Mr. FOWLER WRIGHT'S latest novel is yet another in the same vein as his highly successful The Screaming Lake and The Island of Captain Sparrow. It concerns the fortunes of a tribe which has isolated itself for over two thousand years in an oasis, watered by a subterranean river, the midst of the vast barrenness of the Libyan desert.
This tribe has met the problem of over-population, not by restriction of births, but by the system of competitive eliminations by which the inferior members of the tribe have been periodically destroyed and by this long continued process have reached an exceptional standard of strength and stature.
They are ruled by a race of kings who have continued the ancient Egyptian custom of marrying their, sisters, but at the time of this story the destruction of all but one of the royal race renders this custom impossible. As a consequence, an English girl whose aeroplane has come down in the desert finds herself in unwelcome competition with an American girl who has been kidnapped from a Cairo train, for the doubtful honour of sharing the King's throne.
CHAPTER I
IT was good of you to come," Leonard said gratefully. "I was afraid that you would. But I hoped that you might not hear."
"Grimblett brought some chatter from Cairo. It was so absurd that I should not have listened at all if it had partly confirmed from another source. Of course, I knew it was false, but I thought I'd like to find out what the truth is, and stand by if you were in any jam. So I got a week's leave."
"Well, it's over now. I resigned yesterday."
"You what?"
"I said I resigned. It seemed the best thing to do."
"You don't mean that you couldn't - - "
"No. I don't mean that I'm under any suspicion now. If I had been, I don't suppose I should have taken that course. There's been an inquiry held, at which they were unanimous that Blinkley lied to get out of paying a bet; and after that the Major apologized to me for the mess."
"Then why - - ?"
"Because I felt like it. It was all right for them to back down, but there wasn't much excuse for having talked before in the way they did, and I was fed up. You know I've never got on well with Atkins, or one or two of the others, and it seemed the right moment to throw my hand in."
The two men who spoke sat at a cracked marble-topped table in the verandah of the Paris Hotel (a good name is as cheap as one of lowlier sound) which overlooked a straggle of sand-blown palms, and the flat mud-bank and spreading surface of the Nile that shone bluely beneath a reflection of cloudless sky.
They were so closely alike in build, in features, in voice, and the mannerisms by which individuality is most clearly revealed, that even those who had known them longest would have relied less upon these characteristics for identification than the uniforms that they wore. The naval uniform indicated Second-Lieut. Denis Kinnear, R.N., of H.M.S. Relief, now stationed at Alexandria, while that of Lieut. Leonard Kinnear (the younger brother by fifty-three minutes) was the military one of a British regiment which had its headquarters at el-Orda.
Denis considered the information he had received in a silence of understanding sympathy. Affinity of feeling between the twins economized words, as it often would. He asked: "What shall you do now?"
"I've got an idea of trying a little exploration."
"Exploring? Where? I didn't think there was much left to be done. Not on this continent, anyway."
"Oh, but there is! Do you know that you might walk for five hundred miles north-west from this spot where we're sitting now and, after the first ten or fifteen, yours might be the first human eyes to survey the scene since the world began?"
"Oh, there! But that's only because there'd be nothing to see. Nothing but sand. There wouldn't be much fun in exploring that."
"No. I don't say there would. But who knows? If I were right when I said that no one has ever been there before, I dare say no one would want to go again when I should come back and say what I hadn't seen. But there's a doubt about that. . . . Did you happen to notice a gigantic - well, not a negro exactly - on the quay when you landed? He's not a man it's easy to overlook."
"You mean a man about six-feet-six, and big every way in proportion? A dark golden-brown colour? Yes, he wasn't one you could miss."
"Well, he was picked up in the desert about two years ago, dying of thirst. He couldn't explain anything, because he didn't seem able to speak any of the fifty languages of Northern or Central Africa. So they gave up trying at last, and found him work imitating what he saw others do, at which they say - of course, it was before I was here - that he was very willing and quick.
"He was quick also at learning the language here, and when he could talk he told an amazing tale of having run away from a city which lies in the heart of the desert, and has kept to itself for more years than he was able to count. It was a wild tale that no one really believed; but the District Commissioner, Beale, took an interest in it, and questioned him for a time, writing down as much of his answers as he could understand.
"I had a talk with Beale about it, and he said that he believed the man at first - Abrah they call him - but he found that the more he seemed willing to believe, the wilder Abrah's tales would become, and when he said that he had fled because he had been condemned as a weakling physically unfit to live, Beale thought he'd been making a fool of him long enough, and put the whole manuscript on the fire."
"It certainly sounds absurd."
"So it does. Beale thinks that he was probably one of a slave-raiding gang that was travelling along the edge of the desert, but sufficiently far away to avoid our patrols, and that he made up the tale to avoid confessing that he had been engaged in a criminal occupation."
"That sounds more likely. And it may have puzzled him to think of a more probable lie. But what did Beale make of his having been unable to talk?"
"He thinks he could have talked if he had liked. He preferred to make gibberish sounds for the same reason - that it saved him the trouble of explaining who he was, and how he came to be there."
"And you think there may be more in it than that?"
"I don't know. You could argue that the more unlikely the tale, the more unlikely it becomes that he would have made up something he couldn't expect anyone to believe. But it isn't only that. I've had just a vague scrap of confirmation, for what it's worth. . . . You see that Scotsman, sitting away on the left?"
"The lank man with red hair where he isn't bald?"
"Yes. That's McGowd. He's a river pilot. He was an elephant-hunter up to ten years ago, when he got charged by a buffalo, and since then he's had something wrong with his inside. But in his young days - well, it's said there wasn't much between here and Timbuktu that he didn't know. I got talking to him once when he wasn't quite sober, and gave him another drink, and he told me that Abrah's tale is quite true."
"And when he got sober again?"
"Then he denied everything. When I reminded him of one or two details he'd given me, he got angry. But he didn't exactly say they weren't true. He asked me how long I thought he would keep his present job if a report got about that he was weak in the head? And did I know of another for him if he lost that? He may have meant that he knew something too queer to be believed, or only that he didn't want it known that he talked nonsense when he got drunk."
"What made you sound him about it?"
"Beale told me McGowd had once said he didn't doubt Abrah's tale, but when he heard that Beale himself thought it was lies he dried up."
"And you think he knows more than he's willing to say?"
"I don't know. I think I should like to find out."
"Well, good luck. I wish I could come too. It's queer that it was I who used to be fascinated by the great deserts. You remember how I once got all the books on the Gobi and the Sahara that I could find in the Liverpool library and was disappointed because they seemed to be more or less explored already?"
"Yes. You'll understand what the attraction is. But do you remember complaining that almost all the books were about the western Sahara, and that the Libyan desert was hardly mentioned at all?"
"Yes. But I understood the explanation to be that there was nothing to be said about it: that there isn't even an oasis south-east of Kufra; nothing but barren sand and a great heat for the best part of a thousand miles, so that no one ever goes there at all."
"If no one goes, how does anyone know?"
"Yes. That sounds logical. But if there were oases, wouldn't they have been discovered ages ago, as they have been in the west? And wouldn't caravan routes have crossed?"
"No one says that there are oases scattered about. The idea is that there's one spot in the middle where some people live who keep to themselves."
"Do you think you could get Abrah for a guide?"
"I thought of asking him."
"Well, if he's told the truth, it'll only be a matter of price, and you won't mind that. But if he's unwilling, it will show he's cooked the tale, and doesn't want to be shown up."
"That's one way of looking at it. I thought rather the opposite, that if he'd made it all up he wouldn't mind leading me nowhere at a good price, and saying he'd missed the way, but if it's true that he had to run for his life he mightn't be anxious to look his relatives up."
"Yes, of course, if you believe that. For that matter, if they don't care to receive callers, it mayn't be very healthy for you. But if you mean to, I know it's no use saying that. So I'll say good luck again, and wish I were coming too. . . . By the way, when you were in Cairo, did you happen to meet a girl named Joselyn Wilde?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Not particularly?"
"I met her once at a dance. A dark, vivid girl? Keen on sports?"
Yes. He remembered her well. Once seen, she had returned to his mind a score of subsequent times, so that the thought of seeking her through the world had come to contend with this desert dream. It had been a definitely additional argument, however vaguely visualized, for the resignation of his commission. But he had seen her only once. Had talked with her for ten minutes after a single dance. What a longer acquaintance would have done it was simple to guess.
It had been a common fear of the twins that they might be drawn to the same girl, which had gone far to reconcile them to being parted by the separate careers which had been chosen for them rather by family tradition than by themselves. Leonard understood instantly the fear which that "Not particularly?" had implied. He buried his own vague impulse as he added: "I saw her for a few minutes only. Is it a case for congratulations?"
"Not yet. I wish it were. Perhaps if I'd been able to get rather more leave! But I understood that her stay in Cairo would not be long, and if you don't really need me here for any row that - - "
"No. Of course not. If that's the idea, you'd better get back on the next train, and make what use you can of the leave you've got."
"Very well. Thanks. I'll go back tomorrow."
Denis spoke with a relief born of something more than a suspicion that that short meeting between his brother and Joselyn Wilde had been the commencement from which her attraction to himself, which had subsequently developed, had had its root - that she did not doubt that it was with himself, in the fancy dress that the occasion required, that she had had the single dance, the subsequent conversation in which mutual attraction had led to the first tentative self-revelations which are the opening tactics of the battle of love, as when the peacock shakes out his tail. Well, if Leonard were indifferent to her, what was the importance of that? But, if he had become free to wander about, the Libyan desert would be a better destination than the Cairo hotel where Joselyn Wilde might be on the next floor, and more accessible to him than to a lieutenant in Alexandria harbour, liable at any moment to be much farther away. Love between the brothers might be great, and their trust strong, but that was no reason that either should be put to so hard a test if matters would arrange themselves in another way.
Denis reverted to the previous subject to ask: "Do you think of taking McGowd along?"
"No. I don't know that he's physically fit. And, besides, he drinks more than he should. He may have been a good man twenty years back, but his day's gone. Anyway, I don't suppose that he'd entertain the idea. It's Abrah for me."
Next morning, Denis took the train back to Cairo. On his arrival, he learnt that Miss Wilde had left a few hours earlier on her way to Khartoum. He had some consolation two days later when a note addressed to the Relief reached his hands, making it plain that she was no more willing than himself that their acquaintance should end because life led them for the moment by separate ways.
CHAPTER II
THREE weeks later, Joselyn Wilde sat on the same verandah of the Paris Hotel where the Kinnear brothers had talked before. She had heard a report in Khartoum that a lieutenant of that name had set out with a single native servant to explore the unknown interior of the Libyan desert, and had stopped on her way back to Cairo with an object which she was now disclosing to Air-Pilot Jackman, a gaunt, hatchet-faced commercial aviator, with a reputation for being endowed with courage and skill and luck in about equally generous proportions.
"He took some camels," he said, "and those about the best string he could get. They've got enough water with them to float a raft. I don't see why you should think he'll have come to harm. Not yet, anyway."
"I don't think anything of the kind. I'm not proposing that we fly to relieve him, or bring him back. I thought I should just like to pay him a friendly call. I suppose you could do it, and be back the same night? What I asked was how much it would cost."
Air-Pilot Jackman avoided a direct reply. He said: "Yes might be back the same day, if you knew just where he is, and flew straight there. And if you could make a sake landing anywhere within ten miles."
"But the desert's all flat. I didn't think there'd be any difficulty about alighting or taking off."
The airman looked at his attractive but too persistent questioner with a humorous tolerance which he might not have shown to an equal masculine ignorance. "Flat, is it?" he asked. "I don't know why so many people have that idea. Why should a country be flat because there's an absence of rain? I don't say there isn't an answer even to that in the end, but it's a process that takes millions of years, and I doubt whether you'd wait the time. . . . The Libyan desert is hills, and gorges, and black rocks, and the hollows of river-beds that have been dry from the time of Adam, or long before, and rough plains, and sand-dunes that rise and fall like a moving sea, only with waves that are ten times higher than any the water heaves. No, it's not over-easy to pick a landing that will let you get out alive, and harder still to find one where you can be sure that you won't damage the 'plane too much to take off again. You have to be careful when you know you can't get a pint of water anywhere for more than five hundred miles."
"But you've flown across it before?"
It was because of that fact that she had been advised to see Jackman, though perhaps less with the expectation that he would do what she required than that he would be able to persuade her of the plain folly it was. He had flown across the waterless desert, to Tunisia and back again, and' he felt it to be a risk which a man may take once with good hope that his life will last, but to make it a habit would be suicidal mania in an acute form.
"Yes," he said, "I've crossed it both ways, and I'm here today. But I knew every minute for eight hundred miles that, if I were forced down, no one would ever see me alive again. . . . And you ask me to fly round looking for a man who may be anywhere in about half a million square miles."
"That's not a fair way to put it. We know the direction in which he set out, and how long he's been gone, and when you're high up you must be able to see an immense distance in the clear air. . . . I'll put it this way, if you like: Suppose you agree to search for seven hours at not less than a hundred and fifty miles an hour - you know you can do more than that - and, come straight back if we've seen nothing by then. Say four hours in a bee-line back. That's eleven in all. There must be a price for which you'd be willing to do that, and I'm not asking you to say what it is."
"Well, that's fair enough." He thought he saw a way of ending a proposal which he was unwilling to entertain seriously. He named a price which he supposed to be beyond reasonable discussion.
Joselyn pulled a slender memorandum book from her bag, and wrote it down. "Five hundred pounds?" she said. "I suppose that's an inclusive figure? Well, it's a bit stiff, but I don't mind. Shall we say half an hour before tomorrow? I suppose it's an advantage to make an early start. You'll be satisfied if I give you a cheque on a London bank? I shall have to cable if you want actual cash"
He stared at her silently, taking the proposition seriously for the first time. Misreading his hesitation, she added: "I could let you have a hundred in cash, or a bit more, but I don't want to delay while I get the lot."
"I'm not worrying about that. You're not the sort to do me down with a dud cheque. Do you mind telling me why you're so keen on this flight?"
"I'm not wonderfully keen. It's just a fancy. Lieutenant Kinnear's a friend, and I thought I'd give him a call that he wouldn't expect. It's no more than a lark."
"Oh yes, it is. It's a very dangerous thing to attempt with no more object than that."
"That depends on what we consider to be worth while. And I don't think the danger's anything like you make out. Not with such a pilot as you. I know it would be all up if you were to crash in a desert place. But why should you? You don't expect to crash any day when you fly to Alexandria or Khartoum. . . . But there's one thing I want to ask you particularly. You know it's said that Lieutenant Kinnear has gone in search of a lost city in the desert, and everyone thinks it's an utterly mad thing to expect to find. You've flown across it, and seen more, perhaps, than anyone else in a thousand years. Do you think it possible that such a place may really exist?"
"No. I don't. I'd go further than that. I'd bet a thousand to one that there's no such place. You were right when you said that, flying high, I could see an immense way, and I can tell you this: Going and coming back - and I didn't take quite the same route - it was all the same. South-east of the Kufra group of oases, there isn't a well, there isn't a sign of life, or a glimmer of green. It's a dead world, dead and dry. Why should men live there, or what would they live on? And shouldn't I have seen them, if they did? It's not a sensible thing to believe."
"Then, if that's so, I think we ought to find Lieutenant Kinnear, and let him know that he's wasting time. If we don't, he'll go on looking for something that isn't there till his water's gone. He's just the sort to keep on a day too long, and die of drought on the way back. I called it a game before, but I think now it's something we're bound to do. He's been misled by a silly tale, and you're the one man who's seen the truth with his own eyes, and can tell him to throw it up, so that he'll have to listen."
Air-Pilot Jackman made no further protest. "If it's to be half an hour before dawn tomorrow," he said, "I'd better have an overhaul now."
CHAPTER III
LEONARD KINNEAR lay awake in the night, and considered stars - stars that were always there in the cloudless sky till the swift coming of dawn, and that shone with a brilliance never seen through the misty air of his native land. He was not depressed, which would have been a condition of mind not to be reached from a light cause in the pure dry air of that sunlit land. But he had become aware of the wildness of what he did. For nearly three weeks he had come on, with Abrah for guide, through the barrenness of the sun-baked land. He could not tell how far he had come, though he knew the pace had been much less than theory would have allowed, but he must have come far. And there had been no sign either of life, or that life had been from remotest time. Not so much as a whitened bone. Not a shrivelled cactus, a withered thorn, or a sand-lizard darting from stone to stone.
It had been a land, as tradition said, of absolute drought and death. And his water, on which life depended, was going fast. How much longer should he go on, risking life for so vain a goal, and with no plan of what he should do if he should find it to be more than mirage, or the invented tale of a cornered man? Surely for three days yet, or perhaps four, or perhaps five. He knew that he would be reluctant to say that the moment to turn had come. For it was a tale that he still believed.
As to that, he told himself that he had three reasons, slender enough, but still sufficient to lure him on. The one was that Abrah was leading him in a direct line. He had been able to check that, not only by sun and stars, but by a pocket-compass he carried, the use of which he doubted that Abrah knew.
"How do you know the way," he had asked "through this desert land?"
And Abrah had replied: "I watched the stars as I came. I had been taught the lore of the stars."
Well, he might have to rely on the same friends. Suppose his compass were broken or lost, and Abrah fled (a contingency that was never long out of his mind), he might find the cloudless sky would contain the only guides that would lead him backward the way he came.
But he knew that Abrah had led him straight, by whatever means. There had been times when they had bent aside to avoid high or difficult ground, but they had come back to the same course, as his compass showed, and there was a good presage in that.
The second reason had been Abrah's reluctance to come, and the reason he gave. He said he had a great fear. If he should return to his own people, they would surely kill him, and what sense was there in doing that? If Lieut. Kinnear should seek their gates, he did not know what they would do, but he expected it would be the same thing. Was the white lord anxious to die?
He had been induced to come at last by a great bribe, and on a bargain that he should lead to no more than a distant view of the city of which he told. He admitted that there were no camels or horses there, nor other means of a swift pursuit. If Leonard were to venture a nearer approach, it was to be alone, after giving him one of the swifter camels with which to fly and sufficient water to enable him to get back alive.
On that bargain he had reluctantly come, but Leonard knew that there may often be a faint or even a treacherous heart in a body of fine physique, and, remembering that first reluctance, he had a lively fear that Abrah's heart might fail and that he might wake any morning to find himself alone and the camels gone. It was an idea that gave him no better than broken and restless sleep, but it made a reality of the dangers that lay ahead.
The third reason was that he had used the opportunity of this solitary companionship to learn something of Abrah's own language, and had confirmed the fact that the man possessed a speech which was radically different from anything he knew - and he knew much - of Northern Africa's many tongues. Such a language could not be improvised. It was evidence of the existence of an isolated tribe, living in or beyond the desert, though it might not prove more than that. Abrah admitted that it had no written form, which suggested that the civilization of those who spoke it could not be high.
Yet if Abrah were to be classed as a savage, Leonard recognized that he was of a high type. His habits were cleanly, his voice pleasantly modulated; his obedience prompt and intelligent; his manner respectful, but without servility; and his physique was magnificent.
Leonard could not acquire a language completely in three weeks, but he learnt much, and that in a conversational form. He observed that its grammar had affinities to that of Latin, and that it had words that were derived from Latin or Greek, or that had come down from a common source. To those languages it was clearly a cousin, if not a child.
Now he lay awake till the sky was transfigured by a violet dawn, and he heard Abrah moving among the hobbled camels, and talking to them in that tongue, and he resolved that his search should not cease till the last pint of measured water had been consumed, leaving only the barest margin that would suffice for the homeward way. . . . The wind rose with the dawn; the wind that plays with the desert sand like a giant child; that plays with it, as it flings the waters about when its wings beat upon the wide surface of sea. But the sand is a better toy.
Now it scooped hollows among the dunes, with smooth wide imprints therein, as though it were there that gigantic mammals had lain. It forced smooth gutters that were like the trails of immense snakes through the sand. It whirled round as a dog turns, treading the place where it will lie. The great dunes rolled like billows of running sand. On and on they rolled in the wind, and as they rolled they made mysterious sounds from the grinding of the myriad grains of the sand. They sounded at times like a giant snoring in sleep, and at others like the throbbing of distant drums.
Had this been a day on which the wind sought to display its ultimate rule of the desert and all it held, it would have increased its might till it tore up the dunes to their foundations of rock, filling the air for a hundred miles with a blind havoc of whirling sand, which it would lay at last in fantastic piles in another place at the caprice of its lordless will.
But today, as the sun came straight upward out of the east and increased its power, the wind sank, as though it were leaving the stage for another artist to take his turn. The heat increased with each hour as the little file of water-burdened camels padded over trackless routes which the wind had swept bare, and which had been smoothed and darkly polished by the age-long friction of flying sand. There were places where the whole surface had been polished until a foothold was hardly kept.
Before noon, the rocks had become so hot that they would burn an incautious hand, and when the sun rose to its midmost height there came a sound, fifty yards ahead, like the discharge of a six-inch gun, when a mass of igneous green-black rock, bursting from the intense heat, flung huge fragments into the air. It did no harm to the approaching caravan beyond that a camel's shoulder was streaked with red from where a flying splinter had torn its neck. But it demonstrated a second phase of the alchemy by which the action of sun and air was shattering and grinding the surface of a once-mountainous land, so that, at a distance of time that might be remote, but was no less sure, it would have reduced all to a common level of wind-blown sand.
As they advanced, they were confronted by a low ridge of jagged rock, smooth-polished and brightly black in the strong light of the midday sun, to which Abrah, who had been increasingly nervous and watchful during the last two days, pointed and said: "It is from there that you will see that I have told you that which is true, and it will be the farthest that we can go. If we see no man approach, we may venture to climb the ridge, so that we avoid to become separated from the camels by more than a few yards, for (as I have said before) they have no beasts which could make pursuit. But if we are seen, we must be instant to flee, for you may not believe how far they can throw their spears if you have not seen."
But they saw no man, nor any sign that there was human life in that barren place, until they had mounted the ridge. It was not high, but it was too steep at the last for the burdened camels, which they would not otherwise have wished to show on the rocky skyline to which they climbed. They hobbled them therefore in a little hollow where the afternoon shade began, though it was no more than a few inches as yet, and made a cautious finish of the ascent.
Lying flatly under the narrow shadow of a sharp-toothed pinnacle of up-jutting stone, Leonard Kinnear looked down on a wide level of sand, and beyond that to what looked like a gigantic mile-wide mushroom of rock, beneath which there was a long low vista of vivid green. Far off to the right, there was a grove of date palms rising high into open air, but, apart from that, whatever cultivation there might be was under the mushroom shadow, so that it would be invisible to the occupant of a high-flying 'plane.
It was a formation of rock which, on a smaller scale, had become familiar during the past weeks. For it would often be that a softer stratum of lower calcareous rock would be rubbed away by the incessant sand-papering of the wind, so that hollows would be formed, deep and wide, and destined to increase with a slow inexorable certainty, until a grain too many would fall, or be worn off, and the overhanging weight of the harder granite would collapse with a dull thunder of sound which would be audible many miles away, while high clouds of sand would be flung up and spread far to obscure the sun.
But this was hollowed to an extent and with a regularity which, though it might have been the wind's work at first, had become evidence of human brains, and of human hands, as was that ordered streak of vegetation below. The puzzle was how, if the rock had been cut away throughout, as Abrah's talk had implied, the higher stratum could be sustained, having become the roof of a lost support. . . .
Abrah moved restlessly, "Effendi, you have seen? It would be safer to go."
Leonard heard, but was not quick to respond. He recognized fear in the voice of a man who would have been a match for any three of the mongrel Arab rivermen of the Nile, and who did not otherwise play the part of a coward. But there was, as yet, no menace in what he saw. he should turn now it would be with a meagre ill-founded to gain belief. He had not set eyes on a living man! Was he to say he had fled from the distant sign of a hanging rock and a grove of palms? There were the camels behind; there was a good rifle beneath his hand. But, by his bargain with Abrah, the man could go now any moment he would, and his service was not to be lightly lost.
"Have patience awhile," he said. "We are safe here, being hid. I would see more."
Abrah grumbled: "They will have our blood if they may. They can throw far."
But he kept his place, with no more words after that, until they heard that which drew their eyes to the sky.
CHAPTER IV
JOSELYN sat at the pilot's side, and looked down on a barren waste that varied only in a monotonous way. So she had looked since dawn, and searchingly during the last four hours, till her eyes ached for that which she did not find.
They flew high. They had made wide circling sweeps in the air, as a dove will do till it sees the distant landmark that guides it home. But they had seen barren hills, or desert, and nothing more. Never the shine of water. Never a patch of oasis-green. Never the sight of a living man.
They could not hear each other speak for the engine's roar, though it was a noise to which they had become so used that it was itself unheard. The pilot wrote on his pad, and passed her the slip: I have done more than I undertook. You can see there is nothing here. I am going back now.
She could not deny that he was within his right. And it certainly seemed that there could be no desert city such as the improbable tale had said. The ancient tradition was surely true that it was the most absolute desert, perhaps, that the world contained. But Denis Kinnear, she did not doubt, must be somewhere there. It would be bitter to go back, having failed in so large a way. She began to write. But he must be somewhere. Won't you try - - And stopped with a sudden realization that the roar of the engine had ceased, and that the propeller was slowing down. She was undisturbed by this, vaguely supposing it to have some connection with his purpose of turning back. But she left her writing for a verbal appeal. "Won't you try just - say another twenty minutes - more to the north than we've been yet? We don't want to go back beaten unless we must."
She wasted a pleading glance with the words, for he neither looked, nor made any answer to that which, in fact, he had not heard. His hands were busy among gadgets that had little meaning to her. Suddenly as it had ceased, the roar of the engine started again.
She must write now what she had spoken before. But he shook his head in reply. He wrote: I thought it was all up when the engine stalled. We must get back while we can.
She could make no protest to that, and remained silent, accepting the bitterness of defeat, but her eyes still continued to search the immense blank desert below.
The engine stopped - started - stopped - and resumed its rhythmic roar. The pilot's eyes and hands were on its controls, so that he had no spare thought or glance for the landscape below. But he must look when she reached over, touching his arm, and pointing far out to the left, and he nodded assent to the message her eyes conveyed, and which she spoke in words that he could not catch.
No water indeed, nor roof nor tent to indicate the dwellings of men, but far off, under the edge of what seemed to be, from that height, a slight change in the level of sandy plain, a grove of palms - an unmistakable grove, where he had thought that four hundred miles, right or left, would not have shown a grass-blade or a leaf of green. And then, moving out from the grove, a single upright figure, and a sudden glint as the sunlight was thrown back by a broad-bladed spear.
The pilot hesitated. He knew that she would have him descend. But, if he did, would he rise again? There was something wrong with the engine now. A fault of ignition, he supposed it to be. It made a large doubt that the long way back would be safely flown. And if he must fail in that, it would be better to go down where there was a prospect of succour, of food, of life, even though the engine had spent its power.
True, the men that were here might be of no sure friendship, yet that was a minor count when to be alone in the desert was certain death. But could he make a safe landing here? It was rough, rocky, much-broken ground. He did not see those who lay under the sheltering rock, nor the camels below the farther side of the little ridge, or his decision might have been sooner made. Perhaps, if he could make a safe landing for half an hour, he could patch up the engine to do that at which it might otherwise fail. While his mind hung irresolute he came round in a long descending curve, and as he did so he found that he need vex it no more with a decision already made. The engine stalled again, and could be coaxed to no further effort. The parachutes? But he was already low, and to abandon the 'plane was to lose hope that they would ever re-cross four hundred miles of unwatered desert that divided them from the civilization from which they came. With the impetus of his failing speed he came round into the wind, and searched the rough ground below for a landing-place that would be level and firm.
He said: "I'm going down. You can jump if you like. It may be the safer way." And then, as the seconds passed, and that chance of safety was lost: "No, don't move. You'd better sit where you are now."
The land rose up to meet them, looking worse at a nearer view. He did all that skill and coolness could, but he had seldom had more need of his reputed luck as the wheels struck an ice-smooth surface of rock and ran bumping across foot-high ridges to which ice would have been brittle and soft. But, as by a miracle, they kept their course until they ran into a narrow pocket of sand, when the 'plane swung sharply round, pitched over with a crumpling of metal wing, and lay still.
CHAPTER V
LEONARD watched the approaching 'plane with a wonder which lessened as he formed a natural misconception of its significance in that lonely sky. Obviously those who dwelt in the oasis beneath the rock were not as isolated from the outside world as has been presumed from the fact that their existence was unknown to it. Probably they had made frequent secret excursions to civilization in earlier days, before the aeroplane had provided them with a means of communication that was not only secret but swift and sure. The plausibility of this interpretation increased as the 'plane turned from its course and came round on a lowering curve.
He saw no cause for alarm, supposing that the pilot knew where he should land, and that the engine had been deliberately shut off, but the fact of this contact with civilization, as he supposed it to be, gave him a perhaps illogical confidence in the character of these desert-dwellers, so that when he saw the machine bump perilously along the rocks, and then collapse in a sideward crash, he rose with no thought of caution, and ran in its direction with an impulse of rescue as natural and unrestrained as though he had witnessed the accident in an English field.
Abrah looked at it with different eyes. He had no opinion of what it meant, but he was sure that it had not come to earth unobserved by those into whose hands he would be reluctant to fall. He saw his white employer, who had been a stranger to him a month before, and whom by the bargain of his engagement he was now entitled to leave, jumping down the rocks and sliding in knee-deep sand with no thought of concealment in what he did. For a time he neither followed him nor retreated, watching him in an irresolute mood. He looked over the plain at the mushroom city he feared, from which there was, as yet, no sign of issuing life. With an angry frown, and a mutter of words in his native tongue, he followed his foolish master towards the place where the fallen aeroplane had now become a fiercely burning column of flame. . . .
Sound-limbed still, but shaken and dazed, Joselyn had struggled up from the bed of sand upon which she had been shot out of the 'plane. Her hair was heavy with sand, and the sharp stones had scratched cheek and neck, giving her more pain than she would have felt from a deeper wound. Her ear bled. Beyond that, she was not injured at all. She looked at the wreck, and was aware of a mounting flame. At the sight, her mind cleared. Tales she had read of the horror of pilots trapped and burned in such wrecks caused her to hasten towards the 'plane. but she saw that Jackman, like herself, had been thrown clear. Only, less fortunately, he had been thrown a shorter distance and on a surface of rock. He lay five yards away, and even there the heat was hard to endure.
There was, indeed, heat enough on the surface of sun-baked rock without the addition of that petrol-fed pillar of flame. It scorched her hand when she touched it as she dragged him farther away.
When she had done this, she must consider whether it were a living man she had saved. He was insensible, but she did not think he was dead. There was the certainty of a broken leg. She saw that blood ran from his mouth, which might mean anything from a broken rib piercing his lungs to no more than a bitten tongue. She stood up, looking round for aid she was unlikely to find, and saw Leonard Kinnear twenty yards away, with Abrah (who could run faster than he) close at his back.
Joselyn looked at Leonard - Denis she supposed him to be - in a natural surprise that he had appeared thus from she knew not where, and Leonard looked with more amazement at her. Abrah's eyes looked a different way, and saw other things. He saw a group of men who ran fast towards where they stood, and there were spears in their hands. He exclaimed sharply, and next moment they were all looking at the same sight.
Leonard had a vain wish for the rifle which he had left lying beneath the rock from which they had watched, when he ran to the burning 'plane. But it was dearly not a case for a useless fight, even if they had had means of defence. The runners were still a long distance away. There should be time to get first to the place where the camels were.
But the air-pilot lay at their feet. Joselyn said desperately: "We can't leave him here. What are we to do?"
Leonard stood irresolute. It was hopeless to attempt to get him away. Were they to lose all for a dead man? Abrah had started to run. He came back. He understood Joselyn's gesture, if not her words. He lost no time in showing what he could do.
With the help of their urgent hands, the insensible body was taken upon his back. With that burden he could still run.
Leonard, unburdened, might have run faster than he, but Joselyn, though she ran well, made slower progress over the stones, for which she was less suitably shod.
They looked back at pursuers who were of a huge stature and strength, making Abrah's assertion that he had been a weakling among them a possible tale. There were nine in all, carrying broad-bladed spears that were of six-foot length, but which looked short in their hands, and which were, in fact, balanced to throw. One of the nine was well ahead, and running at such a pace as increased the distance between himself and his companions, while it was bringing him rapidly nearer to them.
Leonard saw this, but he still thought it to be a race which they would be likely to win, his thought being rather on the rifle upon the crest of the little ridge than the camels below. When he had that in hand, he had some confidence that he could check pursuit.
Joselyn could not tell whether the race would be lost or won, not knowing the goal in view, but she knew that she could do no more, though she saw that the men ran within their strength that they might not leave her behind.
But Abrah looked back, and in his eyes there was a definite fear. "Effendi," he asked, "could you drag her on? . . . You do not understand how they can throw."
Leonard gave Joselyn a hand, but it was doubtful that they did better for that, being less able to choose their steps on difficult ground. He thought: "If I should run ahead, I could get the rifle in time, and could save us all," but it was a thing which, against reason, he was reluctant to try.
But Abrah's mind was relieved by a cunning thought. "It is best," he said to himself, "that it should be he, for I suppose he already knocks at the door of death." But he did not cast his burden away. He only ran less than before, so that he fell a little to the rear of the other two.
When he felt a hard blow on the back, so that he was thrown forward upon the ground, he was neither surprised nor annoyed. But he was very quick to rise, rolling the burden from off his back; and, as he did so, he was aware of a twitch of pain that told him that his plan had been near to fail. The spear, in spite of the distance that it had come, had driven completely through the air-pilot's body, and there was an inch of its point which was red with Abrah's blood rather than his.
Abrah had no time to consider that. The spear came from the hand of a man he knew, and one whom he had a special reason to hate. He meant that it should go back.
Jackman lay still. His luck must have been missing that day. He may have been dead already. Anyway, a blade that was four inches wide at its broadest point had gone through his body without waking a sign of life. Now Abrah pressed a heavy foot on his back and wrenched out the spear. Almost in the same action he had risen to his full height, and the spear was lifted and drawn backward to throw.
His pursuer saw what he would do, which there was a second's space to avoid as the weapon came. He dropped face-forward, so that the spear, already rising into the air, should go over his head. But Abrah had supposed that he would do that and had shortened the throw. The spear sank between a man's shoulders a second time. Abrah gave a bellow of laughter such as had not come from his mouth since he had left that place two years before with a goatskin of water upon his back.
They ran on again with the certainty that they would be first over the ridge, which was now only a short distance ahead, and would have been well content but for the sound of an appalling uproar which came from where the camels had been concealed on the farther side.
CHAPTER VI
THE Arab, desiring camel-meat on the next day, will slaughter the beast he dooms with a knife-thrust in at the lower end of the neck precisely as a pork-eating Christian will stick a pig. It may be among the easiest of all methods of crossing the bridge of death, but it allows a vocal minute before consciousness falters and fails.
There was a man now who slaughtered the hobbled camels with his broad-bladed spear, and the resulting pandemonium could have been heard through the clear desert air three or four miles away. His was no object of meat, but to destroy the means by which unwelcome visitors might have got away to disclose a secret which had been kept for two thousand years. His work was soon done, and might have ended with safety for himself had it needed even ten seconds less than it did.
As it was, he came into Abrah's sight as he withdrew his spear from the last of the screaming beasts. There was no danger for him in that, for Abrah had no weapon which would cross the dividing space, but the man, seeing this, could not pass the occasion to try a throw.
He threw well enough, and had Abrah been new to the game he would have been likely to meet his death, but it was that which he had practised from boyhood days. He bent aside, and the spear whistled past his ribs with a clearance of six inches or eight, and became as near a danger to Leonard, who was a few paces behind, having paused to pick up the rifle.
The man who had cast the spear ran away, but in no panic of speed, thinking that before Abrah could reach it he would be out of range, and having the confidence of one whose friends are many and not far. He knew nothing of firearms, nor was he destined to learn, for the bullet came more quickly than sight or sound, and gave him an instant end. It took little time to see that the camels were done. Those that were not dead had fallen and were so far gone that their necks lay flat on the sand.
Leonard ran back to the top of the ridge, that he might meet the pursuit with the advantage that the position gave. He met Joselyn, who had been half-forgotten in the urgent effort to save the camels which were so vital for their return, and who had slackened her pace and then paused to look back as she gained the ridge. She said, in a breathless way, for she had run to the limit of muscles and lungs: "They are not coming on. They stopped where Mr. Jackman was left."
Cautiously, not to expose himself, for he had no desire to become a target for flying spears, Leonard looked back and saw that it was as she said.
There were eight in all, of whom one or two looked at the man of their own race whom Abrah had killed, and he thought they laughed. But most of them were in a curious group around the dead airman, whose appearance must have been very strange to them.
Bunched as they were, they would have been an easy mark at a longer range and in a worse light, and Leonard could have emptied his rifle with the certainty that he would have fewer foes when it was done; but what use was there in that? With the camels dead, they were trapped, and must find a way of parley, and then of peace, or there could be no comfort for them.
He asked Abrah, who had come to his side: "What will they do now?"
Abrah, who had funked it before, seemed, curiously enough, to be in better heart now that they were caught in a net that they could not break. Leonard wondered whether he could be so elated at the way the first encounters had gone that he did not see that, though they might have won a battle, they had lost a campaign. Now he said: "They will surround us to make an end. But they will not throw spears till they are so near that they cannot miss, for it would be to give them to us. When they are near, we can talk."
Leonard asked: "After what we have done, will they let us go?"
"I cannot say what they will do. But it will be no worse because two are dead. It may be better for that." This sounded unlikely enough, but they were a people apart, who might have unexpected ways. Certainly it would be well if they could be brought to the point of discussion in a peaceable mood. But even if they should be willing to let them go (which was much to hope) how was it to be done? The slaughter of the camels seemed to be an irrevocable obstacle, besides indicating that their departure was just what these people were determined to stop.
But it was already becoming clear that Abrah's first prophecy would be promptly fulfilled. Not less than two hundred spearmen were now spreading upon the plain, and bands of them were moving outward to east and west with the evident purpose of surrounding the little ridge. They were all men of a huge stature and fine physique, so that it might well be that Abrah had been esteemed a weakling among them rather than of exceptional strength. They wore a single, loosely belted garment of white, sufficient for such a climate, and intended rather to stave off the desert heat than to give warmth to those it covered, and they had white turbans upon their heads.
It was not a menace easily to be endured by those who were in the midst of the circle of flashing spears. It seemed a poor chance to let so many approach within talking range. Would they stop for words when, being so many, they had come so near? Leonard imagined that he might call for parley and be answered by a rush that would overwhelm, or the annihilating hail of a hundred spears.
He said to the girl: "I don't know whether you can shoot, or that it will serve any purpose to try, but there is a sporting rifle packed with other things in one of the camel's loads which there will be time to get before they arrive. If we should shoot from both sides it might serve to hold them back for a time, and perhaps till dark, though what use it would be in the end is not easy to see."
"I can shoot a little," she replied, "but it seems silly, placed as we are. We ought to make friends, if we can."
"I'm afraid, with their love of secrecy, and we having killed two of them, it isn't likely to be easy to do, but I agree that it's the best choice that we have."
"Effendi," Abrah interposed, "you should shoot one, if not more. It would be best to shoot a woman, if one were there, which there will not be, but we may hope that a man will do."
It was puzzling advice, and had the sound of wishing to kill the exact equivalent of themselves. Did Abrah think that their own deaths did not matter so long as they had been revenged in advance? It was a possible explanation, but Leonard felt that the advice must have a more reasonable basis than that, and Abrah knew the ways of these people, which should give wisdom to what he said.
Leonard levelled his rifle, and then paused with a scruple, not of the wisdom, but of the ethics of what he had been disposing himself to do. To kill for the defence of their own lives - yes, that was a natural impulse of self-protection. If it were to be a fight to the last, he would not delay to kill all he could. But to select one man, and kill him deliberately as a politic preliminary to the opening of peaceful negotiations, had a savour of murder which might have had power to delay his hand even had he been clearer as to the purpose of what he did.
"If I shoot," he thought, "even though I kill no one, it may warn them to approach in a more circumspect way, and may give more time for Abrah's voice to be heard." So he sent a random bullet over their heads.
But it had no such effect. They came on at the same pace as before, and with no effort to take cover at all. The distance was rapidly narrowing, and he saw that the time for scruples was gone.
As there was no one who had the appearance of a woman among them, the question of taking Abrah's advice literally did not arise. He took aim at one who flourished a spear in a particularly truculent manner, and had the satisfaction of seeing him pitch forward in his stride, and turn a somersault before he lay still.
The effect of this shot was different from that of the one before. Then there had been no more than a sudden noise. Now there was death. The runners halted. First around the dead man, and then farther away, until the whole advance stayed. They did not withdraw out of range, and Leonard could have picked them off where they stood, but his purpose had been warning rather than destruction, and now he waited to see what they would do. He had his reward when a man separated himself from a little knot of conference, and came forward alone, waving a white cloth over his head.
Abrah said at once: "Effendi, give me leave, and a white rag, and I will find out what they are willing to do."
It was evident that he had no doubt of the protective value of the ancient symbol of truce, or the good faith of those by whom it was now displayed. Leonard had a doubtful thought of whether he were worthy of so large a trust, or might be tempted to make his own peace at their cost, but if he should go with him he did not see that he would be better placed, nor perhaps even as well. His knowledge of their language, as he had gained it in the last three weeks, was not enough to encourage him to undertake such a negotiation himself, and an interpreter who is also a principal must be trusted perforce. He considered also that Abrah had acted with loyalty during the last hours, to the point which honour required, or even somewhat beyond.
"You can go," he said, "and find out what terms they will make, telling them that we desire nothing but peace, and if they had not killed our camels, and come at us with spears, we would have met them in a friendly way. You may tell them also that I have weapons which are pregnant with many deaths. And make it plain that you must return alone. I will have none of them here till we have come to a full accord. Are they men who will keep their word?"
Abrah did not appear to listen with care, acting like one who knew what he had to do, as perhaps he did, being concerned with his own kin. He answered the final question with: "There is no matter of that. They will do what they are told, as we all must."
With this cryptic reply, he went as one in some haste, so that he met the approaching envoy while he was still some distance away.
They watched the two stand for some minutes in talk, and then walk back together to the group from which the envoy had come. Here they conferred again, but when the group broke up Abrah did not return.
There was some calling, and waving of spears, and the whole of the two hundred warriors began to withdraw. Abrah went off with those to whom he had talked, and Leonard, who had his field-glasses directed upon him during this time, saw them all disappear into the city, if such it were, under the opposite rocks. He could not observe that there was compulsion in this. It appeared that it was all done in a friendly accord. It might be well enough, or even better than that, but it was not simple to understand, and could be interpreted in several ways, some of which were less pleasant than others. . . . And it would be dark in four hours, and their defence be less easy than in the day.
CHAPTER VII
Crisis being in suspense, if it were not past, the two who were left alone became conscious of each other, and of the enigma of how they met.
Leonard looked at his companion in a natural wonder. He asked: "How on earth did you come to be flying here?"
"I thought," she said frankly, "that you might be glad if I looked you up. Of course, I didn't expect to crash, and I didn't know what a mess I should find you in."
He was too chivalrous to say that, if her 'plane had not appeared, the worst part of the mess, and, in particular, the loss of the camels, would not have occurred; but she saw that he still looked puzzled, as at an inadequacy in her reply. She added: "I heard a report in Khartoum that you were trying to find this place, though everyone said it didn't exist, and I thought - you'd be glad to see me."
As she ended, the confidence of her first explanation had left her voice. She thought him distant and strange. Was he angry that she had come? Even if he were more puzzled than the occasion seemed to require, he might still say he was glad! When she thought of how Denis and she had parted last month, and of the letter which had missed her at the hotel, and followed her up the Nile - well, there was a coldness in this reception hard to condone. Was he too concerned for the peril of the position to have thoughts for her? Or for the love he had protested before? With a sure instinct she felt the explanation to be other than that, but it had a baffling quality she could not define.
He answered kindly enough, but still with that friendly distance so hard to understand or endure: "It was a sporting thing for you to try, and of course I'm glad that you came. At least, I should be if I knew how to get you out of the mess we're in. I'd give something to hear - and to understand - what Abrah's saying now, and what they're saying to him! But even if he make peace, and they're willing to leave us alone, I don't see how we're to get away now that we've lost the camels and your 'plane's burnt. And it's hard to think that they'll be willing for us to go. . . . Do you think that there'll be any search for you, when they find that you don't return?"
"I don't know," she replied, but with an indifference as puzzling to him as his coldness had been to her, her mind still being rather on the manner than the matter of what he said. "I don't see why there should. I told Mr. Jackman that I didn't want it to get about. I thought it was just a matter - between ourselves. Of course, I didn't expect it would end like this."
He was bewildered again by the expression 'between ourselves', and this feeling caused him to regard the problem with a more direct attention than it had had from him before, so that the light of truth came to his mind. 'Who," he asked abruptly, "do you suppose that I am?"
She started at this question, inconsequent in itself, and having the sound of inexplicable insult from him to her. "Of course," she answered coldly, "I know who you are. You're Lieutenant Kinnear. Why do you ask?"
"Attached to the Relief?"
"Yes, of course. . . . At least, I heard something about your having resigned." (Was there, she wondered, some mystery about that, perhaps some scandal which he felt that he must confess before assuming that their past relations could be maintained?)
"I'm not that Lieutenant Kinnear, and it wasn't he who resigned. I'm his brother. People don't often tell us apart."
She looked at him in a doubting silence. It was hard to believe, though it seemed an unlikely lie. Was it some queer old-fashioned chivalry which prompted him to deny that he was himself, so that their relations might be on a footing of uncompromising formality until they should return to more conventional ways? If so, she would brush such nonsense aside with a firm hand. Surely, if ever, it was a time for realities, being in the peril they were!
Her look of doubt changed to an incredulous smile. "Yes," she said, "you certainly are alike! But if you want me to swallow that, perhaps you'll tell me first how you knew my name?"
"I met you at a fancy-dress ball in Cairo two or three months ago. You're not the sort that anyone would forget."
"But you - - " she began. "But it was then - - " She had almost said that it was then that she had fallen in love with him, even before his own feelings had been revealed. But had there been two to whom she had felt in that way, without knowing which was which? And this one, whom she had sought as her lover, was not he whom she had accepted, and to whom she was pledged - and was yet the one to whom she was attached by that tender memory of her first meeting, as she had afterwards supposed, with Denis Kinnear? Well, if that were so, she must be clear for the future, whatever had been before!
She saw that, although she might be unable to tell them dearly apart, there was the vital distinction that one had fallen in love with her. It was he to whom her kisses had been given in the past months. It was to him that her faith was due. And she believed at last that he was not here. How soon, and how, could she get away? As to that, there might be an answer, bad or good, approaching them now. For Leonard (as she now understood him to be), who was using his field-glasses again, said: "Abrah's coming back. He seems to be coming alone. There ought to be a good meaning in that."
CHAPTER VIII
As Joselyn's puzzled resentment at what she had taken to be her lover's inexplicable aloofness died out of her mind, it gave freer place to realization of the sharp peril in which she stood; and while knowledge of the unlikely truth drew her apart from one who was no more than the brother of him she had learned to love, it drew them closer than they had been before, on a different plane, as sharers of common dangers, and allied against them in a place most barren of other friends. It is better, at such a pass, as she had cause to perceive, to be with a true friend than with a lover who seems untrue. So that it was with a sense of comradeship better established than it had been at any time up to a few minutes before that they waited Abrah's return.
When he had left them, he had carried the spear which had been thrown at him by the first man whom Leonard had shot, having used it as a staff to which to bind the white rag which had been his warrant of safety among those from whom he had fled two years before. Now the spear was still in his hand (which might be a better omen even than the fact that he had been allowed to return), but the white rag that it bore was gone, and that was a fact harder to read.
"It looks," Leonard said, "as though he has made so close a peace for himself that its need is done. That may be for himself alone, so that he may come and go as he will; but it may be different for us."
"What shall you do," Joselyn asked, "if he says that he has gone over to them, or if you have reason to think him false?"
"I don't think he will say that. He will either be loyal to us, or he will attempt to persuade us that he is, so that he may lead us into whatever trap they have laid. But I think we must trust him, if we can; or, if we have a doubt, it should not be shown. For he is our only hope, and the only means - beyond the few words that I have - of communicating with those without whose friendship we shall be unable to live longer than the month that our food would last."
"Well, we shall soon hear what he has to say."
Abrah came to them with a face content, as one who had done well and expected praise. He said at once: "It is all agreed. They will accept our lives - mine and yours - for two of those who were slain, and they may take the woman's life also, as for the third man, though that may not so easily be arranged. But even of that there is good reason to hope.
"By that bargain, we have twelve months of a good life, and after that we must endure or fail, as the laws require."
"They will not help us to return?"
"They cannot do that through which they would be overwhelmed by the world. But that is no loss, for there is a much better life here than can be found in your land; and when you have seen what it is you will not wish to be away.
"Yet you fled?"
"It was to save my life. But having seen what life beyond the desert is like, I am not sure that I should do it again, even at the same need."
Joselyn, who could not understand what was said, interposed to ask: "Are we safe? Will they let us go?"
"It seems that we are to be safe, for a time at least, if we choose to stay, about which they would say that our choice is nil. If you will have a moment's more patience, I may be able to understand better myself before I try to explain."
He talked to Abrah for a few minutes further, and then turned to Joselyn to say: "It is a queer tale, which it would be less easy to understand if I had not heard most of it from Abrah before, though I had doubted that much of it could be true, and had not always followed what he said with complete understanding, or as carefully as I should have done had I known where we should be today.
"But - as briefly as I can put it - his tale is this: There is a community dwelling here from remote time, descended from an ancient race which had dominion over a wide land, which may be Egypt or not - I have not learnt on which side of the desert it lay - until they were conquered and massacred by hordes of savages who broke out upon them from a barbarous land. But a few fled to what may then have been no more than an oasis here, where they remained in safety, because no one but themselves knew that it existed, or was tempted to search so far in a barren waterless place. Their descendants, recognizing that, if they should reveal themselves to the world, they would be no more than a few score among nations of alien men, have relied upon the security that isolation gives, and this the more as they have gradually developed a higher standard of life, such as - they have supposed - would make them a tempting prey.
"Because they can support only a limited population, they have adopted a method of elimination by annual contests or competitions, in which either lives are lost, or the losers are subsequently put to death until the total population is reduced to the permanent maximum which they allow. Abrah fled across the desert when his life had been forfeited by this rule, he being defeated in a contest of speed by the man he killed when he pursued us as we came from the 'plane. He crossed the desert with no more than a bag of dates and a goatskin of water, which, to one of their physique, would have been held to be an impossible feat; and it is one that, he says himself, he would not try to repeat, at whatever need. As it was, he collapsed when he was within twenty miles of safety, and was picked up by a Sudanese desert patrol.
"He says that his people, or those who rule them, have no quarrel with us, and as to those we have killed, their deaths have simplified the position, as he hinted before that they would be likely to do. So long as we are content to observe their laws, it seems that we can remain here, taking the places of those who are dead, by which rule we shall have life for about a year, and after that we must keep ourselves by proving from time to time that we are of sufficient relative value to be retained."
"You haven't agreed to that?"
"I haven't agreed to anything. I'm just telling you what Abrah says. It isn't easy to see what better - indeed, what else there is for us to do."
"We must find some way of escape."
"We shouldn't differ about that. But the present question is, are we to go back with Abrah, or remain here, and probably be massacred during the night."
"I don't see how they could expect you to get the best of any of them. Most of them seem to be about seven feet high"
"Yes," he agreed. "And as strong as bullocks, and as active as boys. But Abrah says that all the contests are not of strength, but of excellences of different kinds. And there would be a year in which to decide in what class enter, and how we should prepare. . . . The real question is, if we agree, can we be worse off than we are now?"
"We should be, if we made a promise to stay. At least, I don't see how anything could be much more ghastly than that. . . . Do they have these competitions for women as well as men?"
"So I understand, though I don't know of what descriptions they are. But I don't understand that we are asked for any pledge that we shall stay. They assume that we have no choice. We are simply told that we can remain providing that we observe the laws of the community to which we have come. In fact, that is no more than every civilized state requires aliens to do."
"But they don't have such horrible laws."
"Perhaps not. Though it might be said that these people show better results than we who spend all our resources to save the weak and diseased, and to make sure that criminals don't feel the cold."
Joselyn did not discuss this, her mind having no vacancy for considering abstractions at such a time. She said: "Well, if we've got to!" She tried to reach a courageous gaiety as she added: "It ought to be an adventure worth having, if we come out safe at the other end."
"I'd better ask Abrah first," he said, "whether it's understood that we can keep our own possessions."
"That's a good idea. But it will be enough if you say yours. I've got none to lose."
She wondered silently in what manner her feminine needs would be supplied in that alien place, divided, she supposed, by a millennium of isolation from the civilization from which she came. But he made no reply, the major question which he had to discuss with Abrah being one which he would not mention to her, and beside which there was triviality in the salving of goods.
"Abrah," he said, "you have our trust, and though we would have preferred to return to our own people, I must thank you for what you have done. We will come with you now, as you propose, if I can be more clear on one point than I am yet. You said that our lives - yours and mine - would be secure for the next year, but you spoke about Miss Wilde with less definite words. I will agree to nothing by which her safety is left unsure."
Abrah was silent for a time, giving consideration to his reply. "I cannot promise," he said, at last, "of myself, for what advantage would that be to you? I said what I was told, and it is a question of how it should be taken, for ill or good."
"Which you can judge better than I?"
"Then I tell you it may be heard with a quiet mind. It's meaning was that a way will be found, but it is not yet concluded what it will be."
"I must have something better than that. I must be sure, or I will not move."
"Then you will choose death for both, that one (and she the woman!) be saved a shadow of risk which may never fall."
There was reason in this, but Leonard had noticed a subtle difference in Abrah's manner, and in his words, which he did not like. Since he had returned, he had spoken without actual rudeness, but in a different tone from that of the quayside labourer whom he had hired on the Nile bank. It was as though, being back with his people, and come to accord with them, he was already forgetting the obligations of less prosperous days. He spoke as an equal now, who had been a servant two hours before. Well, it was natural enough! It would be foolish to notice that. But it made his master, with doubtful logic more resolved than before that Joselyn should not be persuaded to yield herself to his people while exposed to a danger she did not know, and with which he was unwilling to disturb her mind.
"Yet," he said, "I am so resolved."
Abrah did not appear to resent this, nor to take it as rejecting the offer of peace which he had brought. He considered it in a grave way, as of a difficulty to be overcome. "I can promise this," he said, "as not being beyond the discretion I am allowed. If this matter be not arranged as you require, you shall be returned here, with the freedom you now have, and so that you shall not be worse placed than you are."
Leonard saw that, in reason, he could ask no more, and that it would, in any case, be useless to press Abrah for pledges beyond his power to fulfil. In fact, the offer exposed how utterly he was at the mercy of those who proposed that which he might take or leave, but the loss of refusal would be entirely his.
"That," he said, "is sufficient for me. I will ask one thing more, will my possessions be left in my own hands?"
"Do you think us thieves? You are not here among uncivilized men."
The difference in Abrah's tone was more evident than before. Being one of his own people again, the two years of menial service among those who cultivated dirt and disease, and various vices which he had not previously known, was ended now, to be no more than a bitter dream if he could re-establish himself as one fit for membership of that limited community.
Leonard took no notice of that. He said: "Well, it is what I am glad to hear."
CHAPTER IX
THEY went down to where the camels sprawled flaccidly with outstretched necks on the blood-drenched sands, and made a hurried choice from their loads of such things as they would be most likely to need before morning should come, or beyond that, in the incalculable strangeness of the place where they were to be - guests? Or what? - for a period which they could but fearfully guess, but which had the look of a long time.
The position of Abrah, who had been a willing servant at noon, had changed so much in the last hours that it was rather as one who solicits favours than as giving command that Leonard asked him to lend his aid to carry a portion of the articles he was anxious to take. But Abrah showed no reluctance to that, and his strength more than doubled the total that they were able to bear.
Certainly it seemed a quiet and desolate place where the camels lay. The scent of their blood had not called a hyena out of the rocks, or a vulture from the bare sky.
"I wonder," Leonard said, "that no birds of prey have come to so great a feast. Are there none in the desert here?"
"On what would they feed? There is nothing here but the barren rocks. I had not seen such a bird until I came to the river land."
"But you must have refuse that you throw out? Have you no creatures that lurk round you to find a meal?"
"We have nothing that we treat in such a fashion as that. What we would destroy, we cast into the water, that bears it away."
"There is a river here?" Leonard asked, in a natural surprise. "There is a stream that flows underground."
The sun was low now, and the sand had ceased to dance in the cooler air, as they made their burdened way across a rough plain that seemed wider to tread than it had been to their eyes in the glaring light. As they neared the mushroom rock, it grew broader, higher, blacker in the sunset light, with a greater marvel in the green cincture dividing it from the plain, which it overhung like a roof without apparent support.
Joselyn faced this strange approach to the vaguely imagined subterranean city with a determination of courage which she found hard to sustain. She had become physically and emotionally exhausted by the prolonged strain of her experiences since she had entered the aeroplane when the dawn had been no more than a faint light in the eastern sky. Vaguely, but no less acutely, she feared the ordeal of meeting the strange people to whose unproved faith her life and honour were now so utterly surrendered. What reception, what hospitality, would they be likely to meet? Would she be separated from the protector who was her lover's likeness, if not himself? Or would they be obtusely confined together, as though assumed to be intimately at one? Would Abrah continue to be with them, or would they be left to the mercy of these strangers of alien speech, without means of request or protest beyond the point to which signs might avail?
From these doubts her words came: "I wish we'd stayed where we were, for this night at least."
"Oh, I don't know," he answered, from a more buoyant mood, "we may as well see at once what we've got to face."
He had the satisfaction of feeling that a loaded automatic was in his pocket: a loaded rifle beneath his arm. There was not only the sense of power that the weapons gave, there was the significance of their being left in his hands. Their use might not have been fully understood, but there had been Abrah to explain, and two deaths to demonstrate the potentialities of that which was in his hands. Optimistically, he concluded that he would not have been allowed to bring them with him had there been hostile or treacherous purpose concealed beneath the verbal compact to which he had given choiceless consent.
Apart from that, he had a most lively curiosity to explore this hidden city which he had found, and of which he might still hope to tell an astonished world. And when his thoughts turned to the girl at his side - well, he had no wish to betray a twin brother he loved, and who trusted him, but suppose the worst, suppose they were doomed to remain here for the future years, surely that would be a special circumstance which would justify much from which honour must otherwise turn aside? As he looked at her, the attraction he had first felt revived with recruited vigour, and he was not without reasonable hope that, if the occasion should fairly come, he could persuade her to a similar mind. He had met her first! She had confessed, only an hour before, to the common difficulty in distinguishing between him and the man she loved.
Was it unreasonable to expect that propinquity and comradeship in this alien place would establish a living bond, of strength to overcome whatever of preference or obligation she might feel towards a distant duplicate whom she might never see? Certainly, if they were to be prisoned here, Providence had shown a rare consideration in the companion who had been sent to him out of the sky. . . . But now to both of them the moment came when fears and hopes and fatigues alike were forgotten in the wonder of what they saw.
During the past weeks, Leonard Kinnear had seen no change above him from the infinite dome of sky - an unclouded dome which would become brilliant at night with its countless stars - and around him the tawny desert, that would become emphatic only in blacks and yellows and reds. But now he looked ahead to a wide vista of freshest green, overhung by a black roof of basaltic rock, and lighted by the indriving rays of the setting sun.
It was easy to see that the original formation of the rocky plateau, which they approached from beneath, had been of a kind familiar to all who have studied the geology of the Libyan desert. An outcrop of shelving strata had exposed a soft calcareous rock beneath a layer of basalt too hard to be worn away, even by the incessant toil of the desert wind and its tool of corroding sand.
But the lower, softer stratum would crumble into a deeper cavity so long as the harder rock above could support its own weight, a question of centuries, to be decided at last by its thickness and density, and the firmness of its unfissured unity with the sustaining mass. But, soon or late, it must fall. That was the desert law, which had brought huge masses of rock to ground as the ages passed, with thunders that could be heard for scores of miles in the clear air, and columns of dust that rose into high pyramids on a still day, or would be caught by a twisting wind, and dragged far through the darkened sky.
But here the slow natural process which levelled the desert crags had been stayed and controlled by the hands of men. The soft stratum, ten or twenty feet in height from the level plain, had been worn away, first no doubt by the wind's action, and then more deeply by excavation, but the basaltic roof had not fallen, being sustained by huge pillars, the centres of which may have consisted of softer rock, but which had been faced with granite blocks so that they had become strong to resist the wind, even had its power to penetrate deeply among them not been checked by the vegetation which now filled the wide space below.
For here was now a green hothouse, mile-wide, shallow-roofed, open on three sides to the wind, and such evening and morning light as could penetrate its cool green shadows, and brighten the grape-clusters of the vines that festooned its roof.
Cool it was in comparison with the hot air that danced between the sun and the burning sand. The two who were led into the shade of a long green corridor felt a sudden chill as they encountered its humid heat. But it was far from cold, and its greater difference was in that humidity which would render it less tolerable to endure than the dry torridity of the sand and sun.
They passed no gate. The green subterranean garden was fenceless to a desert that bred no foe beyond the invading sand, and this must have been controlled and carried away by various narrow channels of water, and many fountains among the leaves.
Meeting no man, Abrah led them far along the straight corridor, which grew dimmer as they left the light of a sun which was itself leaving the desert sky, until they were surprised by light from another source. Not in lamps or bulbs, but in a thin continuous streak, like a fine-drawn wire, a line of electricity shone along the rock-roof of the corridor, partly obscured at times by the hanging vines, but sufficiently strong and continuous to illuminate the high, narrow, leaf-walled passage, and make plain the way they should go.
It was a new surprise to find knowledge and use of electricity among this isolated people, and required a further adjustment of mind towards the problem of what they were, but Leonard reflected reasonably that it did not follow that they had stagnated in ignorance because they had dwelt apart, and light, to those who lived more or less underground, must be a primary necessity. Beyond that, he could only guess how complete the isolation might be, or what means they might have of learning the discoveries of the wider world. . . .
They came at last to a metal gate, and the first sign of a guarded way. Two men held the gate, and the light from above flickered on the blades of spears. They were alert now to an uncommon event, but their presence there may have been as perfunctory as that of sentries who give dignity to a palace door.
Now the gate opened without demur, or the need for words, and the three went on by a passage that was of the same width, though of less height than before, but was now walled as well as roofed by the solid rock. Also, it was no longer level. It sloped steadily downward. At its end, they came to another gate, metal as before, but more heavily made. It opened on to a bridge of stone which crossed a chasm, black and deep, from which rose the sound of a river which flowed far below in a rocky bed. Then there came a third gate, upon which converged three passages, right and left and ahead.
It might seem a wonderful thing to find this subterranean city in the midst of the most barren desert in all the world, but Leonard knew enough to see that, to the geologist at least, it would all be a credible, almost a natural thing. The fault of strata, the consequent outcrop of rocks of different solidity, the presence of subterranean water - it was all no more than the Western Sahara illustrates a hundred times on a smaller scale, where green oases have resulted, and men have sunk wells to find that abundant water will rise so long as it be kept dear of the choking sand.
Here there were guards again, and there was also an unarmed man who was much the smallest they had yet seen, though tall enough to look down on them. He was thinner, with a more sharply featured face, and a lighter skin, as though of a different race. Also, he had a slight stoop. He looked to be one who would be of less use with a spear than any they had yet seen, but might hold a pen in a better grip. Leonard had a moment's wonder of how he had contrived to survive those who had condemned Abrah as one to be weeded out.
The guards opened and closed the gate with the same indifference as before, while the smaller man spoke to Abrah in words that Leonard was only partly able to understand. But it was clear that he spoke as having authority, either of himself or as the messenger of one who ruled, and that Abrah made some protest, though rather as pointing out a difficulty that should be observed than of a matter in which he was himself greatly concerned.
But the man did not give way. He said at last, in words that Leonard had learned enough of their language to follow: "Well, there need be no trouble in that. You tell him now."
Abrah turned to say, in the language which was native to neither, but which they had both learned in the last two years: "It is ordered that I leave you now. But I am first to explain that you will be guided to a room where you can leave all that you have, knowing that it will be touched by none, and where you can rest. But that will not be for more than four hours, after which there will come one - probably he who is now here - who will guide you to the presence of our lord Hulah himself."
"He is chief here?"
"He is King of all."
"Will he wish to see me during the night?"
"Is there night or day under the ground? Our lord Hulah wakes when he will."
"But, if you are not there, how will he be able to understand what I say?"
Abrah put this to the messenger, who appeared to be curt and admonitory in his reply. Abrah translated: "Would you propose that there is aught that our lord Hulah does not understand?"
Leonard thought that even this might be possible. But he had sufficient discretion to frame his answer another way: "It is not that he would not understand. It is my own ignorance that I fear. How shall I understand him?"
"Doubtless you will learn that in his own time."
"I suppose the interview can't be deferred until I have had a reasonable night's sleep?"
"Men do not question the King's will. It will be well to remember that, now you are here."
"I suppose they are allowed to be tired when they have done a day's - or whatever you call it - work?"
"They are not tired if the King calls."
"Very well. I'll say no more about that." He spoke to Abrah personally, not as interpreter, to add: "If you're leaving us, perhaps you'll tell me who's going to carry what you've got now. Our friend here hardly looks equal to it."
It was a difficulty already apparent to those concerned. Confronted with it, the messenger, whose muscles would certainly have been unequal to a burden which Abrah had borne with ease, proposed that the guard should take it, even at the cost of leaving the gate.
There was an altercation on this, the guard questioning the messenger's authority to require him to leave his post, and there being a strict etiquette which forbade Abrah entering the precincts to which they went, but in the end it was agreed that the orders under which they were acting implied that this must be done, and they went on as before.
The way proved to be long, through passages which were narrow, and not very high, but in which the air was still fresh enough to show that there must be an efficient system of ventilation in these subterranean warrens. They were lighted by a thin continuous line of electricity which was embedded in the polished stone of the roof.
The sides of the passages, like the roofs, were of black polished granite, but whereas the roofs appeared to be all of one piece, the sides were of evident blocks. It seemed that the excavations had been immediately beneath the stratum of harder rock, so that its under surface formed a natural ceiling, and the softer sides had, for their own preservation, been faced with the harder stone.
It was evident that they were going deeper underground, though at a very gradual slant. They passed doors at times which were closed. These were formed of single sheets of bronze, giving them an aspect of sombre strength, but it was easy to think that there might be no meaning in that, for where should there be wood in this desert land? The origin of the metal was less easy to guess.
They came at length to a door at which their guide paused. He opened it, without entering. He spoke to Abrah, who went in, laying his burdens down. He made signs that the room was theirs, and went off, as one whose mission was done.
The floor of the chamber was about twelve feet square, and its height not less than seven. These might be considered good dimensions for rooms which were not made by the mere building of walls, but must be hewn from a solid rock. In the ceiling there was a round halo of light.
The room was furnished with a metal table and stools, and a pallet bed, covered with a single goat-hair sheet.
The door had a simple latch, but no lock or bolt either outside or in. It seemed that they could not be confined there, neither could they secure themselves.
They did not see all this at once. Leonard heard Abrah repeat the message that he had been given before. He asked: "Is it for both, or for me alone?"
"It is for you alone. How else should it be? The King sees no women, except it be for one use, or that they are of his own blood."
Leonard received this information without objection. He had heard of Eastern monarchs of quite different habits with which strangers might be less certainly pleased. He was reluctant for Abrah to go, feeling that their isolation would be increased. If there were anything they required, any information they should have, now was the time to speak. He asked: "We shall not be left without food?"
Abrah drew his attention to a gutter which was raised to a convenient height along the farther side of the room. A stream of water ran along it, narrow and clear. "You can drink here," he said, "when you will; and you can use it to wash, or to cast refuse away. It will not flow into other rooms. It is drained off."
He showed also a recess in the wall, where there were a bunch of grapes and some dates. There was also a small goat's horn, such as would serve for a cup. "You will find all you need here," he said. "You are not now among the squalor of those who live on the Nile banks, but in a more civilized place."
Leonard hoped he might find it to be no worse. He asked, repeating a question that Joselyn was addressing to him: "Is there no more than this chamber for both?"
"Can I answer that? I have no right to be here. I stay talking too long."
With these words he was gone, and they stood facing each other in the midst of a scattered litter of the arms and clothes and other impedimenta that they had thought useful to bring.
CHAPTER X
"I HOPE," Joselyn said, as the door closed, "they don't expect us both to stay here."
She looked round with some consternation and some contempt at the meagre size of the windowless room, ventilated, as it seemed, by no more than some holes along the top of the bronze door, and furnished with the narrow pallet bed, which could certainly not have been intended for more than a single use, unless these people slept in succession in a place so independent of night or day. It was a position which would arouse most women to some indignation of protest, even though it might be mitigated by a degree of congeniality in the enforced companionship.
"Abrah couldn't say. He didn't seem to know much. I'm to be ready to see the boss of the show - King, he called him - in three or four hours; so the programme doesn't seem to include going to bed for me."
"And I'm to stay here?"
"That seems to be implied. The King doesn't make a habit of receiving women who are not of his own family."
"Doesn't he? Well, I don't know that I particularly want to see him. But you might mention that we could do with another room. . . . I hope you won't forget the way back, all the same. How shall you make him understand what you want to say? I suppose Abrah'll be there?
"I believe not. It was implied that the King - Hulah they called him - would be superior to such difficulties."
"It sounds likely! But I expect you'll find some way of making him see sense. . . . You'd better start on these grapes before I finish the lot. They're about the best I remember tasting. Quite the best thing we've come across in these dungeons yet. . . . I wonder," she added, with more gravity, "whether we are at the end of the mess, or is it beginning now?"
He answered with the vague optimism that the occasion clearly required. Both being too restlessly excited for sleep, they sat side by side at the low bronze table, and ate the simple fare provided, wondering whether they had come to a place where the full menu would always consist of fruit and water. They talked of many things, but mostly of themselves, as youth will be ready to do, and keeping mainly to the past, for the present was of an ambiguous kind, and the future a threat that they would not face, or an enigma they could not read.
In much less than four hours (or so it seemed) the messenger came again, and with a motion of his hand, making no effort of words, he signalled Leonard to come.
Leonard had already put the automatic in his pocket, with no clear thought of any advantage it could be, and wondering whether he would be searched before being introduced to the presence of this monarch of (as he lightly described it) an oasis and a hole in the ground. He gained the sense of confidence, of equality, that such a weapon gives by its power of death, but he was not foolish enough to think that he could shoot his way to freedom from where was. And, if he should, what life would the desert give?
Joselyn let him go with a cheerful word, "It's just as well," she said, "that there should be someone left to stand by all this junk that we've hauled here. And while I'm sitting on it I shall be pretty sure that you won't bolt."
When she had been left alone, she walked restlessly up and down the little room for a time, trying to adjust her mind to the crowded events of the past day, and the wonder of where she was. After a time, she yawned. She looked at the bed. She considered the unboltable door. She picked up the heavy rifle, and then the lighter sporting weapon, which she found more to her mind. She yawned again. She said aloud: "I wonder how much longer he'll be." She considered: "I can't stand for ever. And if I sit on one of those wretched stools I shall go to sleep and fall off."
Without removing her clothes, she lay down, with the lighter weapon beside her hand.
She was wakened by a light touch. Her eyes opened to see a woman bending above her, who rose, and moved towards the door, beckoning her to follow. She was dazed with sleep, and thought stirred reluctantly. It would be foolish to object, to refuse. It might be that she was being led to the room for which Leonard had successfully petitioned on her behalf. It might be that she was being taken to him. Anyway, there was some comfort in the fact that it was another woman who summoned her from a room where it was plain that she should not be.
CHAPTER XI
HULAH XCII came of a race of kings who had endured for much more than two thousand years in that lonely rule, keeping to one name and one pattern in all they did. They were long-lived, and having followed the ancient custom of Egypt, by which brother and sister would always wed, and the royal line be kept pure from any various blood, they had become so alike, from generation to generation, that the old king, and his heir who might be in the prime of life, and the youthful prince who would follow him, could be told apart by no more than the differences belonging to change of years. Only once, and that less than a year before, had an event come which had drawn that dynasty to perdition's edge and made its ancient custom a broken dream. Hulah XC, of the pure blood of his race, had unaccountably been of a disposition to change the long-founded things. He had had a vision of converting the world; of persuading it to transform itself from the sewerlike filth and muddle in which it quarrelled and starved and bred, to follow the example which he would reveal.
For, in the small kingdom they ruled so long, the line of Hulahs had not imposed the custom by which they had fixed their own race to so close a pattern that it might have been said until then that it had had but one king, who had never changed. Rather they had sought (the numbers of those they ruled being limited by the slender resources the desert gave) to improve quality, as other monarchs might seek to increase the numbers of the people who called them king. Surely, Hulah XC had thought, if he should show to the world the splendid fruits of this ancient policy, it would be moved to imitation, and to reverence those who had been first to discover the possibilities latent in the human race, if it be controlled with no more forethought and wisdom than was given to the breeding of the goats which were the only domestic animals that they had - a small herd being maintained on the herbage which had been taught to grow under the oasis palms.
In the enthusiasm of this belief, Hulah had taken confident counsel both with his sister-wife, and with his son, who would be Hulah XCI at his death, and with his daughter who was wedded to that prince, and who already had adult children to sustain the integrity of the sacred line.
But he had found it to be a dream that they would not share. There had been quarrelling, fierce and long. He had been told alike by sister and children that he had imagined a folly which would bring his people to destruction and himself to shame. From generation to generation, something had been cautiously, furtively learned of events in the outer world, and of the conditions under which mankind was content to live. Did the king realize that they were no more than a rabble of many peoples and changing rules? That they were still subject to scores of diseases, one or other of which would be sure to destroy his own long-isolated people if they should be brought into such pernicious contacts? That they were not of a level of intelligence to appreciate the doctrine that he would expound? That they were not controlled by monarchs of authority to enforce their wills, even if they should have better judgment than the vulgar crowd could be expected to show? That even this lonely spot where his ancestors had ruled for much more than two thousand years, might be claimed as the rightful possession of some country that had never set eyes upon it - by Italy, Egypt, France or the Sudan - and that the whole world would approve their right?
Bitterness grew when he would not yield. Finally, to save their people, their dynasty, and themselves, his assassination had been proposed. His sister-wife had hesitated, reluctantly agreed, repented, and betrayed the plot. By her action, what would have been no more than the destruction of one man - the thrust of a single knife - had become an uproar of violent strife in a narrow room.
It had been seen by none but themselves, and known (or even guessed at first) by none but the eunuchs, who surely would not reveal it to those who dwelt without the interior gates which shut apart the apartment in which those of the royal race were accustomed to live. It had ended with none living except the King's son and grandson, and of these Hulah XCI had been so hurt that he had resigned some weeks before his body was committed secretly to the subterranean flood by which the others had already been swept away.
After that, Hulah XCII, a young man of no more than twenty-three years, had found himself upon a throne which there was no woman to share - a fact that he had not been willing that his people should quickly know.
But he had already taken steps to provide a remedy for that catastrophic position, and as he sat pondering while he waited for the white stranger to be brought before him, he wondered whether he had done well. Should he have waited for the gods to move, as it had been likely that they would do, for the remedy of such disaster as that? Had he had the required patience, he saw that the coming of this woman today would have appeared to him - would surely have been - their interposition on his behalf. Was it less so because he had already secured one in another most secret way, intending that she should become his wife, and the mother of future kings? Well, he would talk to the foreign man who had come to a place that he could not leave now that the camels were dead, and to whom he had given a precarious tenure of life, less for his own sake than for that of the woman, who might have been injured had she fought at his side among flying spears, but who yet might be useful to him in another way, in the crisis which he knew to be nearly come. . . . As he mused thus, Leonard Kinnear was led into the room.
Leonard saw one who was plainly dressed, his power being too real, too absolute, to require the trappings and ritual which are the safety of more precarious kings. Mystery, and aloofness from common men, were the tricks that had for so long a time sustained the power of his ancient throne, and there were few, if any, of those he ruled, except the half-bred eunuchs, who had entered that room, or even passed the interior gates which divided the royal apartment from the accommodations of lesser men.
Leonard saw a man who was young in years, but with the look of one to whom youth had not, and would never, come. His appearance was bleakly austere. His butter-coloured skin was drawn tightly over the high bones of a fleshless face. His thin nose was out-curved, like a vulture's beak. His mouth was tightly closed, but when he spoke there was an expressive mobility in the movement of thin sensitive lips. His eyes, palely brown, had a cool searching intelligence which might not be easy for either liar or fool to meet in a confident mood.
He sat solitary, at a table of beaten copper, beautiful in a weird way, and in a chair of the same design. It was straight-backed, uncushioned, undraped, showing that comfort was not the deity which had allegiance from him. On the table there was an inkhorn, a metal pen, a goatskin parchment, which may have been for the making of notes, but which, in the event, he had no occasion to use. On the floor was a goatskin rug.
Rooms might be expected to be small where they must be hewn from the solid rock, but this was not only almost as small as that from which Leonard had come, it seemed to him to be strangely bleak and austere for the reception-room of one who claimed the state of an ancient king. Yet behind this bareness of outer show he felt that there was a cold and purposeful power, of very formidable if not sinister kind, and of which he would do well to beware.
Hulah XCII motioned him to take a seat of a plainer pattern, but otherwise not unlike his own, on the other side of the table. With a second movement of his hand, he dismissed the messenger from the room. Leonard found himself to be alone with the King. He had not been searched. No one appeared to be interested in any weapon that he might bear. Here was evidence of unsuspecting goodwill, or a great assurance of power, or perhaps contempt which might be of a too arrogant mood.
The King looked at him in a cold silence which was equally destitute of hostility or kindly regard. It simply searched him for what he was. Suddenly the King asked: "Why have you come here?"
Leonard understood the question by no more than a good guess. He tried a halting reply, and the King changed to another tongue, of which he knew nothing at all. He expressed his ignorance in English, lest silence should be misconstrued, and it was to be expected that Hulah would not understand.
Leonard had some knowledge both of ancient and modern tongues. It was by them that his college honours had been gained. Since he had joined the army, and especially since his regiment had been stationed in the Sudan, he had concentrated upon Arabic, both as a modern colloquial tongue, and to gain access to one of the most poetic literatures of the world.
Hulah, showing no sign of annoyance at the deadlock to which they had come, paused for a thoughtful moment, and asked the question again in a different speech. His slow deliberate words, strangely accented, and having an unfamiliar construction, were yet plainly to be recognized as Arabic of an archaic kind.
Leonard replied in the same language: "I was curious to see what the desert held."
He had spoken as deliberately as the King, and it was clear that he was understood. Yet the King did not respond, neither did he regard the substance of the reply. It became evident that he desired to test to the full the points where their knowledge of language met.
When he spoke next, it was in words that Leonard guessed to be ancient Greek, to which he made a stammered reply in what he supposed to be the pronunciation of that obsolete language. Hulah, observing the quality of his response in the same impassive manner, paused again, and then spoke in Latin, which was more easy to understand.
He listened to Leonard's reply, and for the next half-minute sat motionless and as though his thoughts had wandered to other things. But he must have signalled in some way that Leonard did not observe, for after that short interval an attendant entered the room bringing a shallow oblong tray of fine sand, which he placed on the table before the King.
Hulah took a stylus from a groove at its side. He wrote some Latin words in the sand. Then he turned the tray towards Leonard, pointing to them in succession, for him to pronounce in his own manner. Having listened to these, he smoothed the sand with a roller at the foot of the tray, and wrote more. After this process had been twice repeated, he said: "It is enough." He commenced to question in Latin, using so closely the pronunciation that he had heard that Leonard could understand without difficulty, neither did the King appear to find difficulty in following his replies. Once or twice, a doubtful phrase was resolved by writing upon the tray. Once or twice, one or other would substitute Arabic, when hindered by a limitation of Latin vocabulary, but otherwise the conversation proceeded without difficulty on either side.
Leonard recognized the intellectual feat which had so rapidly grasped and adopted a different system of pronunciation from that which Hulah had evidently been accustomed to use. He realized that he was confronted by a most formidable mind, and he met the interrogation to which he was subjected with, to the limit of his own ability, the combination of finesse and frankness which he felt that the occasion required.
"Did Abrah tell you of this place?"
"He did."
"And tell others?"
"No one believed."
"Except you?"
"I had a doubt, so I came to see."
"Others will come?"
"I cannot say. I suppose not."
"Why did the woman come?"
"She followed me. It was a mistake."
"She is your wife?"
"No. It was my brother she sought. She thought it he who had come."
"She is his wife?"
"Not yet."
"Will he follow her here?"
"I suppose not. No one knew where she had come."
"But some knew the route you had taken?"
"They knew I came into the desert."
"Then how did she find you?" She took a chance. Her bird-machine could fly far."
"You will be content to remain here?"
"I do not see how I could leave."
"You would certainly die."
"I prefer to live."
"You are wise. If you deserve life, you may find it yours."
"How can I deserve life?"
"By excellence either in strength, or in some service or art. But you will be instructed in that. Answer me now. You learnt something of the language that Abrah speaks?"
"Yes. But not much."
"You will learn no more. It is not for you."
"Am I to speak Latin to all?"
"You will speak to one. He is versed in this tongue, and will tell you all you should know. If it prove that you have more knowledge than he, it may be your gain, though it may be your part to seek life by another way. You will go back now, taking some sleep, after which you will learn more of my will."
"May I make a request?"
"Speak."
"They have put the girl and myself together. May we have separate rooms, as is the custom in our own land?"
"It was needless to ask, being that which is already done."
It was a reply that had a satisfactory sound, but also raised a vague fear. He was assured that he had what he asked, but might it not prove to be even more? He would have inquired further, but Hulah recognized his intention, and checked the unspoken words. "It is enough. I do not answer. I ask."
And with that word, the messenger who had guided Leonard to the room entered and led him away.
CHAPTER XII
LEONARD was led back to an empty place, as he had been told to expect. He looked round, and observed that his possessions were undisturbed. Only, the bed had been used, and the sporting rifle lay by its side, where it had not been before.
There was no sign of a struggle, of disorder. Probably she had gone willingly, though guided by those with whom she could have no speech. She might not be far. She might be in the next room! He delayed his guide with an attempt to question him upon this, but the man was either ignorant or unwilling or unable to understand.
Well, of what did he complain? They must either be left together or put apart. His request had been granted before he asked. Was he to make trouble of that? But he wished he knew where she was, and how and where he might see her again. For the time, he could do nothing better than sleep, as the King had said.
But sleep, which he needed, was slow to come. He considered the interview he had had. Did he like this strange ruler, who could think and speak in old tongues that had become silent in their own lands? Not at all. Yet he would not say he disliked. The man was cold, inhuman. He did not appear to be one who would easily be moved by any emotion. Not by love, nor perhaps by anger or hate. He might be just, by a strange code, and in a most ruthless way. He might be even better than that. But he was not easy to read.
Leonard judged him to be wise, implacable, practising neither kindness nor cruelty for themselves, but with the single purpose of maintaining this solitary rule in its ancient mode, for which no price would be called too high.
He slept at last, and for long hours, and was undisturbed. He waked to find that a meal had been already laid out for him, of a plain kind, but with more variety than the fruit of the night before. He ate with appetite, turning his mind resolutely from the fear that he had come to a place which he could not leave. He must take the present chance, learning all he could of the strange life he had discovered; and doubtless a way of leaving would come at last. For the present, he told himself that he was not anxious to go.
It was true that he could have imagined a meal more to his mind. But those who explore the remote parts of the earth cannot expect to find the comforts of home. And he could mend even that, for the time, if he could get the loads that the camels bore, which it had been promised that he should have. If he could obtain them, and know that Joselyn Wilde were content and near, he felt that he would confront the adventure with confidence that it might be worse, and hope of a good end.
While he was in this mood, a man entered whom he had not seen previously. He was old, though he still moved with some ease and vigour. He had an ascetic scholarly face, with more of humanity in it than could be seen in that of the King, to which it yet bore a faint resemblance, as of a man having a portion at least of a kindred blood. It was noticeable that, though the men Leonard had seen since he passed the guards of the interior gates might not be deficient in health or in bodily vigour, yet they had no excellence of physique, such as had been conspicuous in Abrah, and in the two hundred spearmen who had issued out to the desert at the sight of the circling 'plane.
It was a simple guess that there were other tests than that of physical strength by which they were allowed to endure, but the difference was more than such an explanation would meet, for they appeared to be of another breed.
The man who entered now spoke in the Latin tongue, which he had already learned to accent in the manner which made it easy for Leonard to understand. He said: "It is my lord Hulah's will that I should transfer you from here to a better place. But you must first give me a pledge,"
Leonard had a fear that he would be asked to undertake not to leave, which, though it might appear to be an impossible thing, he would have been reluctant to do. But he answered only: "If you would say what it is?"
"It is one that it is vital to understand, and to break it would be a short passage to death; but it is hard neither to give nor to keep.
"You must know that we who wait on the King are few in number, and have contact with many things that are not for the privity of those who do not enter the inner gates. You must give your word in a solemn way that you will talk to none without of that which you may learn here, and to no woman at all; nor, indeed, to any except myself and the King. On that pledge, I would consult with you on much in a free way, both to impart and to learn."
This did not sound either an unreasonable or a too onerous pledge, but Leonard caught at one word, the implications of which he was quick to probe.
"Why do you say: 'to no woman at all' ?"
"That will not be hard to observe, for none is allowed within the interior gates, excepting one of an aged sort who waits on the King's suite."
"So that the girl who came with me will not be here?"
"The King has made exception for her."
"I shall see her?"
"That, I suppose, will depend largely upon yourself, and the degree to which you may gain the confidence of the King."
"Then, Miss Wilde being excepted, I give my word."
The man hesitated at this, but after a moment's pause he said no more than: "That is well. It is also our lord Hulah's will that you learn no more of the common tongue which is spoken here, which there should be no present occasion to do."
"I will accept your assurance of that."
"Then I will guide you to the place which will be yours from this day."
"And these things I have here will be brought?"
"They will be brought, and also those you left with the dead beasts. Excepting only that the water-skins will not be required, and the beasts themselves have been used already for food; for flesh, as you will know, does not long endure in the desert heat."
"It is a pity that they were killed. They could have been of much use alive. If not to me, then to you."
"Do you think that? Do you suppose that we should have been secure here for more than two thousand years bad there been less than a rigid law that no beast should live having longer legs than a goat? We have been ruled, as you will agree when you know more, by those who allow no slackness, from which failure is bred."
Leonard said nothing to this, which was poor hearing for one whose ultimate purpose was to find some means of crossing that desert space which had been held an in-violate barrier for so long a time. But it was not a subject on which it would be wise to make further remark. He picked up the firearms, less from any desire to have them at hand than fear of accident if they should be moved by those who would not understand the danger of what they did, and followed Olah (which was the sage's name), finding, as he went, no lack of subjects on which to talk to the one man with whom he would be able, as it was agreed, to speak in future with a free tongue.
"I was surprised," he said, looking upwards to the thread of light in the roof of the passage along which he was led, "that you should have such a light here, you having so little contact with the outside world; for even there it has not been long in use."
"But it has been used here for a thousand years. You must not judge us by the backwardness of the savage peoples from which you come."
"Would you call us that? There may be other things we have which it would be to your advantage to know."
"So it may. It is of such we look to you to tell."
"It must have been a great labour to excavate these dwellings beneath the rocks."
"So it has been. But you must know - as, indeed, you will shortly see - that we have more space than the pick would win, but for which we must have remained less than we are. That which you first saw was the wind's work, which those who came to this place on an ancient day drove deeper, and pillared up. After that, they cut rooms in the rock in a patient way, so that each generation had more space than before. But it was when they came to the great caves that their numbers grew, and their wealth began."
"That was long ago?"
"It was longer than I can say. For you must understand that it was no work of our hands, but was done by a folk who were driven out, or rather destroyed, when our ancestors came here. It was they also who worked the mines, which are very rich, both in copper and tin." Leonard exclaimed with surprise: "You work mines here!"
"So we do, though not much. For even when the ancient people were driven out they had metal here, ready for use, in a grea