Secret of the Sands. Sara Sheridan

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СКАЧАТЬ been that long. For heaven’s sake, the Palinurus will only recently have abandoned the rendezvous point at Aden. But every day of this has been hell – the heat and the terror of never knowing when they may be hauled from the tent and made to march for miles overnight or, worse, perhaps be beheaded. Jessop is sure he read somewhere that it is beheading that is most likely.

      The men have quickly become two ragged piles of skin and bones – the doctor is a good two stones down on what he considers his fighting weight of two hundred pounds, at which he left Bombay all those months before. He has little fight left now. For a while he hoped the abrasions caused by their initial struggle against the ropes might cause blood poisoning or that the sign that the emir had branded agonisingly on the white men’s buttocks might become infected to the same effect but neither of these possibilities has transpired to release either him or Jones from their captivity, and he has become resigned simply to waiting, endlessly, and hoping despite himself for food and water. If the meagre rations stopped, at least there would be an end to the whole damn business. In this weakened state, a couple of days of privation would certainly do it.

      However, when their stony-eyed jailer arrives and pours some warm, brackish liquid from a goatskin down Jessop’s face, he cannot help but lick at it in desperation. The survival instinct, he notes, is stronger than his logical response to the situation and thirst turns any man, even a scientific kind of chap, into a panic-stricken, babbling, begging fool. The doctor has come to realise that a man will sit in his own excrement, wracked by hunger pains, baking in his own skin, and still he will survive despite himself.

      ‘Me too,’ Jones begs and receives a dark dribble of lukewarm liquid.

      Jones, it has turned out, has no dignity and less goodness. Jessop does not blame him, and it is hardly a surprise. Jessop suspects that when Jones is occasionally taken away by one of the guards that he is gratifying the man sexually for extra food. Firstly, he never mentions what happens when he leaves the tent, which is odd. And then the lieutenant’s weight has not dropped as dramatically as the doctor’s own. Jessop is not sure what he would do given that opportunity – Jones’ blonde hair is clearly of more interest to those so inclined. In any case, he does not like to think about it preferring, when he is not wishing fervently for death, instead to fantasise about either crisp, green apples and a stroll he took shortly before his departure through the winding lanes of his father’s estate or, occasionally, the madman’s dream of escaping the tent, stealing a camel and somehow outrunning and outfoxing the emir’s well-fed warriors on their own territory, to make it back to the coast and safety. Both these dreams seem equally outlandish and unlikely but they occupy him nonetheless. Out on the jabel there are falaj – stone-lined irrigation systems to carry the water. They were built by the Persians more than a thousand years ago. Jessop dreams of bathing in one. Why won’t the man simply let him die?

      Most evenings there is thin soup of some kind or other – the watered-down, half-rancid remnants of meals served days ago at the emir’s table. The moisture in this mush is as important as the nourishment though Jessop has noticed he is sweating less and as a consequence he cannot cool down. He knows he is in the advanced stages of acute dehydration and thinks it would be good to write to his professor at King’s about the phenomenon. The old man would be interested, no doubt, for the human body is always endlessly fascinating to him and he values practical experimentation above all else. Both of the men have lost the ability to grow their beard and the thin, straggly wisps on their chins are matted against the skin. If you think about it too much, it becomes devilishly itchy.

      Jessop is jolted out of this reverie by the voice of his companion.

      ‘I don’t see it,’ Jones says his first coherent words in several weeks that have not been formed to beg for food or water. ‘I’ve no idea how we are ever going to get out of here, old man.’

      Jessop laughs more in shock than in amusement. He had assumed that Jones, like him, was wishing for death but that clearly has not been the case.

      ‘Really,’ Jones continues, as if it is only just occurring to him, ‘at most we could run if we could get through these ropes. But then how would we survive? There’s sand everywhere. Sand and baking sun. This whole damn country is just an oven.’

      ‘We’re not going to survive,’ the doctor says wearily. ‘At least, I hope not for much longer. A little more privation and we’ll be there, my friend, and that is my considered, medical opinion.’

      Apparently, this has not occurred to the lieutenant. Perhaps, Jessop wonders, he thinks this is a tale in some story book and we have to get out because, as white men, we are the heroes. It occurs to him that Jones did not have much of a grasp on reality even before their fortunes changed, and now he does not comprehend that he is filthy, ragged and hovering on the cusp of death.

      ‘But they will send someone when they realise we’re missing, won’t they? I mean, we’re British subjects.’

      The lieutenant manages to sound almost outraged. It’s actually quite admirable and Jessop can’t bring himself to point out that Haines is well-meaning but not always effective and that it will take an extraordinarily effective man to cross the burning sands and come to find them. All this to be done quickly – for in current circumstances, the doctor does not give himself or his companion much more than a few weeks of life. A man given no food can last three months, of course, there’s always that – and they are at least receiving some rations. But still, he considers, with the heat, another two months seems an impossibility unless things improve.

      In any case, it is not, as far as the doctor can see, in Captain Haines’ nature to marshal his men into a search party or to undertake what would surely be an arduous negotiation with the Bedu. If the emir were for turning he would surely have done so by now. Their best hope is that he has sued for ransom, though there has been no mention of that, and truly the fellow would have a cheek, given they’d paid for his hospitality already. Jessop feels outraged. He didn’t kill the damn girl on purpose. In fact, he cured all the others. There is no accounting for it; the emir is grieving, he is not reasonable. He may never return to reason and that’s the truth. It is too exhausting to think about.

      ‘How long do you suppose we have been here?’ Jones cuts in on the doctor’s rambling thoughts. ‘How long do you think it will take them to rally the troops and come for us? It’s really not on. Seems to me that we’ve been tied up for far too long, anyway.’

      It’s a good question. Jessop tries to work out how long it might have been but the trouble is that one scorching day merges into another. It’s impossible to measure time.

      It’s weeks, he thinks, not months. He’s sure of it though he is aware that in these conditions he is easily confused. For all he knows they could have been here a year, perhaps, or longer. The imprisonment in the tent is punctuated very occasionally by a sandstorm or a few days of exhausting marching to another oasis where the tent is set up again and the two men are bound again to a stake. Once, they were lucky and the ropes were long enough to allow them to sleep on their stomachs. Sleeping on the stomach, Jessop has come to understand, diminishes the pain of extreme hunger. Today his bonds are far too tight, however, to manage it. They’ve been bound like this, he thinks, for ages and ages, though how long that actually is escapes him.

      ‘They’ve certainly held us for several weeks,’ is the best he can do.

      ‘Well, I hope the rescue party make it soon,’ the lieutenant says testily, as if his carriage is late for the opera or the vicar and his sister have, inexplicably, not turned up to take tea. ‘Really I do.’

       Chapter Sixteen

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