Ballads of Brave Deeds By H. D. Rawnsley. With a Frontispiece and Preface by G. F. Watts |
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Hosan the Faithful |
 | Ballads of Brave Deeds |  |
Hosan the Faithful
After the battle of Om Worogat in which Slatin Bey's forces were decimated, whilst he was attending the wounded Isa, it occurred to him that he had not seen his other boy, Morgan Hosan, who was leading one of his horses. “He was,” says Slatin Bey, “a fine, intelligent young fellow, scarcely sixteen years old, honest, quiet, and brave. ‘Isa,’ said I, to the boy carrying the satchel, ‘where is Morgan, who was leading my horse Mubarak; he is an active fellow, and perhaps mounted the horse, and has managed to escape?’ Sad and brokenhearted, poor Isa shook his head, and, his eyes filling with tears, he handed me a bit of my horse's bridle. ‘What is this?’ I asked. ‘Master,’ said he, ‘I did not want to make you more sorry than you are. I found him not far from here, lying on the ground, with a spear-wound in his chest. When he saw me he smiled, and whispered, “I knew you would come and look for me. Say good-bye to my master, and tell him I was not a coward. I did not let go his horse, and it was only when I fell down stabbed in the chest that they cut the bridle to which I clung, and took him; show my master the bit of the bridle that is still in my hand, and tell him that Morgan was faithful. Take the knife out of my pocket,—it belongs to my master; give it to him, and say many salaams to him from me.”’ Isa, his voice choked with sobbing, handed me the knife, and I, too, now quite broke down. Poor Morgan, so young and so true! Poor master, to have lost so faithful a servant and so true a friend! ‘Tell me, Isa, what was the end?’ I said. ‘He was thirsty,’ he replied, ‘and I took his head in my hands, and in a few seconds he was dead. I then got up and left him; I had other things to do, and there was no time to cry.’”
Extract from “Fire and Sword in the Soudan, 1879-1895,” by Rudolf Slatin Pacha, C.B.
Through a welter of blood the sun sank in the west,
The wings of the vultures were dark overhead,
And the earth where he fell with the wound in his breast
Was redder than sunset, but still in his hand
Was the bridle he held when he swooned on the sand.
The musk-scented Mahdi on Worogat plain;
No quarter to give and no quarter to get,
We fought till the bravest were captive or slain;
But Hosan, to dash through his captors would dare,
For his colonel's grey Arab was left in his care.
But the men of Ababdeh are swifter than sight,
Like lightning they came on the left, on the right,
Then a spear-head shone silver, and flushed into rose,
And Hosan fell pierced to the shout of his foes.
The spear-man who smote, to the saddle may leap,
But Hosan, the faithful, through blood and through pain,
His master's last charge till death free him, will keep,
By the angels of judgment who question the just
None shall say that young Hosan was false to his trust.
But a hand on the bridle will not slack its hold,
Till a sword cleave the rein where the clenched fingers clung,
And a-swoon in the dust the brave Hosan has rolled,
While the rose of God's wrath blossomed large in the west,
And the earth sobbed to red from the rose of his breast.
His lips parched for thirst and his eyes growing dim,
But he smiled,—“Bear Salaams to my master and say,
Though my life play me false I was faithful to him,
Strove to break through the fence of the spear and the sword,
To bring back his horse and be true to my word.
This rein, he will know it, the sword cleft it through—”
Then he ceased,—backward fell the proud head on the sand.
Ah! master, thy Hosan was faithful and true:
Lo! the sign of his service and faith to the last,
Scarce loosed from his fingers—death shut them so fast.
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