arating himself from the Russian would be suicide.
As he worked he thought carefully over the matter of this speechless companionship. He could speak to the Russian in French, and the astonishment of the Russian would break his disguise. Then they could call it a truce and the Russian would become a help instead of a hindrance. Simple enough, and Bugs longed to do it. But the plan intervened. If Bugs revealed himself as Sinnat he could never copy the papers without the Russian's knowledge. Another drug would be too suspicious. The plan would be wrecked. The loneliness and the dragging acting of the deaf mute were terrible—but the plan had to go through.
Every day saw them farther south. Somewhat north of the Protectorate of Aden they would turn inland. No white man had ever been inland more than a hundred miles. . . . The protectorate is British. If Bugs, still Ben Mohamet, could get the Russian into Aden—then would the plan be a success. They could continue to Bombay, and the Russian would never know Bugs as anything but an Afghan. . . . To get away, after filing the chain, in the auto truck of the Nubians. . . . To Aden.
But half-way down the coast, after ten of the prisoners had either died or killed themselves, a complication arose. The cadi arrived in a very good car, driven by another Nubian. Evidently he had arranged for the sale of his slaves, and was going to make delivery himself. He raged furiously when he heard of the deaths. . . .
South, march by march. The heat, the filth, the thirst, the starvation. . . . And Bugs, like Bayard or Sidney, giving the Russian part of his own scant food. And the Russian suppressing his showing of gratitude. A strange drama of a conflict of human wills. Two men who would willingly have died for one another, who had grown to love one another like brothers—divided by duty and the rigors of the service they so luminously served.
They arrived, after many weeks of indescribable hell, at the last march along the coast line. Bugs had worn the connecting chain so thin that he could easily snap the link, weak as his once powerful hands had grown from the unspeakable diet. Next day they would turn inland, and his chance would be gone. They were closer to British territory than they would be again.
At that his was a desperate chance. To get the Russian into the truck, and drive it across the line—even farther, since the cadi would never stop pursuit at an imaginary boundary. To get the cadi's better car was impossible—it was parked by the cadi's tent too far away from the prisoners. All Bugs could expect was the chance of a sudden rush to the truck, in which one of the Nubians slept. The neck chains would make action difficult, even when the connecting chain was severed. And, what was worse, Bugs had to chose the hour before the dawn for his escape. That desert road was no place for night driving at speed; for, naturally, there were no lights on the truck.
To do all this as Ben Mohamet, never to let the gallant Russian know he was anything but that Afghan.
The night seemed to pass very slowly. Bugs lay down by the Russian—indeed strange bedfellows—the Russian who had so long acted the half-witted deaf mute that Bugs often thought he was no longer acting—that the strain had made the part real, and no wonder. . . . The poor prisoners moaned in their fitful sleep. He would have to be careful not to waken any of these. They would yell for him to take them with him. He
