"No," said Irene.
They jogged along in silence for some distance. The girl added nothing, to her emphatic monosyllable. d.i.c.k felt a tugging at his heart-strings which was becoming a dangerously frequent symptom.
"As you have favored me with your confidence thus far, won"t you take the next step, and tell me why you credit Baron von Kerber with such complaisance?" he demanded.
"A woman should not always be asked for reasons, Mr. Royson," said she lightly.
"In the graver events of life one wishes for them, nevertheless."
"Perhaps we are deviating from the chief issue," she countered. "If only I could persuade grandad that he is being wilfully misled, things might go as I wish. Can"t you help, Mr. Royson?"
Then she turned her face to his, and the temptation that had gripped him many a time of late came back with an intensity that was almost unendurable. He did not flinch from her steadfast eyes. Though the path of honor was steep and straight he must tread it to the end.
"If I tell your grandfather what little I know of these people I break my word," he said harshly. "That is the only reply I can make, Miss Fenshawe. May I add the ign.o.ble argument that any such breach of faith on my part would probably be useless? You ought to sympathize with me."
"Why?" she said coldly.
"Because it is not often that a man is tortured as I am by a conflict between duty and--and desire."
"There is our palm grove," she cried, pointing to a few stunted trees whose fronds showed above the rock-strewn bank of a small wady, or ravine, which cut through the center of the shelving plateau they were crossing. "The ground is fairly clear here. Shall we try a canter?"
Without waiting for a reply she pressed her pony into a steady gallop.
Royson responded to her wayward mood, and followed her lead. Though the sun was so hot that their hands would have blistered if unprotected by gloves, the clean, dry air-current created by the rapid motion was exhilarating in the extreme. They were riding through a lost continent, yet its savage ruin was sublimely beautiful. The comparatively level spot that allowed the luxury of a gallop was made up of sand and stones, with here and there a black rock thrusting its bold contour above the shingle. A curiously habitable aspect was given to the desert by numbers of irregular alluvial mounds which, on examination, were found to consist of caked soil held together by the roots of trees. So, at one time, this arid plain had borne a forest. To the mind"s eye, here lay the dead earth"s burial-place.
Ages ago a torrent had fertilized the surrounding tract, and its dried- up bed was marked by water-smoothed boulders. Here and there, small groups of dwarf bushes, covered with dagger-like thorns, drew sustenance from secret rills of moisture. The camel path they followed had the distinctness of daily use, though no recognized _kafila_ had pa.s.sed that way during the previous year, new trade routes to the interior having drawn the caravans in other directions. Soon it turned up the side of the ravine. The _sayall_ bushes began to grow more densely, and the wady spread to a great width. Beyond a patch of pebbles lay a brown carpet of tough gra.s.s. In the center stood seven date-trees and a considerable number of stunted bushes, these latter differing from the _sayall_ only in the size of their thorns, which were fully two inches long and seemingly untouchable. Yet, next to water, the thorn-crop const.i.tuted the chief wealth of the oasis, because camels would munch the tough spines with great relish.
The camping-place appeared to be untenanted. Royson found the footprints of gazelles wherever the sand had collected in a hollow, but the animals must have scampered away unseen towards the barren hills near at hand. Through an occasional gap there were glimpses of the mighty ramparts of Abyssinia. It was hard to realize that the dainty gazelle could find food in this desolate land. Yet, with the inborn instinct of the hunter and scout, Royson unslung his carbine and held it across the saddle-bow as he urged his horse slightly in front of the short-striding Somali. When he drew rein he rose in the stirrups to peer through the barrier of thorns.
"First come, first served," he cried joyously. "We have the forage to ourselves, Miss Fenshawe. I shall be sorry for any others who come this way after our host has pa.s.sed. Look at it now. It is an absolute army.
We shall strip this poor little garden of the desert as locusts are said to eat up a cornfield."
Irene slipped from the saddle, loosened the girths, and then glanced at the distant caravan, which had just become visible again on the sky- line of the plateau. It was more than likely that no such mixed gathering of men and animals had taken that road since the destruction of forests converted the country into a wilderness. The party from the yacht numbered eighteen; there were fifty Bedawi Arabs in attendance on a hundred camels; eight horses, Arabs or Somali ponies, each required a syce, while the sheikh who had brought the caravan from Pajura was overlord of a score of hangers-on who figured in his list as servants.
A thin haze of dust rose as this regiment advanced. In that wonderful light its progress might be marked twenty miles away by keen eyes. The girl watched it silently for a time, while Royson, knowing the manner in which the camp would be formed, picketed the two horses so as not to interfere with the general arrangements.
Then he lit a cigarette and rejoined Irene.
"How far distant is the head of the caravan now?" she asked.
"Nearly two miles. It looks more like two furlongs," said he, divining her thought, for it was easy to discern Mrs. Haxton, wrapped in a gray dust-cloak, on a splendid riding camel in advance of the main body; beside her, on Arab horses, were Mr. Fenshawe and von Kerber, the latter having just ridden up from the rear.
"Does one"s sight become better, then, by residence in this strange land?" murmured the girl.
Royson deliberately ignored the less obvious significance of the words.
"I think so," he said. "When all is said and done, desert and sea are akin, and most certainly a sea voyage benefits the eyes. Yet, now that you mention it, the atmosphere is remarkably clear to-day."
"Are you weather-wise, Mr. Royson? Is not that a sign of storm?"
"I sought instruction from Sheikh Abdur Kad"r on that very point only this morning. He says that the Kamsin does not blow at this season, and there is every reason to believe that it has not rained in this locality during the past three hundred years."
"Dear me! Three--hun-dred--years!" "Yes. Sorry, but I can"t make it any less." "Then you may give Sheikh Abdur Kad"r my compliments and tell him I predict either a thunderstorm or some unusual disturbance before night. Mrs. Haxton has a very effective smile, I admit, but it requires exceptional charm to make a smile distinctly visible at--how far did you say?--two miles?"
The lady in question was certainly bending towards Mr. Fenshawe, and the smile was a reasonable conjecture. But they had tacitly agreed to forget their earlier conversation. They chatted freely now with the friendly ease that was their wont ever since the exigencies of camp life had thrown them together far more than was possible on board ship.
Five weeks ago the _Aphrodite_ dropped anchor off Pajura after crossing from Aden, where Mr. Fenshawe had despatched his cablegrams and obtained a portion of the equipment needed for the desert tour. The arrival of such a large party occasioned no little excitement at the French port. That tiny station had not seen so many white faces at one time since its establishment, and, when its polite Commandant recovered from his voluble surprise, he warned Mr. Fenshawe that the interior was somewhat unsafe. But stories of Arab unrest were familiar to the veteran. He had heard them regularly during the preceding thirty years, and he was more than ever bent on outwitting the jealous rivals who had placed such obstacles in his path.
The French officers at Pajura thought he was rather cracked to take ladies with him, yet they were obliged to admit that desert travel was healthy and enjoyable, provided supplies were ample, and, on this score, the skilled explorer of Soudan by-ways showed that he had lost none of his cunning. Before the caravan started news came from Aden that the _Cigno_ had been dragged off her sandspit. This gave an added value to the land route, as the coast of Erythrea was a.s.suredly closed to them; the French authorities, on the other hand, rendered every a.s.sistance in their power.
And now, after a month of steady marching, the caravan was well within Italian territory. The route lay parallel with the sea, but nearly a hundred miles distant from it. It traversed the interminable wadys and shelving table-lands leading down to the coast from the granite and pink Nubian stone foothills of the inner range of giants which guarded the fertile valleys of Abyssinia. Thus far, no unexpected difficulties had cropped up. The few nomads encountered were only too anxious to be friendly. The weather, scorching by day and intensely cold by night, was quite bearable. Indeed, to any one in good health, it supplied a marvelous tonic. Travelers less admirably equipped might have suffered annoyance from the snakes and scorpions which seem to thrive in the midst of sunburnt desolation, but these _voyageurs de luxe_ slept in hammocks slung in roomy tents, and a.s.siduous servants dislodged every stone before they spread the felt carpets on which the heaven-born deigned to sit at meals.
Yet--as Irene had guessed correctly--this magnificent progress through the desert contained a canker that threatened its destruction. Either von Kerber"s calculations were at fault, or the papyrus was a madman"s screed. The caravan was already two marches beyond the point agreed on by every authority consulted as that fixed by the Greek who survived the ma.s.sacre of the Roman legion. The unhappy Austrian could no more identify the Five Hills mentioned in the papyrus as the essential clue to the whereabouts of the treasure than a man in an unknown forest can distinguish a special group of five trees. That is to say, he may blunder on them by chance, but he cannot find them by using his judgment. As Irene put it, here were not five, but five thousand hills.
The mortal puzzle before von Kerber was to pick his five.
When the caravan arrived at the halting-place the tense solitude gave way to pandemonium. Camels grunted and squealed in eager plaint to be relieved of their loads, horses neighed and fought for the best tufts of gra.s.s, men raged at each other as though the work of preparing the camp were something new and wholly unexpected.
Through the turmoil strode Abdur Kad"r, a lean, saturnine Arab, who anathematized all his a.s.sistants indiscriminately, only varying his epithets according to the nationality of the man under the lash of his tongue at the moment.
"Bestir yourself, illegitimate one. Are we to await the setting sun ere the tents are fixed?" he shouted at a negro who was bothered by a knotted rope. A crash behind him told that a too-zealous Arab had tumbled a box to the ground.
"Oh, you owl, what evil have you done?" roared the Sheikh, transfixing the culprit with a glittering eye.
"Lo, I loosened a strap, honored one, and the accursed thing fell," was the explanation.
"It fell, eh? So shall my whip fall, Sidi Ha.s.san, if thou art not more painstaking." He rushed towards a group of Somali syces.
"Pigs, and children of pigs," he cried, "for what does the Effendi pay ye? Is there not occupation, ye black dogs? May your fathers" graves be defiled by curs!"
Stump, whose rubicund visage was burnt brick-red by the desert, took a keen interest in Abdur Kad"r"s daily outpourings. He had no Arabic, but he appreciated the speaker"s fluency.
"He"d make a bully good bo"s"n," was his favorite comment, and he would add sorrowfully, "I wish I knew wot he was sayin". It "ud do me a treat."
In an astonishingly short s.p.a.ce of time the camp would be in form, fires lit with parched shrubs gathered during the last stage of the journey, a meal cooked, and every one settled down to rest until sunset, when, if there was no evening march, the Arabs and negroes would sing, and perhaps indulge in amazingly realistic sword-play, while the dozen sailors brought from the yacht would watch the combatants or engage in a sing-song on their own account.
The present encampment offered no exception to the general rule. Abdur Kad"r, it is true, may have raged a little more extensively than usual when it was discovered that the well had caved in from sheer disuse, and several hours" labor would be necessary before some brackish water could be obtained. He did not trouble the Effendi with this detail, however. There was another more pressing matter to be dealt with, but, Allah be praised, that might wait till a less occupied hour, for the Frank was in no hurry, and he paid like a Kaliph.
About four o"clock Irene was sitting in her tent making some belated jottings in a diary. Being thirsty, she called a servant, and told him to bring a bottle of soda-water. A few minutes later she heard a stumble, a crash, and a loud exclamation in Arabic. The man had fallen over one of the heavy stones to which the guy-ropes were fastened.
She looked up smilingly, and wondered whether he would understand her if she said in French that she hoped he had not injured himself. The gla.s.s was broken, but the bottle was intact, for the native had caught it as he fell.
"ca ne fait rien," she cried encouragingly. Then she found that the Somali had risen to his knees, and was gazing skyward with every token of abject terror. At the same instant a strange commotion broke out in the camp. Through the open side of the tent she saw Europeans and natives all looking in the one direction--northwards. The Britons and Arabs had an air of profound astonishment. They pointed and gesticulated, but otherwise showed self-control. But the negroes were in a panic. For the most part they were kneeling. A few prostrated themselves at full length, and howled dolorously.
The girl was alone, and she naturally felt alarmed. Royson was not far away, and he, like the rest, was held spellbound by some spectacle the nature of which she could not guess. Perhaps his thoughts were not far removed from Irene, because he turned and looked at her.
"Come quickly, Miss Fenshawe," he shouted. "Here is the most wonderful mirage!"
Was that it--a mirage? Why, then, this hubbub? She had grown so accustomed to the grim humor of the desert in depicting clear streams of running water, smooth, tree-bordered lakes, and other delightful objects of which the arid land dreamed in its sleep of death, that the excitement caused in the camp was wholly inexplicable.
"What are you doing there?" she cried sharply to the frightened servant. "Go and get another gla.s.s, and take care you do not fall next time."