Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/26

 18 "You say that you are imprisoned, and yet you could come here, and in the night-time at that."

"I have been escorted by the police who day and night watch my house, and I know that they have an order to cut off our heads soon!"

"Speak like a rational woman," answered Mr. Rawlinson, shrugging his shoulders. "You are not in the Sudân, but in Egypt where no one is executed without a trial. So you may be certain that not a hair will fall from your head or the heads of your children."

But she began to implore him to intercede for her yet once more with the Government, to procure permission for her to go to Smain.

"Englishmen as great as you are, sir," she said, "can do everything. The Government in Cairo thinks that Smain is a traitor, but that is false. There visited me yesterday Arabian merchants, who arrived from Suâkin, and before that they bought gums and ivory in the Sudân, and they informed me that Smain is lying sick at El-Fasher and is calling for me and the children to bless them—"

"All this is your fabrication, Fatma," interrupted Mr. Rawlinson.

But she began to swear by Allah that she spoke the truth, and afterwards said that if Smain got well, he undoubtedly would ransom all the Christian captives; and if he should die, she, as a relative of the leader of the dervishes, could obtain access to him easily and would secure whatever she wished. Let them only allow her to leave, for her heart will leap out of her bosom from longing for her husband. In what had she, ill-fated woman, offended the Government or the Khedive? Was it her fault or could she be held accountable because she was the relative of the dervish, Mohammed Ahmed?

Fatma did not dare in the presence of the "English