Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
"No, I am a musician," returned the prisoner, and he laughed happily, like a man that has made a jest. Nejoumi made a sign, and an instrument with many broken strings was handed to the captive. Feversham seated himself upon the ground, and with slow, fumbling fingers, breathing hard as he bent over the zither, he began to elicit a wavering melody.
"I have told you the truth," answered Feversham, stubbornly, and Nejoumi took a different tone. He called for food, and the raw liver of a camel, covered with salt and red pepper, was placed before Feversham.
There was sport prepared for them this morning under the few palm trees before the house of the Emir Wad El Nejoumi. A white prisoner captured a week before close to the wells of El Agia on the great Arbain road, by a party of Arabs, had been brought in during the night and now waited his fate at the Emir's hands.
And, while he ate, Nejoumi questioned him, in the silkiest voice, about the fortifications of Cairo and the strength of the garrison at Assouan, and the rumours of dissension between the Khedive and the Sirdar. But to each question Feversham replied: "How should a Greek know of these matters?" Nejoumi rose from his angareb and roughly gave an order.
It was the melody to which Durrance had listened in the street of Tewfikieh on the eve of his last journey into the desert; and which Ethne Eustace had played only the night before in the quiet drawing-room at Southpool. It was the only melody which Feversham knew. When he had done Nejoumi began again. "You are a spy."
He could not improve upon it, he was sure, by any alteration suggested by fear, at a moment when he could not think clearly. A rope was flung about his neck, and he was pushed and driven beneath the gallows. "Speak, Kaffir," said Nejoumi; "so shall you escape death." Feversham smiled and grimaced, and shook his head loosely from side to side.
Nejoumi looked at him sourly for a moment. He turned to the men who stood ready to draw away from Feversham the angareb on which he was placed: "To-morrow," said he, "the Kaffir shall go to Omdurman." Feversham began to feel then that the rope of palm fibre tortured his wrists. Mrs. Adair speculated with some uneasiness upon the consequences of the disclosures which she had made to Durrance.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking