CHAPTER XXVIII--A Race for Life
Fernando stood motionless, his rifle in his hand. He had been within an ace of fulfilling his oath, and sending the Arab to the shades.
"I would have hit him," he complained, "had the lamp not been taken away."
Meanwhile Cortes dashed down the steps, and crossed the central aisle to the body of the murdered man.
The madman lay quite still. A life of fasting, of penance and privation, had closed in the heroic fulfilment of his duty. With his last breath he had demanded of von Hardenberg to deliver up the Sunstone; and there he was--a huddled, formless object, lying at the foot of the altar.
The first impulse of Harry Urquhart was to follow in pursuit of the sheikh. With this intention he hastened to the terrace, whence he could see nothing. The Black Dog had vanished into the white mists that wrapped the mountain-side. By now he was no doubt at the bottom of the great flight of steps on each side of which stood the strange, fantastic statues.
Harry, rifle in hand, was about to take up the chase, when he remembered that somewhere beyond that impenetrable granite rock was von Hardenberg--alone in the midst of the treasure.
He returned to the cave, and went to the rock and listened. He could hear nothing. Beyond, all was silent as the grave.
"What can we do?" reiterated the boy, looking about him in bewilderment.
Jim Braid went to the nine wheels and turned them at random, hoping that by chance the vault would open. In a little while he desisted and returned to Harry.
"We must follow the sheikh," said he. "We must endeavour to recover the Sunstone at every cost."
"And leave _him_ here?" said Harry, with a motion of the hand towards the granite rock.
"We can do nothing," said Fernando.
"I bear the rascal no goodwill," said Harry. "He deserves but little pity. But this is terrible!" he added, and repeated the word again and again.
"Come," said Cortes, "we waste time in talking."
As he spoke, he led the way from the cave, followed by the others.
As they pa.s.sed down the great flight of steps, Harry Urquhart turned and looked back. The entrance to the caves was no longer visible. A great cloud lay upon the mountain like a mantle. Near at hand, the strange beasts carved in stone were quite conspicuous and plain, but gradually, as they mounted one behind the other towards the terrace, they became lost in the mist. They resembled an army of quaint, primeval animals that were filing down from the clouds to inhabit the abodes of men.
The elder guide, shading his eyes with a hand, scanned the mountains to the north. Presently he let out a cry--a cry of exultation.
"There!" he cried, pointing across the valley.
Sure enough, far in the distance was a white speck that was moving rapidly upon the mountainside, disappearing for a moment to appear again, always bearing in the same direction--towards the north.
Cortes turned to the others.
"I can run," said he. "I was a tracker once by trade. I undertake to keep upon his trail. Do you follow as quickly as you can."
Fernando laid a hand upon his brother"s shoulder.
"You will not kill him?" he said.
"No. The man"s life is yours."
With these words Cortes sped upon his way, springing from boulder to boulder, supple in figure, agile despite his wound. He had spent much of his life hunting wild game in the midst of unexplored, inhospitable hills. He was quick of eye and sure of foot.
Outrunning his companions, he went rapidly upon his way, and was soon lost to sight. All that afternoon they followed in his tracks, and towards evening they heard a shot, high up in the mountains, many miles to the north.
A grim smile pa.s.sed across the face of the elder guide, who calmly turned to Harry.
"Yonder," said he, "is the sheikh."
"It was he who fired?" asked Harry.
Fernando shook his head.
"That shot was fired by my brother," he answered. "I know the sound of my brother"s rifle."
"Where are we going?" asked Jim.
The half-caste shrugged his shoulders.
"The Black Dog chooses the way," said he.
"He goes to his home?" asked Harry.
"His home!" repeated Fernando. "Has the wild dog a home? Does the hare burrow in the ground? The Black Dog sleeps where he finds himself. All the world is his home. He may go into Nigeria; he may cut back to the coast; he may pa.s.s through the mountains to the great Sahara Desert.
But, wherever he goes, Cortes will follow him; he will be followed to the ends of the earth. And now and again Cortes will fire his rifle to guide us on our way, to let us know that he still holds the Black Dog in view."
Throughout the days that followed, the mountains witnessed the almost superhuman efforts of two men: Sheikh Bayram, the Black Dog of the Cameroons, and Cortes, the half-caste Spaniard of the Coast.
The one fled from justice, clutching the Sunstone in his hand, and the other followed, until miles grew into leagues, until they reached the rolling gra.s.slands to the west of Lake Chad, where cattle grazed in herds.
It was a struggle of t.i.tans, a race for life or death between men who were well versed in the craft of the hunter, who knew each bridle-path and mountain-spring and solitary oasis between the bend of the Congo and the Atlas Mountains.
Day and night they raced onward, under the march of the southern stars.
And Cortes clung to the heels of Black Dog like a leech. As often as the sheikh halted, he was obliged to push on again in greater haste.
At nightfall, every evening, Cortes fired his rifle, and this enabled his brother and the two boys to keep upon his track. The route taken by the sheikh was not a straight one: the course he followed was in the shape of the letter S. Harry and his party were often able to take short cuts, completing one side of a triangle when the Arab and his pursuer had accomplished the other two. Thus it was that upon the twentieth day they came to the place where the younger guide was encamped.
"He is close ahead?" asked Fernando.
Cortes pointed to the west.
"He is in the valley yonder," said he. "To-night he sleeps in the jungle that lies on the edge of the plateau."
They were now in a part of the globe of which little is known. They had left the cattle far behind them. This country is uninhabited except by wild animals, and is visited only by the caravans that come south-east from Timbuctoo.
The Black Dog, with the Sunstone in his possession, still held his course towards the north, setting forth across the illimitable, barren waste. He journeyed for two days without halting. Then he crossed a river, and, pa.s.sing over a plateau, descended into the true desert, where the sun blazed like a furnace.