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And even at night, when the streets were most crowded and the uproar loudest, it seemed that underneath the noise, and almost appreciable to the ear, there lay a deep and brooding silence, the silence of deserts and the East. "Durrance went down to Tewfikieh at ten o'clock that night," said Calder. "I went to his quarters at eleven. He had not returned.
The "Safieh" remained up the Nile, making fast to the bank about 100 miles north of Fashoda, to await the return of the "Tewfikieh" with orders from the Khalifa and reinforcements to destroy the French.
We had full confirmation of the fact that Major Marchand was at Fashoda brought down to Omdurman on the 7th September by the dervish steamer "Tewfikieh." The little craft was an ex-Thames, above-the-bridges, penny steamer with Penn's oscillating engines. She was one of the boats Gordon sent from Khartoum in 1884 to meet the Desert Column at Metemmeh.
"Does my story account for it?" asked Calder. "Not a bit. It was the Greek musician I expected that night," he explained with a laugh. "I was curious to know what stroke of ill-luck had cast him out to play the zither for a night's lodging in a café at Tewfikieh. That was all," and he added slowly, in a softer voice, "Yes, that was all."
Had the dervishes, or even the "Safieh's" people who were drumming up recruits, been granted a fortnight to do it in the Marchand expedition would have been totally destroyed. The "Tewfikieh" arrived in a dust-storm and passed the Sirdar's gunboats unseen, and it was not until she got to Omdurman that the dervish reis and crew realised what had happened.
The Khalifa being as usual in need of supplies sent out a small foraging expedition many weeks before our arrival on the scene. Starting in the steamers "Safieh" and "Tewfikieh," they collected grain and cattle, shipping them down to Omdurman. Learning that Europeans had been seen at Fashoda, part of the force proceeded there, and engaged the French, attacking them by land and water.
He was apologising for his blindness, which had hindered him from inquiring. She began to wake to the comprehension that it was really Durrance who was speaking to her, but he continued to speak, and what he said drove her quite out of all caution. "I went at once to Cairo, and Calder came with me. There I told him of Harry Feversham, and how I had seen him at Tewfikieh.
"Other times, other manners," and those modern generals discredit themselves who fail to recognise at the close of the nineteenth century that the schoolmaster and the press must be reckoned with. The information given me by the reis of the "Tewfikieh" proved accurate in almost every detail.
"Yes, for I came across him this Spring at Wadi Halfa," Durrance continued. "He had fallen rather low," and he told Willoughby of their meeting outside of the café of Tewfikieh. "It's strange, isn't it? a man whom one knew very well going under like that in a second, disappearing before your eyes as it were, dropping plumb out of sight as though down an oubliette in an old French castle.
Wadi Halfa was the military station, Tewfikieh a little frontier town to the north separated from Halfa by a mile of river-bank.
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