‘I had not notion that Sir Sidney spoke Turkish,’ said Stephen aside to Jacob, while Omar was tearing the sheep apart.
‘He was in Constantinople with his brother Sir Spencer, the minister; indeed I believe they were joint-ministers.’
When the lamb was no more than a heap of well-cleaned bones, and when Omar, his chief huntsman and the two guests had eaten cakes made of dried figs and dates, moistened with honey and followed by coffee, and when the glow of the moon was just beginning to tinge the sky behind the mountain, the Dey stood up, uttered a formal prayer, and called for bowls of blood. ‘Goat, not swine,’ he said emphatically, patting Stephen’s shoulder to encourage him: and so, armed and red-footed, they set off, first climbing from the dell, then dropping by Wednesday’s path to the stream and its almost bare, well-trodden bank. By now Stephen’s eyes were accustomed to the dimness and he might have been walking along a broad highway, with Omar Pasha close before him. For so big a man he moved with an easy, supple pace, making barely a sound: twice he stopped, listening and as it were taking the scent of the air like a dog. He never spoke, but sometimes he turned his head, when the gleam of his teeth could be seen in his beard. He would have been the very model of a hunter, thought Stephen, with his silent tread and his subfusc clothes, but for the fact that as the rising moon shed an even greater light through the trees so it shone on the steel of the rifle slung over his shoulder. Stephen’s was under his light cloak, its butt far down below his knee: he had lived so long in cold, wet countries that the duty of keeping his powder dry had assumed religious proportions. He was thinking of other expeditions by night for the dawn-fighting and at the same time reflecting with pleasure that he was keeping up without much effort, though the six-foot Dey had a much longer stride, when Omar stopped, looked round, and pointing to a mass of bare rock emerging from the trees he whispered, ‘Ibn Haukal.’ Stephen nodded, and with infinite precaution they crept up to the small, low-ceilinged cave. With infinite precaution, but even so Omar, the leader, dislodged a little heap of shale that rattled down to the path, a very small but very shocking avalanche. They were still standing motionless when a very small-eared owl, known to Stephen from his childhood by the name of gloc, Athena’s owl, uttered its modest song, ‘Tyu, tyu’, answered almost at once by another, a quarter of a mile away. ‘Tyu, tyu.’
Omar, having listened very attentively indeed for other sounds and hearing none, moved on, bent double, into the cave. They could not stand upright, of course, but the front, opening on to the stream, was quite wide enough for two and they sat comfortably, their guns across their knees, gazing down at a path that grew more and more distinct as the great moon, just beyond the full, mounted higher and higher in the sky, putting out the stars.
The air was warm and most uncommonly still, and Stephen heard a pair of nightjars churring away in their unchanging voice as they wheeled about pursuing moths far down, perhaps almost as far off as the Shatt. Brighter and brighter still, and the path just beneath, somewhat constricted by Ibn Haukal’s crag, was strikingly clear, once Omar had very gently cut away some of the overhanging shrub: and on this path they saw a hyena, most distinctly a striped hyena, carefully working out a line, like a hound – their own line, in fact, the scent of their bloody shoes. And where they had turned it paused, uttered its habitual shrieking howl (Stephen noticed that its mane rose as it did so) and ran straight
up into the cave. For- a moment it stood transfixed in the entrance, then turned and fled, its mad
laugh echoing from one side of the valley to the other. Omar neither moved nor spoke: Stephen made no comment.
A long, long pause, interrupted only by the passage of a porcupine; and though the silent wait grew a little wearisome Stephen had the consolation of his watch, an elegant Breguet, a minute-repeater, that had travelled with him and consoled him for more years than he could easily reckon. Every quarter of an hour or so he would press a button and a tiny silver voice would tell his attentive ear the time. If Omar ever heard the minute sound he gave no sign; but just after twenty minutes past the hour he stiffened, changed his grip on the gun, and Stephen saw the large pale form of a lion pace swiftly across their field of vision from right to left.
The turn of the stream and its accompanying path, together with a scattering of low bushes hid him after a very few seconds: but Stephen was left the sharpest possible image of a great smoothly-moving creature, pale, and with a pale mane, even; shoulder-blades alternately protruding through a mass of muscle. A perfectly confident, selfcontained and concentrated animal, between nine and ten feet long, perhaps three and a half feet at the withers (though he held his head much higher than that), and weighing a good thirty stone, with that enormous chest.
‘Mahmud,’ whispered Omar, smiling: Stephen nodded, and they returned to their silence. But not for very long: far sooner than Stephen had expected, away on the left there was a crashing of branches, a wild flailing about, some high desperate shrieks, a very deep sustained growling.
Now the minutes passed very, very slowly: both men were extremely tense, and if Stephen opened his mouth to draw a deeper breath, he could hear the beating of his heart.
Then at last came the sound of jackals, very usual attendants on a lion’s kill: his furious snapping as they ventured too near: and after a long but extraordinarily expectant wait, the sound of movement among the downstream bushes.
Mahmud came clearly into sight on the left, carrying a heavy wild boar, and carrying it high, well to the left to free the stride of his leg. Nearer: nearer: and when he was just past the mid-point, just going from them, Omar rose and shot him, aiming behind the right ear. But though the lion fell he was on his feet again the next moment, roaring with fury.
Omar shot him again and this time he fell forward twitching, no other movement.
But now his lioness was almost there. She lowered her head over him, licking his death-wound and moaning. Then she looked up directly into the cave with the men and charged straight for them in five prodigious bounds.
Stephen saw her eyes clear in the moonlight: it was a mere fair-ground shot and with real regret he killed her as she rose in her last leap.
The Dey’s huntsmen knew very well that Mahmud was his intended quarry, and when in the still night they heard three shots rather than one it was clear to them that something was very much amiss. Five of them came racing down the nearest path from the camp with torches, and they found their chief and his guest guarding the lions from the jackals and hyenas, drawn by even the faintest smell of death.
By the light of a great fire they, the second huntsman and his team, skinned Mahmud and his mate, while the headman lit the Dey and his companion back to the camp, Omar most solicitously giving Stephen his hand wherever the going was a little steep.
•
As soon as they reached the dell Jacob was summoned from his tent and desired to translate the Dey’s gratitude and congratulations, quite remarkably well-phrased and convincing. Stephen begged Jacob to say all that was proper and smiled and bowed, with gestures that disclaimed all
merit: but the force of very strong emotion so recently felt but only now fully perceived was mounting so that he wholly longed for silence and his bed.
‘And the Dey says,’ Jacob went on, ‘that a mule hardened to the task will be sent down to bring the skins up in the morning: while as for Mahmud’s cubs, they are perfectly capable of looking after themselves – have already killed several young boars and two fawns – but nevertheless he promises you that they shall be given a sheep or two every week for some months. And as for the foolish tale about gold for the Shiite heretics he assures you that not an ounce, not half an ounce, shall ever pass through Algiers while he is Dey; and he will send the Vizier a direct order to that effect, in case there should ever have been a ghost or perhaps I should say an apparition of misunderstanding or incomprehension.’
Stephen nodded, smiled and bowed yet again. Omar looked kindly at him and said to Jacob, ‘My saviour is himself in need of salvation: pray lead him very quietly away.’ He clasped Stephen, imprinted a bristly kiss on his cheek, bowed and withdrew.