days for the United States and Canada to negotiate for the purchase of twenty thousand tons of wheat. It was not the ideal time to break such news to a pregnant wife. At least she will have enough to keep her fully occupied in my absence. He had learnt by hard experience that when she was bored Saffron was more difficult to handle than the entire Dervish army.

The ground shook to the thunder of hoofs. Eight horsemen raced each other down the long green field. The spectators shrieked and roared. The atmosphere was feverish and electric. Once again the Nile Cup and the honour of the Army polo team were at stake.

The white ball rolled over the uneven turf. Colonel Adams overhauled it swiftly, and leant low out of the saddle, mallet poised. His bay mare was as adept as her rider. She turned in neatly behind the bouncing ball, placing him in the perfect position to make the crossing shot. Mallet and ball met with a crisp thwack, and the ball sailed in a high arc over the heads of the opposing team, dropping directly in the path of Penrod’s charging grey gelding. Penrod picked it up on the first bounce after it struck earth. He tapped it ahead, and his nimble pony chased after it, like a whippet behind a rabbit. Tap and tap again the ball skipped towards the goalposts at the far end of the field. The other riders pursued the grey, their heels hammering into the ribs of their mounts, shouting and pumping the reins for greater speed, but they were unable to catch Penrod. He ran the ball between the posts, and the umpires waved their flags to signal a goal and the end of the match. Once again, the army had retained the Nile Cup against all comers.

Penrod rode back to the pony lines. Under her parasol, Amber was waiting for him. She watched him with pride and devotion. He was marvellously handsome and tanned, although there were crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes from squinting into the desert glare. His body was lean and hard, tempered by years of hard riding and still harder fighting. He was no longer a youth, but a man approaching his prime. He swung one booted leg over the pony’s withers and dropped to the ground, landing like a cat. The grey trotted on to meet his grooms: he could smell the bucket of water and the bag of dhurra meal they had ready for him.

Amber ran to Penrod, and threw herself against his chest. “I am so proud of you.”

“Then let’s get married,” Penrod said, and kissed her.

She made the kiss endure, but when at last she must relinquish his lips, she laughed at him. “We are getting married, you silly old thing, or have you forgotten?”

“I mean now. Immediately. At once. Not next year. We’ve waited far too long.”

She stared at him. “You jest!” she accused him.

“Never been more serious in my life. In ten days I am away again into the desert. We have a spot of business to take care of in Omdurman. Let us be married before I go.”

They were swept up in the feverish madness of war when custom and convention no longer counted. Amber did not hesitate. “Yes!” she said, and kissed him again. She had Saffron and Jane to help her with the arrangements. “Yes! Oh, yes, please!”

Every pew in the cathedral was filled. They held the reception at the Gheziera Club. Sir Evelyn Baring placed the Agency houseboat at their disposal for the honeymoon.

They cruised upriver as far as Giza. In the evening they drank champagne and danced on the deck, while before them rose the silhouette of the pyramids backlit by the sunset. Later, in the great stern cabin on the wide bed with green silk covers, Penrod led her gently along enchanted pathways to a mountain peak of whose existence she had only dreamed. He was a wonderful guide, patient and skilled, and experienced, oh, so very experienced.

Penrod left Amber in the care of Saffron and Jane, and took the steamer south to Aswan and Wadi Haifa to rejoin his regiment. He found Yakub waiting for him at the river landing, wearing his new khaki uniform with panache. He stamped his feet as he saluted, his grin was infectious, and one eye rolled sideways. Yakub, the outcast, had a home at last. He wore the chevrons of a sergeant on the sleeve of the uniform of the Camel Corps of the Egyptian army. His turban had been replaced with a peaked cap and neck flap. He was still becoming accustomed to breeches and puttees rather than a long galabiyya so his stance was slightly bowlegged. “Effendi, the peerless and faithful Sergeant Yakub looks upon your face with the same awe and devotion that the moon feels towards the sun.”

“My bags are in the cabin, O faithful and peerless one.”

They rode southwards on one of the flat-bed track-laying bogies of the new railway. The smoke from the engine stack blew back over them. The soot darkened Penrod’s tanned skin and even Yakub turned a deeper brown while dust and sparks stung their eyes. At last the locomotive reached the railhead, and came to a hissing halt with clouds of steam billowing from her brakes.

The railway line had already been driven sixty-five miles into Dervish territory. Penrod’s regiment was waiting for him and his orders were to scout the few small villages along the intended line of rail, then sweep the terrain ahead for the first sign of the Dervish cavalry, which they knew must already be on its way northwards to dispute the right of way.

Penrod found it good to breathe the hot, dry air of the desert again, and to have a camel under him. The excitement of the chase and the battle ahead made his nerves sing like copper telegraph lines in the wind. The sensation of being young, strong and alive was intoxicating.

They reached the village at the wells of Wadi Atira. Penrod opened the ranks of his squadron and they encircled the cluster of mud buildings, which were deserted and falling into ruins. There was one chilling reminder of the Dervish occupation: at the entrance to the village stood a makeshift but obviously effective gallows, made from telegraph poles that the army had abandoned when it withdrew after the fall of Khartoum. The skeletons of the souls who had perished upon it had been cleaned and polished by the abrasive, dust-laden wind. They still wore their chains.

Penrod moved forward past Tanjore where the desolation was similar. The old British fort at Akasha, relic of the Gordon relief expedition, was in ruins. The storerooms had been used by the Dervish as execution chambers: desiccated human carcasses lay in abandoned attitudes on a dusty floor, which was thick with the droppings of lizards and the shed skins of vipers and scorpions.

Penrod converted Akasha into an entrenched camp, a base from which the Camel Corps could sally out. He left two of his squadrons to hold the camp, and with the remainder of his regiment he pressed on into the Desert of the Mother of Stones to search for the Dervish.

While he scoured the land along the Nile, behind him the railhead reached Akasha and his rudimentary camp was transformed into an impregnable fortress and staging station, guarded by artillery and Maxim machine-gun detachments.

As Penrod’s camels approached Firket, a few Bedouin galloped towards them, waving their arms and shouting that they were friendly. They reported to Penrod that, only hours before, they had been pursued by a marauding party of Dervish cavalry, and although they had escaped, five of their comrades had been overtaken and massacred. He sent a troop of his camels forward to scout the caravan route that led through a narrow boulder-strewn defile towards Firket five miles ahead. No sooner had they entered the defile than the troop commander found himself confronted by at least two hundred and fifty Dervish horsemen, supported closely by almost two thousand spearmen.

Trapped in the defile, the commander wheeled his men round in an attempt to extricate them and bring them back to the support of Penrod’s main force. Before they could complete the manoeuvre the Dervish horses charged. Immediately both sides became entangled in wildest confusion, and covered by a dense fog of brown dust thrown up by the hoofs of the horses and the pads of the camels. In the tumult all words of command were drowned.

From the mouth of the defile Penrod saw that disaster was about to engulf his embattled squadron. “Forward!” he shouted, and drew his sabre. “Charge! Go straight at them!” With three troops of camels behind him, he crashed into the struggling mass of men and beasts. With his left hand he fired his Webley, and hacked with his sabre at the jibbd’clad figures half hidden in the swirling curtains of dust.

For minutes the outcome hung in the balance, then the Dervish broke and scattered back behind the shields of their spearmen. They left eighteen of their dead lying on the sand and retreated towards Firket. Penrod sensed they were trying to lead him into a trap, and let them go.

Instead he turned aside and climbed Firket mountain. From the towering heights he glassed the town below, and saw immediately that his instinct had been true. He had found the main body of the Dervish army. It was massed among the mud-brick buildings, and the cavalry lines extended as far as the banks of the Nile a mile beyond the city.

“At a rough estimate three thousand horse, and only Allah knows how many spears,” he said grimly.

Osman Atalan arrived at Firket two weeks after the skirmish with the Egyptian Camel Corps. He had travelled fast, covering the distance from Omdurman in only fourteen days. He was accompanied by ten of his trusted aggagiers.

Since the first word on the British advance, and the commencement of the work on the railway line from Wadi Haifa, Firket had been under the command of the Emir Hammuda. Osman listened to the report of this indolent and careless man. He was appalled. “He cares only for what lies between the buttocks of his pretty boys,” he told al-Noor. “We must go forward ourselves to find the enemy and discover what they are planning.”

They came no closer to the village of Akasha than five miles before they were attacked by elements of the Camel Corps, and driven off with the loss of two good men. They made a wide circle round the village, and the next day captured two Bedouin coming from the direction of the village. Osman’s aggagiers stripped and searched them. They found foreign cigarettes and tins of toffees with a picture of the English queen painted on the lids.

The aggagiers held down the Bedouin and sliced off the soles of their feet. Then they forced them to walk over the baking stones. This induced them to talk freely. They described the huge build-up of infidel troops and equipment at Firket.

Osman realized that this was the forward base from which the main infidel attack on Firket would be launched. He circled back through the Mother of Stones towards the Nile, coming in ten miles to the north of Akasha. He was searching for the railway line from Wadi Haifa that the Bedouin had reported. The railway had been in the forefront of his mind since al-Jamal had described it to him.

When he came upon it, it seemed innocuous, twin silver threads lying on the burning sands. He left al-Noor and the rest of his band on the crest of the dunes and rode down alone to inspect it. He dismounted, and warily approached the shining rails. They were fastened by fish-plates to heavy teak sleepers. He kicked the rail: it was solid and immovable. He knelt beside it and tried to lever out one of the iron bolts with the point of his dagger. The blade snapped in two.

He stood up and hurled away the hilt. “Accursed thing of Shaitan! This is not an honourable way to make war.”

Even in his scorn and anger he became aware of a sound that trembled in the desert air, a distant susurration, like the breath of a sleeping giant. Osman stood upright on al-Buq’s saddle, and gazed northwards along the line of rail. He saw a tiny feather of smoke on the horizon. As he watched, it drew closer, so rapidly that he was taken by surprise, the alien shape seeming to swell before his eyes as it rushed towards him. He knew that this was the land steamer of which al-Jamal had told him.

He swung al-Buq’s head round and urged him into a gallop. He had a quarter of a mile to cover before he reached the foot of the dune. The machine was coming on apace. He looked ahead to the crest of the dune and saw his aggagiers on the skyline. They had dismounted and were holding their horses, allowing them to rest.

“Get down!” Osman roared as he raced across the open ground. “Let not the infidel see you!” But his men were four hundred yards away and his voice did not carry to them. They stood and watched the approaching machine with amazement. Suddenly a blast of white steam shot up from the land steamer and it emitted a howl like a maddened jinn. Stupefied, making no effort to conceal themselves, they stood and stared at it. It was a mighty serpent, with a head that hissed, howled and shot out clouds of smoke and steam, and whose body seemed to reach back to the skyline.

“They have seen you!” Osman tried to warn them. “Beware! Beware!” Now they could see that the rolling trucks were stacked with steel rails and crates. On the last they made out the heads of half a dozen men, who were crouched behind some strange contraption.

“Beware!” Osman was racing up the slip-face of the dune, almost at the top. His voice held a high, despairing note. Suddenly the yellow sands under the feet of the group of aggagiers and the hoofs of their horse exploded into flying clouds of dust. It was as though a khamsin wind had torn over them. The terrible sound of the Maxim gun followed close behind the spray of bullets. The troop of men and horse disintegrated, blown away like dead leaves.

The gun traversed back towards Osman, but before the dancing pattern of bullets reached him, al’Buq lunged over the crest. Osman swung down from the saddle. He was still stunned by the enormity and menace of the machine, but he ran to where his men lay. Most of them were dead. Only al-Noor and Mooman Digna were still on their feet. “See to the others,” Osman ordered. He threw himself flat on the top of the dune and peered down the far side. He watched the long train of wagons wind away along the floor of the valley towards Akasha.

In the few moments that they had been exposed to the fire of the Maxim gun, eight of his men had been killed outright, four were gravely wounded and would die. Four had survived. Five horses were untouched. Osman destroyed the wounded animals, left a waters king with the wounded men to ease their passing, gathered up his surviving aggagiers and rode back to Firket.

Now that he had had his first glimpse of the juggernaut that was rolling down on them, he realized that his options were limited. There was little he could do to oppose and hold the enemy here at Firket. He determined to assemble and concentrate all his array on the banks of the Atbara jiver and strike the enemy there in overwhelming force.

He replaced the depraved and ineffectual Emir Hammuda with the Emir Azrak. This man was completely different from Hammuda: he was a fanatical devotee of the Mahdi; he had carried out many daring and brutal raids on the Turk and the infidel; his name was well known in Cairo, and he could expect little mercy if he were captured; he would fight to the death. Osman gave Azrak orders to delay the enemy at Firket for as long as possible, but at the last moment to fall back on the Atbara river with all his army. He left him, and rode back to Omdurman.

No sooner had Osman ridden away than Hammuda refused to accept that he had been replaced and engaged in a bitter dispute with Azrak, which left both men powerless.

While they wrangled the sirdar built up his base at Akasha. Men and equipment, supplies and munitions were brought down the railway line with machine-like efficiency. Then, with nine thousand men under his personal command, General Kitchener fell upon the town of Firket. The Dervish were decimated and the survivors driven out helter-skelter.

Hammuda died in the first charge. Azrak escaped with less than a thousand men and rode southwards to the confluence of the Atbara to meet Osman. With his Camel Corps Kitchener followed the fleeing Dervish along the riverbank, and captured hundreds of men and horses and great stores of grain.

Within weeks the entire Dervish province of Dongola had fallen to the sirdar. The juggernaut resumed its deliberate and ponderous advance southwards towards the Atbara river. Month after month and mile after weary mile the railway line unreeled like a silken thread across the desert. On most days the track advanced a mile or so, but on occasions up to three miles.

The workmen encountered unexpected hardships and setbacks. Cholera broke out and hundreds of graves were hastily dug in the empty desert. The first false flood of the inundation brought the ‘green tide’, all the sewerage that had settled on the exposed banks during the Low Nile, downstream. There was no other water to drink. Dysentery racked the army camps. Terrible thunderstorms poured out of a sky that usually never rained. Miles of track were washed away, miles more were swamped under six feet of water.

Zafir, the first of the new stern-wheel gunboats, was brought in sections from Wadi Haifa, and reassembled in a makeshift boatyard at Koshesh on the clear-water section above the cataracts. Her appearance was stately and impressive, and she was launched with General Kitchener and his staff on board. As the boilers built up a full head of steam there was an explosion like a salvo of heavy artillery as they burst. The Zafir was out of action until new boilers could be brought out from England and installed.

Yet the remorseless advance continued. The Dervish garrisons at Abu Hamed and Metemma were overrun, and driven back on the Atbara river. Here Kitchener bombarded Osman Atalan’s great defensive zareba, then smashed it wide open with bullet and bayonet. The Arabs either fled or fought to the death. The black Sudanese troops who would fight as willingly for the infidel as they had for the Dervish were recruited into the sirdar’s army.

Victory on the Atbara was decisive. Kitchener’s expeditionary force went into summer quarters. He planned and mustered his powers and waited for the river to rise before the final advance on Omdurman.

Penrod, who had received a spear wound through the thigh during the fighting, was granted convalescent leave. He travelled back, by rail and river steamer from Aswan, to Cairo.

When Penrod limped into Cairo, Amber was beside herself with joy to have him at her side, and in her bed. Lady Jane Ballantyne had returned to Clercastle at the insistence of her husband. What had been planned as a three-month sojourn had extended to almost two years. Sir Peter had long ago tired of the bachelor existence.

Ryder Courtney had returned from a highly successful visit to the United States and Canada. The wheat he had purchased was already offloading in Alexandria docks. He had arrived home just in time for the birth of his son. He had learnt that as soon as the Sudanese campaign ended, Sir Evelyn Baring would turn all his energy and the resources of the Khedive to the building of the great irrigation works on the upper Nile, which had been long projected. Almost two hundred thousand acres of rich black soil would be brought under permanent irrigation and would no longer be dependent on the annual inundation from the Nile. Ryder had purchased twenty thousand of these acres in a speculative move. It was a wise decision that, within ten years, would make him a cotton millionaire.

Penrod’s wound healed cleanly, and he discovered that he had been gazetted for the Distinguished Service Order for his conduct in the battles of Firket and Atbara. Amber missed her moon, but on Saffron’s advice she did not tell Penrod of this momentous occurrence. “Wait until you are certain,” Saffron told her.

“What if he guesses the truth before I tell him?” Amber was nervous. “He would take that hard.”

“My darling, Penrod is a man. He would not recognize a pregnancy if he tripped over it.”

With the approaching cool season heralding High Nile, and conditions conducive to resuming campaigning, Penrod kissed Amber farewell and, oblivious of his impending elevation to fatherhood, returned upriver to the great military camp on the Atbara.

When he arrived he found that the encampment now stretched for many miles along the riverbank, and the Nile itself resembled the port of some prosperous European city. It was a forest of masts and funnels. Feluccas and gyassas, barges, steamers and gunboats crowded the anchorage. There were six newly assembled armoured’screw gunboats. They were a hundred and forty feet long and twenty-four wide. They were armed with twelve-and six-pounder quick-firing guns, and with batteries of Maxim machine-guns on their upper decks. They were equipped with modern machinery: ammunition hoists, searchlights and steam winches. Yet they drew only thirty-nine inches of water, and their stern screws could drive them at speeds of up to twelve knots. In addition there were four elderly stern-wheel gunboats, dating from Chinese Gordon’s era, which also carried twelve-pounders and Maxim guns.

The sirdar had asked London for first-line British troops to reinforce his already formidable new Egyptian army. His request had been granted and battalions of the Royal Warwickshires, Lincolns, Seaforth Highlanders, Cameron Highlanders, Grenadier Guards, Northumberland Fusiliers, Lancashire Fusiliers, the Rifle Brigade and the 21st Lancers had already joined and were encamped in the great zareba. The array of artillery was formidable and ranged from forty-pounder howitzers to field and horse batteries. The sirdar’s large white tent stood on an eminence in the centre of the zareba, with the Egyptian flag waving on a tall staff above it.

Penrod found his camels fat and strong and his men in much the same condition. Life in summer quarters, without the presence of their commander, had been restful. Penrod stirred them into action with a vengeance.

As the first green flood of the rising Nile had poured down through the Shabluka gorge, the grand advance began. Thirty thousand fighting men and their battle train moved southwards to the first staging camp at the entrance to the gorge. Here the mile-wide river was compressed into a mere two hundred yards between the black and precipitous cliffs. They were fifty-six miles from Khartoum and Omdurman. The next staging camp was only seven miles upstream opposite Royan Island above the gorge, but these were seven difficult and dangerous miles.

The gunboats thrashed their way up through the racing, whirling rapids, towing the barges behind them. The ill-fated gunboat Zafir now sprang a leak and sank by the bows in the jaws of the gorge. Her officers and men had barely time to escape with their lives.

For the infantry and cavalry the march to Royan Island was doubled in length. To avoid the rocky Shabluka hills they had to circle far out into the desert. Penrod’s camels carried water for them in iron tanks.

Once they had reached Royan Island, the road to Omdurman was clear and open before them. The vast array of men, animals, boats and guns moved forward relentlessly, ponderously and menacingly.

At last only the low line of the Kerreri hills concealed the city of Omdurman from the binoculars of the British officers. There was still no sign of the Dervish. Perhaps they had abandoned the city and fled. The sirdar sent his cavalry to find out.

The Khalifat Abdullahi had assembled all his army at Omdurman. They numbered almost a hundred thousand. Abdullahi reviewed them before the city, on the wide plain below the Kerreri hills. The prophecy of one of the saintly mullahs on his deathbed was that a great battle would be fought upon the hills that would define the future of Mahdism and the land of Sudan.

Anyone looking upon the mighty Dervish array could not doubt the outcome of the battle. The galloping regiments were strung out over four miles, wave after wave of horsemen and massed black Sudanese spearmen. At the climax of the review, Abdullahi addressed them passionately. He charged them in the name of Allah and the Mahdi to do their duty. “Before God, I swear to you that I will be in the forefront of the battle.”

The threat that the emirs and khalifs feared above all others was that presented by the gunboats. Their spies had reported the power of these vessels to them. Abdullahi devised a counter to this menace. Among his European captives still in Omdurman was an old German engineer. Abdullahi had him brought before him, and his chains were struck off. This was usually the prelude to execution and the German was prostrated with terror.

“I want you to build me explosive mines to lay in the river,” Abdullahi told him.

The old engineer was delighted to have this reprieve. He flung himself into the project with enthusiasm and energy. He filled two steel boilers each with a thousand pounds of gunpowder. As a detonator he fixed in them a loaded, cocked and charged pistol. To the pistol’s triggers he attached a length of stout line. A firm tug on this would fire the pistol, and the discharge would ignite the explosive contents of the boiler.

The first massive mine was loaded on to one of the Dervish steamers, the hhmaelia. With the German engineer and a hundred and fifty men on board it was taken out into mid-channel and lowered over the side. As it touched the bottom of the river the steamer’s captain, for reasons he never had an opportunity to explain, decided to yank the trigger cord.

The efficacy of the mine was demonstrated convincingly to Abdullahi, his emirs and commanders who were watching from the shore. The hhmaelia, with her captain, crew and the German engineer, was blown out of the water.

Once Abdullahi had recovered from the mild concussion induced by the explosion, he was delighted with his new weapon. He ordered the captain of one of his other steamers to place the second mine in the channel. This worthy had been as impressed as everybody else with the first demonstration. Wisely he took the precaution of flooding the mine with water before he took it on board. The mine, rendered harmless, was then laid in the channel of the Nile without further mishap. Abdullahi praised him effusively and showered him with rewards.

The Dervish commanders waited for the infidel to come. Each day their spies brought reports of the slow but relentless approach. Better than anyone Osman Atalan understood the strength and determination of these stern new-age crusaders. When the infidel advance reached Merreh, only four miles beyond the Kerreri Hills, he rode out with al-Noor and Mooman Digna and gazed down from the heights upon the host. Through the dust they raised, he saw the marching columns and the lance heads of the cavalry glittering in the sunlight. He watched the heliographs flashing messages he could not understand. Then he gazed at the flotilla of gunboats, beautiful and deadly, coming up the flow of the Nile. He rode back to his palace in Omdurman and called for his wives. “I am sending you with all the children to the mosque at the oasis of Gedda. You will wait for me there. When the battle is won, I will come to find you.”

Rebecca and Nazeera packed their possessions on to the camels, gathered up the three children and, under an escort of aggagiers, left the town.

“Why do these infidels wish to hurt us?” Ahmed asked pitifully. “What shall we do if they kill our exalted and beloved father?” Ahmed lacked the fine looks of his parents. His eyes were blue, but close-set and furtive. His front teeth protruded beyond his upper lip. This gave him the appearance of a large, ginger rodent.

“Do not snivel, my brother. Whatever Allah decrees, we must be brave and take care of our honoured mother.” Kahruba answered.

Rebecca felt her heart squeezed. They were so different: Ahmed plain-featured, timid and afraid; Kahruba beautiful, fearless and wild. She hugged the infant to her breast as she swayed on the camel saddle. Under the cotton sheet she had spread over her to protect her from the sun, her baby daughter lay listlessly against her bosom. The tiny body was hot and sweaty with the fever that consumed her. Omdurman was a plague city.

The little caravan of women and children reached the oasis an hour after dark.

“You will like it here,” Rebecca told Ahmed. “This is where you were born. The mullahs are learned and wise. They will instruct you in many things.” Ahmed was a born scholar, hungry for knowledge. She did not bother to try to influence Kahruba. She was her own soul, and not amenable to any views that did not coincide with her own.

That night as she lay on the narrow angareb, holding her sick baby, Rebecca’s mind turned to the twins. This had happened more often recently, ever since she had known that the Egyptian army was moving irresistibly southwards down the river towards them.

It was many years since she had parted from Amber, even longer since Saffron had run off through the dark streets of Khartoum. She still had a vivid picture of them in her mind. Her eyes stung with tears. What did they look like now. Were they married? Did they have children of their own? Were they even alive? Of course they would not recognize her. She knew she had become an Arab wife, drawn and haggard with childbirth, drab and aged with care. She sighed with regret, and the infant whimpered. Rebecca forced herself to remain still, to allow her baby to rest.

She was seized with a strange unfocused terror for what the next few days would bring. She had a premonition of disaster. The existence to which she had become inured, the world to which she now belonged, would be shattered, her husband dead, perhaps her children also. What was there still to hope for? What was there still to be endured?

At last she fell into a dark, numbed sleep. When she awoke the infant in her arms was cold and dead. Despair filled her soul.

The British and Egyptian cavalry moved forward together. The Nile lay on their left hand, and on it they could see the gunboats sailing up the stream in line astern. Before them stood the line of the Kerreri hills. Penrod’s camels were on the right flank of the advance. They climbed the first slope, and came out abruptly on the crest. Spread below him, Penrod saw the confluence of the two great Niles, and between them the long-abandoned ruins of Khartoum.

Directly ahead, in Omdurman, rose the brown dome of a large building. It had not been there when Penrod had escaped. He knew, however, that this must be the tomb of the Mahdi in the centre of the city. Nothing else had changed.

The wide plain ahead was speckled with coarse clumps of thorn bush and enclosed on three sides by harsh, stony hills. In the centre of the plain, like another monument, was the conical Surgham Hill. Abutting the hill, a long low uneven ridge hid the fold of ground immediately beyond it. There was no sign of the Dervish. Obedient to his express orders, Penrod halted his troops on the high ground and they watched the squadron of British cavalry ride forward cautiously.

Suddenly there was movement. Hundreds of tiny specks left what appeared to be the walls of a zareba of thorn branches. It was the Dervish vanguard. They moved forward to meet the British cavalry. The front echelon of, troopers dismounted and, at long range, opened fire with their carbines on the approaching Dervish. A few fell, and their comrades rode unhurriedly back to the zareba.

Then a remarkable transformation took place. The dark wall of the zareba came to life. It was not made of thorn bush but of men, tens of thousands of Dervish warriors. Behind them another vast mass appeared over the low ridge in the centre of the plain. Like an infestation of locusts, they swarmed forward. Around and between their divisions individual horsemen rode back and forth, and squadrons of their wild cavalry swirled. Hundreds of banners waved above their ranks, and myriad spearheads glittered. Even at this distance Penrod could hear the booming of the war drums and the braying of the ombeyas.

Through his binoculars he searched the front ranks of this massive concentration of the enemy, and in the centre he picked out the distinctive scarlet and black war banner of Osman Atalan. “So my enemy has come,” he whispered, reverting instinctively to Arabic.

Beside him, Sergeant Yakub grinned evilly and rolled his one eye. “Kismet,“I he said. “This has been written!”

Then their attention was diverted from the awe-inspiring spectacle of the Dervish advance to the river on their left. The flotilla of gunboats, with a crash of cannon, engaged the Dervish forts on both banks, which guarded the river approaches to the city. The Dervish guns responded, and the thunder of artillery echoed from the hills. But the fire from the gunboats was fast and deadly accurate. The embrasures of the forts were smashed to rubble and the guns behind them blown off their mountings. The Maxim guns scoured the rifle trenches on each side of the forts, and slaughtered the Dervish in them.

The British and Egyptian cavalry withdrew slowly ahead of the advancing Dervish army. In the meantime Kitchener’s main army came marching up along the riverbank, and laagered around the tiny abandoned fishing village of Eigeiga. In this defensive position they awaited the first assault of the Dervish.

Suddenly the mass of advancing Dervish halted. They fired their rifles into the air, a salute and a challenge, but instead of coming on to the attack they lay down on the earth. By now it was late in the afternoon, and it was soon evident that they would not mount their main attack that day.

The flotilla of gunboats had reduced all the Dervish forts, and shelled the tomb of the Mahdi, destroying the dome. Now they dropped back down the current and anchored opposite the army zareba. Night fell.

At the rear of the Dervish army, Osman Atalan sat with the Khalifat Abdullahi at the small campfire in front of his tent. They were discussing the day’s actions and skirmishes, and planning for the morrow. Suddenly, from the centre of the river, a huge cyclopean eye of brilliant light swept over them. Abdallahi sprang to his feet and shouted, “What is this magic?”

“Exalted Abdullahi, the infidel are watching us.” “Pull down my tent!” Abdullahi screamed. “They will see it.” He covered his eyes with both hands, lest the light blind him, and threw himself on to the ground. He feared no man, but this was witchcraft.

Four miles apart the two great armies passed the hours of darkness in fitful slumber and constant vigilance, impatiently awaiting the dawn. At half past four in the morning the bugles of the river camp sounded the reveille. The drums and fifes joined in. The infantrymen and gunners stood to arms and the cavalry mounted up.

Before sunrise the cavalry patrols trotted forward. Because there had been no night attack they suspected that the Dervish had crept away during the hours of darkness, and that the hillside would be deserted. At the head of three troops of his camels, Penrod reached the crest of the slope in front of the zareba and looked down the back slope towards the city and Surgham Hill. Even in the dim light he could see that the dome of the Mahdi’s tomb had been shot away by the gunboats. He searched the plain below him, and saw that it was covered with dark patches and streaks. Then the light strengthened with the swiftness of the African dawn.

Far from having absconded, the entire might of the Dervish army lay before him. It began to roll forward on a solid front almost five miles wide. Spear points shimmered above the ranks, and the Dervish cavalry galloped before and about the slowly moving masses of men. Then the war drums began to beat, the ivory ombeyas blared, and the Dervish to cheer. The uproar was almost deafening.

As yet the Dervish masses were hidden from the main Egyptian army on the river, and the gunboats anchored behind them. However, the tumult carried to them. The attack developed swiftly. The Dervish legions were well disciplined and moved with purpose and determination. The British and Egyptian cavalry dropped back before them.

The Dervish front ranks, waving hundreds of huge coloured banners and beating the drums, topped the rise. Below them they saw the waiting infidel army. They did not hesitate, but fired their rifles into the air in challenge and rushed down the slope. The sirdar let them come, waiting until they were exposed on the open hillside. The ranges were accurately known to his gunners, and to the captains of the gunboats. However, it was not the British who opened the conflict. The Dervish had brought up a few ancient Krupps field cannon and their shells burst in front of the British zareba.

Immediately the gunboats and field batteries returned fire. The sky above the advancing Dervish masses was pocked with bursting puffs of shrapnel, like cotton pods opening in the sun. The sea of waving banners toppled and fell, like grass blown down by a whirlwind. Then they rose again as the men coming up behind the fallen lifted them high and charged forward.

The cavalry cleared the field to give the guns full play. The Dervish came on, but their ranks thinned steadily and they left the hillside thickly strewn with tiny inert figures. Then the Dervish were in range of the rifles and the Maxims. The slaughter mounted. The rifles grew so hot that they had to be exchanged with those of the reserve companies in the rear. The Maxims boiled away all the water in their reservoirs and were refilled from the water bottles of their crews.

The frontal attack had been planned, by Osman and Abdullahi, to allow their main forces to hook round the flanks and crush in to the sides of the infidel line. The men being massacred by the guns on the open ground were brave, but they were not the elite of the Dervish army. This was coming up behind the ridge.

Penrod had retired on to the flank, and was ready to deal with the survivors of the first charge when they tried to escape, when suddenly he was confronted by thousands of fresh enemy cavalry coming at him from over the crest of the ridge at close range. He must fly with his troops, and try to reach the safety of the lines before they were wiped out. They raced away but the Dervish and their excited clamour were close upon them. One of the gunboats, playing nursemaid, had been watching this dangerous situation develop. It dropped back down the river, and just as it seemed that Penrod’s troops must be overtaken by overwhelming numbers of cavalry, it opened up with the deadly Maxims. The range was short and the results stunning. The Dervish cavalry fell in tangled masses, and their rear ranks pulled up and turned back. Penrod led his squadrons into the shelter of the zareba.

Now the sirdar could leave the zareba and begin the final assault towards the city. The Dervish were in full retreat and the way was open. The lines of cavalry, bayonets and guns crossed the ridge and moved down towards the shattered tomb of the Mahdi.

But the Dervish were not beaten. As the British lines neared Surgham Hill and the sandy ridge they found that Osman Atalan and the Khalifat had concealed the flower of their army in this fold of ground. Twenty-five thousand aggagiers and desert warriors burst out from ambush, and poured down on the British.

The fighting was terrible. The gunboats on the river could take no part in it. The British lancers were surprised by the close proximity of Osman’s lurking aggagiers and were forced to charge straight at them. Savage, undisciplined infantry could not withstand the charge of British lancers, but these were horsemen. They ran forward to press the muzzles of their rifles against the flanks of the British horses, then fired; they hamstrung others with the long blades, they dragged the riders from their saddles.

The lancers suffered terrible casualties. Al-Noor killed three men. This short but bloody action was only a tiny cameo in the main battle that raged across the plain and around Surgham Hill.

The British and the Egyptians fought superbly. The brigades manoeuvred with parade-ground precision to meet every fresh charge. The officers directed their fire with cool expertise. The Maxims came up to exacerbate the slaughter. But the Dervish courage was inhuman. The fires of fanaticism were unquenchable. They charged and were shot down in tangled heaps, but immediately fresh hordes of jibba-bright figures sprang up, seemingly from the ground, and ran upon the guns and bayonets and died. From the gunsmoke that hung over their mangled corpses fresh figures charged forward.

And the Maxims sang the chorus.

By noon it was over, Abdullahi had fled the field, leaving almost half his army dead upon it. The British and the Egyptians had lost forty-eight men, almost half of whom were lancers who had died in the fatal two minutes of that brave but senseless charge.

Penrod was among the first men into the city of Omdurman. There were still small pockets of resistance among the pestilential hovels and stinking slums, but he ignored them and, with a troop of his men, rode to the palace of Osman Atalan. He dismounted in the courtyard. The buildings were deserted. He strode into them with his bared sabre in his hand, calling her name: “Rebecca! Where are you?” His voice echoed through the empty rooms.

Suddenly he heard a furtive movement behind him, and whirled round just in time to deflect the dagger that had been aimed between his shoulder-blades. He flicked back his blade, catching his assailant as he struck again, slicing open his wrist to the bone. The Arab screamed and the dagger fell from his hand. With the point of the sabre to his throat Penrod pinned him to the wall behind him. He recognized him as one of Osman Atalan’s aggagiers. “Where are they?” Penrod demanded. “Where are al-Jamal and Nazeera?” Clutching his wrist, the blood from his severed artery pumping sullenly, the Arab spat at him.

“Effendi.” Yakub spoke from behind Penrod’s shoulder. “Leave this one to me. He will speak to me.”

Penrod nodded. “I will wait with the camels. Do not be long.”

“The remorseless Yakub will waste little time.”

Twice Penrod heard the captured Arab scream, the second time weaker than the first, but at last Yakub came out. “The oasis of Gedda,” he said, and wiped the blade of his dagger on his camel’s neck.

The oasis of Gedda lay in a basin of chalk hills. There was no surface water, only a single deep well with a coping of limestone. It was surrounded by a grove of date palms. The dome of the saint’s tomb was separated from the taller dome of the mosque and the flat-roofed quarters of the mullahs.

As Penrod’s troop rode in from the desert they saw a group of children playing among the palm trees, small, barefooted boys and girls in long, grubby robes. A copper-haired boy pursued the others, and they squealed with laughter and scattered before him. As soon as they saw the camel troop approaching they froze into silence and stared with huge dark eyes. Then the eldest boy turned and ran back towards the mosque. The others followed him. After they had disappeared the oasis seemed silent and deserted.

Penrod rode forward, and heard a horse whinny. The animal was standing behind the angle of the side wall. It was knee-haltered and had been feeding on a pile of cut fodder. It was a dark-coloured stallion. “Al-Buq!”

He reined in well short of the front doors of the mosque, jumped down and threw the reins to Yakub. Then he unsheathed his sabre and walked forward slowly. The doors were wide open and the interior of the mosque was impenetrably dark in contrast to the bright sunlight without.

“Osman Atalan!” Penrod shouted, and the echoes from the hills mocked him. The silence persisted.

Then he saw dim movement in the gloom of the building’s interior. Osman Atalan stepped out into the sunlight. His fierce and cruel features were inscrutable. He carried the long blade in his right hand, but he had no shield. “I have come for you,” Penrod said.

“Yes,” Osman answered. Penrod saw the glint of silver threads in his beard. But his gaze was dark and unwavering. “I expected you. I knew that you would come.”

“Nine years,” said Penrod.

“Too long,” Osman replied, ‘but now it is time.” He came down the steps, and Penrod retreated ten paces to give him space to fight. They circled each other, a graceful minuet. Lightly they touched blades and the steel rang like fine crystal.

They circled again, watching each other’s eyes, looking for any weakness that might have developed in the years since they had last fought. They found none. Osman moved like a cobra, tensed and poised for the strike. Penrod was his mongoose, quick and fluid.

They crossed and turned, and then as if at a signal, leapt at each other. Their blades slithered together. They broke apart, circled and came together again. The silver blades blurred, glittered and clattered against each other. Penrod drove in hard, forcing Osman on to his back foot, keeping the pressure on him, the blades dancing. Osman stepped back, and then counter-attacked, just as furiously. Penrod gave ground to him, leading him on, making him buy each inch.

Penrod watched him carefully, then cut hard at his head. Osman blocked. Their blades were locked together. Now they both stood solidly and all their weight was on their sword wrists. Tiny beads of sweat popped out on their foreheads. They stared into each other’s eyes and pushed. Penrod felt the sponginess in Osman’s grip. To test him he broke the lock and jumped back.

As their blades disengaged Osman had a fleeting opening and tried for it, thrusting at Penrod’s right elbow to disable his sword arm, but it was one of his old tricks and Penrod was ready for it. It seemed to him that Osman was slow. He hit the long blade and pirouetted clear.

Not slow. He changed his mind as they circled again. Just not as fast as he used to be. But, then, am I?

He feinted at Osman’s face, then leant back, not making it obvious that he was inviting the riposte. Osman almost caught him. His counter-stroke came like thunder. Penrod just managed to turn it. Osman was at full extension, and there was the lag again, his old bad habit, slow on the recovery. Penrod hit him.

It was a glancing blow that skidded along Osman’s ribcage under his arm. The point sliced down to the bone, but did not find the gap between the ribs. They circled again. Osman was bleeding profusely. The blood loss must weaken him swiftly, and the damaged muscles would soon stiffen. He was running out of time and threw everything into the attack. He came with all his weight and skill. His blade turned to dancing light. It was cut and thrust high in the line of defence, then cross and go backhanded for the thigh, then at the head. He kept it up relentlessly, never breaking, never giving Penrod a chance to come on to his front foot, forcing him on to the defensive.

He cut Penrod high in the left shoulder. It was a light wound, and Osman was losing blood more heavily. Each fresh attack was less fiery, each recovery after the thrust just a little slower. Penrod let him expend himself, holding him off and waiting his moment. He watched Osman’s eyes.

During the entire bout Osman had not gone for Penrod’s hip. Penrod knew from experience that it was his favourite and most deadly stroke with which he had crippled innumerable enemies. At last Penrod offered it to him, turning his lower body into Osman’s natural line.

Osman went for the opening, and once he was committed Penrod turned back so the razor edge slit the cloth of his jodhpurs but did not break the skin. Osman was fully extended and could not recover quickly enough.

Penrod hit him. His thrust split the sternum at the base of Osman’s ribs and went on to transfix him cleanly as a fish on a skewer. Penrod felt his steel grate on his opponent’s spinal column.

Osman froze, and Penrod stepped in close. He seized his opponent’s sword wrist to prevent a last thrust. Their faces were only inches apart. Penrod’s eyes were hard and cold. Osman’s were dark with bitter rage, but slowly they became opaque as stones. The sword dropped from his hand. His legs buckled, but Penrod held his weight on the sabre. Osman opened his lips to speak, but a snake of dark blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and crawled down his chin.

Penrod relaxed his wrist and let him slide off the blade. He fell at Penrod’s feet, and lay still upon his back with his arms spread wide.

As Penrod stepped back a woman screamed. He looked up. He became aware for the first time of the small group of Arab women and children huddled in the doorway of the mosque. He recognized the little ones as those who had run to hide as he rode up. But he knew none of the women.

“Nazeera!” It was Yakub’s voice. He saw one of the women react, and then he recognized her. Nazeera held two children against her legs. One was the ugly copper-haired boy, and the other an exquisite little girl, a few years younger than the boy. Both children were weeping and trying to break out of Nazeera’s grip, but she held them fast.

Then an Arab women left the group and came slowly down the steps towards him. She moved like a sleep-walker, and her eyes were fastened on the dead man at his feet. There was something dreadfully familiar about her. Instinctively Penrod backed away, still staring at her in fascination. Then he exclaimed, “Rebecca!”

“No,” the stranger replied in English. “Rebecca died long ago.” Her face was a pitiful travesty of that of the lovely young woman he had once known. She knelt beside Osman and picked up his sword. Then she looked up into Penrod’s face. Her eyes were old and hopeless. “Look after my children,” she said. “You owe me that at least, Penrod Ballantyne.”

Before he understood what she intended and could move to prevent her, she reversed the sword. She placed the pommel on the hard ground and the point under her bottom ribs and fell forward upon it with all her weight. The length of the blade disappeared into her body, and she collapsed on top of Osman Atalan.

The children screamed, broke from Nazeera’s grip, rushed down the steps and threw themselves on to the bodies of their parents. They wailed and shrieked. It was a dreadful sound that cut to the core of Penrod’s being.

He sheathed his sabre, turned away and walked away towards the palm grove. As he passed Yakub he said, “Bury Osman Atalan. Do not mutilate his body or take his head. Bury al-Jamal beside him. Nazeera and the children will come with us. They will ride my camel. I will ride al-Buq. When all is ready call me.”

He went into the grove and found a fallen palm trunk on which to sit. He was very tired, and the cut on his shoulder throbbed. He opened his tunic and folded his handkerchief over the wound.

The two children, the boy and the girl, must be Rebecca’s, he realized. What will become of them? Then he remembered Amber and Saffron. They have two aunts who will fight over them. He smiled sadly. Of course, they will have Rebecca’s share of the trust fund, and they have Nazeera. They will lack nothing.

Within the hour “Yakub came to call him. On the way back to the mosque they stopped beside the newly filled double grave. “Do you think she loved him, Yakub?”

“She was a Muslim wife,” Yakub replied. “Of course she loved him. In God’s eyes, she had no choice.”

They mounted up. Nazeera had the two children with her on the camel, and Yakub rode beside her. Penrod was on the stallion, and led them back to Omdurman.

Ahmed Habib abd Atalan, the son of Rebecca and Osman Atalan, became uglier as he grew older, but he was very clever. He attended Cairo University where he studied law. He fell in with a group of politically active fellow students, who were violently opposed to the British occupation of their country. He devoted the rest of his life to the same jihad against that hated nation and Empire as his father. He was a German supporter during both world wars and spied for Erwin Rommel in the second. He was an active member of the Revolutionary Command Council in the bloodless coup that ousted the Egyptian King Farouk, the British puppet.

Rebecca’s daughter Kahruba remained small but she became more beautiful with every year that passed. At an early age she discovered in herself an extraordinary talent for dancing and acting. For twenty years she burned bright as a meteor across the stages of all the great theatres of Europe. With her wild, free spirit, she became a legend in her own lifetime. Her lovers, both men and women, were legion. Finally she married a French industrialist, who manufactured motor-cars, and they lived together in regal state and pomp in their palatial mansion in Deauville.

The Khalifat Abdullahi escaped from Omdurman, but Penrod Ballantyne and his Camel Corps pursued him relentlessly for more than a year. In the end he deigned to run no further. With his wives and devotees around him he sat on a silk carpet in the centre of his camp in the remote wilderness. When the troops rushed in he offered no further resistance. They shot him dead where he sat.

The tomb of the Mahdi was razed to the ground. His remains were exhumed, and his skull was turned into an inkwell. It was presented to General Kitchener, who was horrified. He had it reburied in a secret grave in the wilderness.

After the battle of Omdurman Kitchener became the darling of the Empire. He was rewarded with a peerage and a huge money grant. When the Boers in South Africa inflicted a series of disastrous defeats on the British army, Kitchener was sent to retrieve the situation. He burnt the farms and herded the women and children into concentration camps. The Boers were crushed.

During the First World War, Kitchener was promoted to field marshal and Commander-in-chief to steer the Empire through the most destructive war in all human history. In 1916 while he was on board the cruiser Hampshire, en route to Russia, the ship struck a German mine off the Orkneys. He drowned at the high noon of his career.

Sir Evelyn Baring became the 1st Earl of Cromer. He returned to England where he spent his days writing and, in the House of Lords, championing free trade.

Nazeera helped to raise all the children of the three Benbrook sisters. This occupied most of her time and energy, but what remained she divided impartially between Bacheet and Yakub.

Bacheet and Yakub pursued their vendetta for the rest of their lives. Bacheet was referred to by his rival as the Despicable Lecher. Yakub was the Jaalin Assassin. In their later years they took to frequenting the same coffee-house where they sat at opposite ends of the room, smoking their water-pipes, never addressing each other but deriving great comfort from their mutual antagonism. When Bacheet died of old age, Yakub never returned to the coffee-house.

Ryder Courtney’s cotton acres flourished. He invested his millions in Transvaal gold and Mesopotamian oil. He doubled and redoubled his fortune. In time his mercantile influence encompassed almost all of Africa and the Mediterranean. But to Saffron he remained always a benign and indulgent husband.

General Sir Penrod Ballantyne went to South Africa on Kitchener’s staff, and was present when the Boers surrendered at the peace of Vereeniging in the Transvaal. In the First World War he rode with Allenby’s cavalry against the Ottoman Turks in Palestine. He fought at Gaza and Megiddo, where he won further honours. He continued to play first-class polo well into his seventies. He and Amber lived in their house on the Nile, and in it raised a large family.

Amber and Saffron outlived both their husbands. They grew ever closer as the years passed. Amber flourished as an author. Her novels faithfully captured the romance and mystery of Africa. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Saffron’s marvellously colourful paintings were hung in galleries in New York, Paris and London. Her Nile series of paintings was eagerly sought by wealthy collectors on two continents, and commanded enormous prices. Picasso said of her, “She paints the way a sunbird flies.”

But they are all gone now, for in Africa only the sun triumphs eternally.

GLOSSARY

Arab names will not go into English, exactly, for their consonants are not the same as ours, and their vowels, like ours, vary from district to district. There are scientific systems of transliteration, helpful to people who know enough Arabic not to need helping, but a wash out for the world. I spell my names anyhow, to show what rot the systems are

T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Abadan Riji - “One who never turns back’. Penrod Ballantyne’s Arabic name abd slave aggagiers elite warriors of the Beja tribe of desert Arabs

Ammi aunt angareb - a native bed with leather thong lacing

Ansars - “The Helpers’, warriors of the Mahdi ardeb Oriental measure of volume. Five ardebs equal one cubic metre as ida porridge of dhurra (G.V.) flavoured with chili Bahr El Abiad the White Nile Bahr El Azrek the Blue Nile bombom bullets or cannon shells

Beia oath of allegiance required by the Mahdi from his Ansars

Beit el Mai the treasury of the Mahdi

Buq, al-War Trumpet, Osman Atalan’s charger can tar Oriental measure of weight: one can tar equals a hundredweight djinni see Jinnee dhurra Sorghum vulgare; staple grain food of men and domestic animals

Effendi lord, a title of respect falja - a gap between the front top teeth; a mark of distinction, much admired in the Sudan and many Arabic countries fellah (pi. fellahin) Egyptian peasant ferenghi foreigner

Filfil pepper, Saffron Benbrook’s Arabic name

Franks Europeans galabiyya traditional long Arabic robe

Hulu Mayya Sweet Water, one of Osman Atalan’s steeds

Jamal, al- ‘the Beautiful One’; Rebecca Benbrook’s Arabic name jibba the uniform of the Mahdists; long tunic decorated with multi-coloured patches jihad holy war jinnee (pi. jinn) - a spirit from Muslim mythology, able to assume animal or human form and influence mankind, with supernatural powers jiz scarab or dung beetle kufi Muslim traditional skull cap

Karim, al- “Kind and Generous’; variation of Ryder Courtney’s Arabic name kit tar bush with wicked hooked thorns

Kurban Bairam Islamic festival of sacrifice,

commemorating the sacrifice of the ram by Abraham in place of his son Isaac; one of the most important holidays in Islam kurbash whip made from hippo hide khalifa deputy of the Mahdi khalifat the senior and most powerful khalifa khedive the ruler of Egypt mulazemin the servants and retainers of an eminent Arab

Mahdi ‘the Expected One’, the successor to the Prophet Muhammad

Mahdist follower of the Mahdi

Mahdiya the rule of the Mahdi nullah dry or water-filled streambed ombeya war trumpet carved from a single elephant tusk souk bazaar sitt title of respect, equivalent to ‘my lady’ in English

Sakhawi, al- “Generosity’, Ryder Courtney’s Arabic name sirdar the title of the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army shufta bandit

Tej strong beer made from dhurra

Turk derogatory term for Egyptian

Tirbi Kebir the great graveyard, large salt pan in the Bight of the Nile wadi Gully or dried watercourse

Yom il Guma Friday, the Muslim Sabbath

Zahra, al- “The Flower’, Amber Benbrook’s Arabic name zareba fortified stockade of stones or thorn bush zenana women’s quarters in an Arabic household

WILBUR SMITH was born in Central

Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University.

He became a full-time writer in 1964

after the successful publication of

When the Lion Feeds, and has since written thirty novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide.I

His books are now translated intol twenty-six different languages.