an occasion when the laws of the river were reaching out strong hands for
him. Now, as Mahommed swam, he kept moaning to himself, cursing his
father and his father's son, as though he himself were to blame for the
crime which had been committed. Here was a plot, and he had discovered
more plots than one against his master. The bridge-opener--when he found
him he would take him into the desert and flay him alive; and find him he
would. His watchful eyes were on the hut by the bridge where this man
should be. No one was visible. He cursed the man and all his ancestry
and all his posterity, sleeping and waking, until the day when he,
Mahommed, would pinch his flesh with red hot irons. But now he had other
and nearer things to occupy him, for in the fierce struggle towards the
shore Lacey found himself failing, and falling down the stream.
Presently both Mahommed and David were beside him, Lacey angrily
protesting to David that he must save himself.

"Say, think of Egypt and all the rest. You've got to save yourself--let
me splash along!" he spluttered, breathing hard, his shoulders low in
the water, his mouth almost submerged.

But David and Mahommed fought along beside him, each determined that it
must be all or none; and presently the terror-stricken fisherman who had
roused the village, still shrieking deliriously, came upon them in a
flat-bottomed boat manned by four stalwart fellaheen, and the tragedy of
the bridge was over. But not the tragedy of Achmet the Ropemaker.




CHAPTER XIV