Craven felt himself in strange accordance with the men with whom he rode. The love of hazardous adventure that was in his blood leaped into activity and a keen fierce pleasure swept him at the thought of the coming conflict. The death he sought was the death he had always hoped for--the crashing clamour of the battlefield, the wild tumultuous impact of contending forces, with the whining scream of flying bullets in his ears. To die--and, dying, to atone!
"Come to Me all ye who ... are heavy laden and I will give you rest."
Might that ineffable rest that was promised be even for him? Would his deep repentance, the agony of spirit he had endured, be payment enough? Eternal death--the everlasting hell of the Jehovah of the ancients! Not that, merciful God, but the compassion of Christ: "He that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out."
On that terrible day in Yokohama that seemed so many weary years ago Craven had laid his sin-stained soul in all sincerity and humbleness at the feet of the Divine Redeemer, but with no thought or hope of forgiveness. Always the necessity of personal atonement had remained with him, without which by his reasoning there could be no salvation. That offered, but not until then, he would trust in the compassion that passed man's understanding. And to-night--to-day--he seemed nearer than he had ever been to the fulfilment of his desire. The mental burden that had lain like an actual crushing weight upon him seemed to slip away into nothingness. A long deep sigh of wonderful relief escaped him and he drew himself straighter in the saddle, a new peace dawning in his eyes as he raised them to the starlit sky. Out of the past there flashed into his mind the picture--forgotten since the days of childhood--of Christian freed of his burden at the foot of the Cross, as represented in the old copy of the "Pilgrim's Progress" over which he had pored as a boy, enthralled by the quaint text which he had known nearly by heart and fascinated by the curious illustrations that had appealed to his young imagination.
The years rolled back, he saw himself again a little lad stretched on the rug before the fire in the library at Craven Towers, the big book propped open before him, studying with a child's love of the grotesque the grisly picture of Apollyon whose hideous black-winged form had to his boyish mind been the actual image of the devil, a tangible demon whom he had longed to conquer like Christian armed with sword and shield. The childish idea, a bodily adversary to contend with--it would have been simpler. But the devil in a man's own heart, the insidious inward prompting to sin that unrepelled grows imperceptibly stronger and greater until the realisation of sin committed comes with horrible suddenness! To Craven, as to many others, came the futile longing to have his life to live again, to start afresh from the days of innocency when he had hung, enraptured, over the woodcuts of the "Pilgrim's Progress." He forced his thoughts back to the present. Death, not life, lay before him. Instinctively he glanced at the man who rode at his right hand. In the cold white moonlight the Arab's face was like a piece of beautiful carved bronze, still and terrible in its fixed intentness. Sitting his horse with evident difficulty, animated by mere strength of will, his wasted frame rigidly upright, his sombre tragic eyes peering steadfastly ahead, he seemed in his grim purposefulness the very incarnation of avenging justice. And as Craven looked at him covertly he wondered what lay hidden behind those set features, what of hope, what of fear, what of despair was seething in the fierce heart of the desert man. Of the dearly loved wife who had been ravished from him there had come no further word, her fate was unknown. Had she died, or did she still live--in shameful captivity, the slave of the renegade who had made her the price of his treachery? What additional horror still awaited the unhappy husband who rode to avenge her? With a slight shudder Craven turned from the contemplation of a sorrow that seemed to him even greater than his own and sought his left hand neighbour. With a quick smile Saïd's eyes met his. With an easy swing of his graceful body he drew his horse nearer to the spirited stallion Craven was riding but did not speak. The ready flow of conversation that was habitual had apparently forsaken him.