CHAPTER II. THE ADVICE OF SERGEANT QUICK
CHAPTER III. THE PROFESSOR GOES OUT SHOOTING
CHAPTER IV. THE DEATH WIND
CHAPTER V. PHARAOH MAKES TROUBLE
CHAPTER VI. HOW WE ESCAPED FROM HARMAC
CHAPTER VII. BARUNG
CHAPTER VIII. THE SHADOW OF FATE
CHAPTER IX. THE SWEARING OF THE OATH
CHAPTER X. QUICK LIGHTS A MATCH
CHAPTER XI. THE RESCUE FAILS
CHAPTER XII. THE DEN OF LIONS
CHAPTER XIII. THE ADVENTURES OF HIGGS
CHAPTER XIV. HOW PHARAOH MET SHADRACH
CHAPTER XV. SERGEANT QUICK HAS A PRESENTIMENT
CHAPTER XVI. HARMAC COMES TO MUR
CHAPTER XVII. I FIND MY SON
CHAPTER XVIII. THE BURNING OF THE PALACE
CHAPTER XIX. STARVATION
CHAPTER XX. THE TRIAL AND AFTER
CHAPTER I.
THE COMING OF THE RING
Every one has read the monograph, I believe that is the right word, of
my dear friend, Professor Higgs—Ptolemy Higgs to give him his full
name—descriptive of the tableland of Mur in North Central Africa, of
the ancient underground city in the mountains which surrounded it, and
of the strange tribe of Abyssinian Jews, or rather their mixed
descendants, by whom it is, or was, inhabited. I say every one
advisedly, for although the public which studies such works is usually
select, that which will take an interest in them, if the character of a
learned and pugnacious personage is concerned, is very wide indeed. Not
to mince matters, I may as well explain what I mean at once.
Professor Higgs’s rivals and enemies, of whom either the brilliancy of
his achievements or his somewhat abrupt and pointed methods of
controversy seem to have made him a great many, have risen up, or
rather seated themselves, and written him down—well, an individual
who strains the truth. Indeed, only this morning one of these inquired,
in a letter to the press, alluding to some adventurous traveller who, I
am told, lectured to the British Association several years ago, whether
Professor Higgs did not, in fact, ride across the desert to Mur, not
upon a camel, as he alleged, but upon a land tortoise of extraordinary
size.
The innuendo contained in this epistle has made the Professor, who, as I
have already hinted, is not by nature of a meek disposition, extremely
angry. Indeed, notwithstanding all that I could do, he left his London
house under an hour ago with a whip of hippopotamus hide such as the
Egyptians call a _koorbash_, purposing to avenge himself upon the
person of his defamer. In order to prevent a public scandal, however, I
have taken the liberty of telephoning to that gentleman, who, bold and
vicious as he may be in print, is physically small and, I should say,
of a timid character, to get out of the way at once. To judge from the
abrupt fashion in which our conversation came to an end, I imagine that
the hint has been taken. At any rate, I hope for the best, and, as an
extra precaution, have communicated with the lawyers of my justly
indignant friend.
The reader will now probably understand that I am writing this book, not
to bring myself or others before the public, or to make money of which
I have no present need, or for any purpose whatsoever, except to set
down the bare and actual truth. In fact, so many rumours are flying
about as to where we have been and what befell us that this has become
almost necessary. As soon as I laid down that cruel column of gibes and
insinuations to which I have alluded—yes, this very morning, before
breakfast, this conviction took hold of me so strongly that I cabled to
Oliver, Captain Oliver Orme, the hero of my history, if it has any
particular hero, who is at present engaged upon what must be an
extremely agreeable journey round the world—asking his consent. Ten
minutes since the answer arrived from Tokyo. Here it is:
“Do what you like and think necessary, but please alter all names, et
cetera, as propose returning via America, and fear interviewers. Japan
jolly place.” Then follows some private matter which I need not
insert. Oliver is always extravagant where cablegrams are concerned.
I suppose that before entering on this narration, for the reader’s
benefit I had better give some short description of myself.
My name is Richard Adams, and I am the son of a Cumberland yeoman who
married a Welshwoman. Therefore I have Celtic blood in my veins, which
perhaps accounts for my love of roving and other things. I am now an
old man, near the end of my course, I suppose; at any rate, I was
sixty-five last birthday. This is my appearance as I see it in the
glass before me: tall, spare (I don’t weigh more than a hundred and
forty pounds—the desert has any superfluous flesh that I ever owned,
my lot having been, like Falstaff, to lard the lean earth, but in a hot
climate); my eyes are brown, my face is long, and I wear a pointed
white beard, which matches the white hair above.
Truth compels me to add that my general appearance, as seen in that
glass which will not lie, reminds me of that of a rather aged goat;
indeed, to be frank, by the natives among whom I have sojourned, and
especially among the Khalifa’s people when I was a prisoner there, I
have often been called the White Goat.
Of my very commonplace outward self let this suffice. As for my record,
I am a doctor of the old school. Think of it! When I was a student at
Bart.‘s the antiseptic treatment was quite a new thing, and
administered when at all, by help of a kind of engine on wheels, out of
which disinfectants were dispensed with a pump, much as the advanced
gardener sprays a greenhouse to-day.
I succeeded above the average as a student, and in my early time as a
doctor. But in every man’s life there happen things which, whatever
excuses may be found for them, would not look particularly well in cold
print (nobody’s record, as understood by convention and the Pharisee,
could really stand cold print); also something in my blood made me its
servant. In short, having no strict ties at home, and desiring to see
the world, I wandered far and wide for many years, earning my living as
I went, never, in my experience, a difficult thing to do, for I was
always a master of my trade.
My fortieth birthday found me practising at Cairo, which I mention only
because it was here that first I met Ptolemy Higgs, who, even then in
his youth, was noted for his extraordinary antiquarian and linguistic
abilities. I remember that in those days the joke about him was that he
could swear in fifteen languages like a native and in thirty-two with
common proficiency, and could read hieroglyphics as easily as a bishop
reads the _Times_.
Well, I doctored him through a bad attack of typhoid, but as he had
spent every farthing he owned on scarabs or something of the sort, made
him no charge. This little kindness I am bound to say he never forgot,
for whatever his failings may be (personally I would not trust him
alone with any object that was more than a thousand years old), Ptolemy
is a good and faithful friend.
In Cairo I married a Copt. She was a lady of high descent, the tradition
in her family being that they were sprung from one of the Ptolemaic
Pharaohs, which is possible and even probable enough. Also, she was a
Christian, and well educated in her way. But, of course, she remained
an Oriental, and for a European to marry an Oriental is, as I have
tried to explain to others, a very dangerous thing, especially if he
continues to live in the East, where it cuts him off from social
recognition and intimacy with his own race. Still, although this step
of mine forced me to leave Cairo and go to Assouan, then a little-known
place, to practise chiefly among the natives, God knows we were happy
enough together till the plague took her, and with it my joy in life.
I pass over all that business, since there are some things too dreadful
and too sacred to write about. She left me one child, a son, who, to
fill up my cup of sorrow, when he was twelve years of age, was
kidnapped by the Mardi’s people.
This brings me to the real story. There is nobody else to write it;
Oliver will not; Higgs cannot (outside of anything learned and
antiquarian, he is hopeless); so I must. At any rate, if it is not
interesting, the fault will be mine, not that of the story, which in
all conscience is strange enough.
We are now in the middle of June, and it was a year ago last December
that, on the evening of the day of my arrival in London after an
absence of half a lifetime, I found myself knocking at the door of
Professor Higgs’s rooms in Guildford Street, W.C. It was opened by
his housekeeper, Mrs. Reid, a thin and saturnine old woman, who
reminded and still reminds me of a reanimated mummy. She told me that
the Professor was in, but had a gentleman to dinner, and suggested
sourly that I should call again the next morning. With difficulty I
persuaded her at last to inform her master that an old Egyptian friend
had brought him something which he certainly would like to see.
Five minutes later I groped my way into Higgs’s sitting-room, which
Mrs. Reid had contented herself with indicating from a lower floor. It
is a large room, running the whole width of the house, divided into two
by an arch, where once, in the Georgian days, there had been folding
doors. The place was in shadow, except for the firelight, which shone
upon a table laid ready for dinner, and upon an extraordinary
collection of antiquities, including a couple of mummies with gold
faces arranged in their coffins against the wall. At the far end of the
room, however, an electric lamp was alight in the bow-window hanging
over another table covered with books, and by it I saw my host, whom I
had not met for twenty years, although until I vanished into the desert
we frequently corresponded, and with him the friend who had come to
dinner.
First, I will describe Higgs, who, I may state, is admitted, even by his
enemies, to be one of the most learned antiquarians and greatest masters
of dead languages in Europe, though this no one would guess from his
appearance at the age of about forty-five. In build short and stout,
face round and high-coloured, hair and beard of a fiery red, eyes, when
they can be seen—for generally he wears a pair of large blue
spectacles—small and of an indefinite hue, but sharp as needles.
Dress so untidy, peculiar, and worn that it is said the police
invariably request him to move on, should he loiter in the streets at
night. Such was, and is, the outward seeming of my dearest friend,
Professor Ptolemy Higgs, and I only hope that he won’t be offended
when he sees it set down in black and white.
That of his companion who was seated at the table, his chin resting on
his hand, listening to some erudite discourse with a rather distracted
air, was extraordinarily different, especially by contrast. A tall
well-made young man, rather thin, but broad-shouldered, and apparently
five or six and twenty years of age. Face clean-cut—so much so,
indeed, that the dark eyes alone relieved it from a suspicion of
hardness; hair short and straight, like the eyes, brown; expression
that of a man of thought and ability, and, when he smiled, singularly
pleasant. Such was, and is, Captain Oliver Orme, who, by the way, I
should explain, is only a captain of some volunteer engineers, although,
in fact, a very able soldier, as was proved in the South African War,
whence he had then but lately returned.
I ought to add also that he gave me the impression of a man not in love
with fortune, or rather of one with whom fortune was not in love;
indeed, his young face seemed distinctly sad. Perhaps it was this that
attracted me to him so much from the first moment that my eyes fell on
him—me with whom fortune had also been out of love for many years.
While I stood contemplating this pair, Higgs, looking up from the
papyrus or whatever it might be that he was reading (I gathered later
that he had spent the afternoon in unrolling a mummy, and was studying
its spoils), caught sight of me standing in the shadow.
“Who the devil are you?” he exclaimed in a shrill and strident
voice, for it acquires that quality when he is angry or alarmed, “and
what are you doing in my room?”
“Steady,” said his companion; “your housekeeper told you that
some friend of yours had come to call.”
“Oh, yes, so she did, only I can’t remember any friend with a face
and beard like a goat. Advance, friend, and all’s well.”
So I stepped into the shining circle of the electric light and halted
again.
“Who is it? Who is it?” muttered Higgs. “The face is the face
of—of—I have it—of old Adams, only he’s been dead these
ten years. The Khalifa got him, they said. Antique shade of the
long-lost Adams, please be so good as to tell me your name, for we
waste time over a useless mystery.”
“There is no need, Higgs, since it is in your mouth already. Well, I
should have known you anywhere; but then _your_ hair doesn’t go
white.”
“Not it; too much colouring matter; direct result of a sanguine
disposition. Well, Adams—for Adams you must be—I am really
delighted to see you, especially as you never answered some questions in
my last letter as to where you got those First Dynasty scarabs, of
which the genuineness, I may tell you, has been disputed by certain
envious beasts. Adams, my dear old fellow, welcome a thousand
times”—and he seized my hands and wrung them, adding, as his eye
fell upon a ring I wore, “Why, what’s that? Something quite
unusual. But never mind; you shall tell me after dinner. Let me
introduce you to my friend, Captain Orme, a very decent scholar of
Arabic, with a quite elementary knowledge of Egyptology.”
“_Mr._ Orme,” interrupted the younger man, bowing to me.
“Oh, well, Mr. or Captain, whichever you like. He means that he is not
in the regular army, although he has been all through the Boer War, and
wounded three times, once straight through the lungs. Here’s the
soup. Mrs. Reid, lay another place. I am dreadfully hungry; nothing
gives me such an appetite as unrolling mummies; it involves so much
intellectual wear and tear, in addition to the physical labour. Eat,
man, eat. We will talk afterwards.”
So we ate, Higgs largely, for his appetite was always excellent, perhaps
because he was then practically a teetotaller; Mr. Orme very moderately,
and I as becomes a person who has lived for months at a time on
dates—mainly of vegetables, which, with fruits, form my principal
diet—that is, if these are available, for at a pinch I can exist on
anything.
When the meal was finished and our glasses had been filled with port,
Higgs helped himself to water, lit the large meerschaum pipe he always
smokes, and pushed round the tobacco-jar which had once served as a
sepulchral urn for the heart of an old Egyptian.
“Now, Adams,” he said when we also had filled our pipes,
“tell us what has brought you back from the Shades. In short, your
story, man, your story.”
I drew the ring he had noticed off my hand, a thick band of rather
light-coloured gold of a size such as an ordinary woman might wear upon
her first or second finger, in which was set a splendid slab of
sapphire engraved with curious and archaic characters. Pointing to
these characters, I asked Higgs if he could read them.
“Read them? Of course,” he answered, producing a magnifying glass.
“Can’t you? No, I remember; you never were good at anything more
than fifty years old. Hullo! this is early Hebrew. Ah! I’ve got
it,” and he read:
“‘The gift of Solomon the ruler—no, the Great One—of
Israel, Beloved of Jah, to Maqueda of Sheba-land, Queen, Daughter of
Kings, Child of Wisdom, Beautiful.’
“That’s the writing on your ring, Adams—a really magnificent
thing. ‘Queen of Sheba—Bath-Melachim, Daughter of Kings,’
with our old friend Solomon chucked in. Splendid, quite
splendid!”—and he touched the gold with his tongue, and tested it
with his teeth. “Hum—where did you get this intelligent fraud from,
Adams?”
“Oh!” I answered, laughing, “the usual thing, of course. I
bought it from a donkey-boy in Cairo for about thirty shillings.”
“Indeed,” he replied suspiciously. “I should have thought the
stone in it was worth more than that, although, of course, it may be
nothing but glass. The engraving, too, is first-rate. Adams,” he
added with severity, “you are trying to hoax us, but let me tell you
what I thought you knew by this time—that you can’t take in Ptolemy
Higgs. This ring is a shameless swindle; but who did the Hebrew on it?
He’s a good scholar, anyway.”
“Don’t know,” I answered; “wasn’t aware till now
that it was Hebrew. To tell you the truth, I thought it was old
Egyptian. All I do know is that it was given, or rather lent, to me by
a lady whose title is Walda Nagasta, and who is supposed to be a
descendant of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.”
Higgs took up the ring and looked at it again; then, as though in a fit
of abstraction, slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
“I don’t want to be rude, therefore I will not contradict
you,” he answered with a kind of groan, “or, indeed, say anything
except that if any one else had spun me that yarn I should have told him
he was a common liar. But, of course, as every schoolboy knows, Walda
Nagasta—that is, Child of Kings in Ethiopic—is much the same as
Bath-Melachim—that is, Daughter of Kings in Hebrew.”
Here Captain Orme burst out laughing, and remarked, “It is easy to see
why you are not altogether popular in the antiquarian world, Higgs. Your
methods of controversy are those of a savage with a stone axe.”
“If you only open your mouth to show your ignorance, Oliver, you had
better keep it shut. The men who carried stone axes had advanced far
beyond the state of savagery. But I suggest that you had better give
Doctor Adams a chance of telling his story, after which you can
criticize.”
“Perhaps Captain Orme does not wish to be bored with it,” I said,
whereon he answered at once:
“On the contrary, I should like to hear it very much—that is, if
you are willing to confide in me as well as in Higgs.”
I reflected a moment, since, to tell the truth, for sundry reasons, my
intention had been to trust no one except the Professor, whom I knew to
be as faithful as he is rough. Yet some instinct prompted me to make an
exception in favour of this Captain Orme. I liked the man; there was
something about those brown eyes of his that appealed to me. Also it
struck me as odd that he should happen to be present on this occasion,
for I have always held that there is nothing casual or accidental in
the world; that even the most trivial circumstances are either
ordained, or the result of the workings of some inexorable law whereof
the end is known by whatever power may direct our steps, though it be
not yet declared.
“Certainly I am willing,” I answered; “your face and your
friendship with the Professor are passport enough for me. Only I must
ask you to give me your word of honour that without my leave you will
repeat nothing of what I am about to tell you.”
“Of course,” he answered, whereon Higgs broke in:
“There, that will do; you don’t want us both to kiss the Book, do
you? Who sold you that ring, and where have you been for the last dozen
years, and whence do you come now?”
“I have been a prisoner of the Khalifa’s among other things. I had
five years of that entertainment of which my back would give some
evidence if I were to strip. I think I am about the only man who never
embraced Islam whom they allowed to live, and that was because I am a
doctor, and, therefore, a useful person. The rest of the time I have
spent wandering about the North African deserts looking for my son,
Roderick. You remember the boy, or should, for you are his godfather,
and I used to send you photographs of him as a little chap.”
“Of course, of course,” said the Professor in a new tone; “I
came across a Christmas letter from him the other day. But, my dear
Adams, what happened? I never heard.”
“He went up the river to shoot crocodiles against my orders, when he
was about twelve years old—not very long after his mother’s death,
and some wandering Mahdi tribesmen kidnapped him and sold him as a
slave. I have been looking for him ever since, for the poor boy was
passed on from tribe to tribe, among which his skill as a musician
enabled me to follow him. The Arabs call him the Singer of Egypt,
because of his wonderful voice, and it seems that he has learned to
play upon their native instruments.”
“And now where is he?” asked Higgs, as one who feared the answer.
“He is, or was, a favourite slave among a barbarous, half-negroid
people called the Fung, who dwell in the far interior of North Central
Africa. After the fall of the Khalifa I followed him there; it took me
several years. Some Bedouin were making an expedition to trade with
these Fung, and I disguised myself as one of them.
“On a certain night we camped at the foot of a valley outside a great
wall which encloses the holy place where their idol is. I rode up to
this wall and, through the open gateway, heard some one with a
beautiful tenor voice singing in English. What he sang was a hymn that
I had taught my son. It begins:
‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.’
“I knew the voice again. I dismounted and slipped through the gateway,
and presently came to an open space, where a young man sat singing upon
a sort of raised bench with lamps on either side of him, and a large
audience in front. I saw his face and, notwithstanding the turban which
he wore and his Eastern robe—yes, and the passage of all those
years—I knew it for that of my son. Some spirit of madness entered
into me, and I called aloud, ‘Roderick, Roderick!’ and he started
up, staring about him wildly. The audience started up also, and one of
them caught sight of me lurking in the shadow.
“With a howl of rage, for I had desecrated their sanctuary, they
sprang at me. To save my life, coward that I was, I fled back through
the gates. Yes, after all those years of seeking, still I fled rather
than die, and though I was wounded with a spear and stones, managed to
reach and spring upon my horse. Then, as I was headed off from our
camp, I galloped away anywhere, still to save my miserable life from
those savages, so strongly is the instinct of self-preservation
implanted in us. From a distance I looked back and saw by the light of
the fired tents that the Fung were attacking the Arabs with whom I had
travelled, I suppose because they thought them parties to the sacrilege.
Afterwards I heard that they killed them every one, poor men, but I
escaped, who unwittingly had brought their fate upon them.
“On and on I galloped up a steep road. I remember hearing lions
roaring round me in the darkness. I remember one of them springing upon
my horse and the poor beast’s scream. Then I remember no more till I
found myself—I believe it was a week or so later—lying on the
verandah of a nice house, and being attended by some good-looking women
of an Abyssinian cast of countenance.”
“Sounds rather like one of the lost tribes of Israel,” remarked
Higgs sarcastically, puffing at his big meerschaum.
“Yes, something of that sort. The details I will give you later. The
main facts are that these people who picked me up outside their gates
are called Abati, live in a town called Mur, and allege themselves to
be descended from a tribe of Abyssinian Jews who were driven out and
migrated to this place four or five centuries ago. Briefly, they look
something like Jews, practise a very debased form of the Jewish
religion, are civilized and clever after a fashion, but in the last
stage of decadence from interbreeding—about nine thousand men is
their total fighting force, although three or four generations ago they
had twenty thousand—and live in hourly terror of extermination by the
surrounding Fung, who hold them in hereditary hate as the possessors of
the wonderful mountain fortress that once belonged to their
forefathers.”
“Gibraltar and Spain over again,” suggested Orme.
“Yes, with this difference—that the position is reversed, the Abati
of this Central African Gibraltar are decaying, and the Fung, who answer
to the Spaniards, are vigorous and increasing.”
“Well, what happened?” asked the Professor.
“Nothing particular. I tried to persuade these Abati to organize an
expedition to rescue my son, but they laughed in my face. By degrees I
found out that there was only one person among them who was worth
anything at all, and she happened to be their hereditary ruler who bore
the high-sounding titles of Walda Nagasta, or Child of Kings, and Takla
Warda, or Bud of the Rose, a very handsome and spirited young woman,
whose personal name is Maqueda——”
“One of the names of the first known Queens of Sheba,” muttered
Higgs; “the other was Belchis.”
“Under pretence of attending her medically,” I went on, “for
otherwise their wretched etiquette would scarcely have allowed me access
to one so exalted, I talked things over with her. She told me that the
idol of the Fung is fashioned like a huge sphinx, or so I gathered from
her description of the thing, for I have never seen it.”
“What!” exclaimed Higgs, jumping up, “a sphinx in North
Central Africa! Well, after all, why not? Some of the earlier Pharaohs
are said to have had dealings with that part of the world, or even to
have migrated from it. I think that the Makreezi repeats the legend. I
suppose that it is ram-headed.”
“She told me also,” I continued, “that they have a tradition,
or rather a belief, which amounts to an article of faith, that if this
sphinx or god, which, by the way, is lion, not ram-headed, and is
called Harmac——”
“Harmac!” interrupted Higgs again. “That is one of the names
of the sphinx—Harmachis, god of dawn.”
“If this god,” I repeated, “should be destroyed, the nation
of the Fung, whose forefathers fashioned it as they say, must move away
from that country across the great river which lies to the south. I
have forgotten its name at the moment, but I think it must be a branch
of the Nile.
“I suggested to her that, in the circumstances, her people had better
try to destroy the idol. Maqueda laughed and said it was impossible,
since the thing was the size of a small mountain, adding that the Abati
had long ago lost all courage and enterprise, and were content to sit
in their fertile and mountain-ringed land, feeding themselves with
tales of departed grandeur and struggling for rank and high-sounding
titles, till the day of doom overtook them.
“I inquired whether she were also content, and she replied,
‘Certainly not’; but what could she do to regenerate her people,
she who was nothing but a woman, and the last of an endless line of
rulers?
“‘Rid me of the Fung,’ she added passionately, ‘and I
will give you such a reward as you never dreamed. The old cave-city
yonder is full of treasure that was buried with its ancient kings long
before we came to Mur. To us it is useless, since we have none to trade
with, but I have heard that the peoples of the outside world worship
gold.’
“‘I do not want gold,’ I answered; ‘I want to rescue my
son who is a prisoner yonder.’
“‘Then,’ said the Child of Kings, ‘you must begin by
helping us to destroy the idol of the Fung. Are there no means by which
this can be done?’
“‘There are means,’ I replied, and I tried to explain to her
the properties of dynamite and of other more powerful explosives.
“‘Go to your own land,’ she exclaimed eagerly, ‘and
return with that stuff and two or three who can manage it, and I swear
to them all the wealth of Mur. Thus only can you win my help to save
your son.’”
“Well, what was the end?” asked Captain Orme.
“This: They gave me some gold and an escort with camels which were
literally lowered down a secret path in the mountains so as to avoid the
Fung, who ring them in and of whom they are terribly afraid. With these
people I crossed the desert to Assouan in safety, a journey of many
weeks, where I left them encamped about sixteen days ago, bidding them
await my return. I arrived in England this morning, and as soon as I
could ascertain that you still lived, and your address, from a book of
reference called _Who’s Who_, which they gave me in the hotel, I came
on here.”
“Why did you come to me? What do you want me to do?” asked the
Professor.
“I came to you, Higgs, because I know how deeply you are interested in
anything antiquarian, and because I wished to give you the first
opportunity, not only of winning wealth, but also of becoming famous as
the discoverer of the most wonderful relics of antiquity that are left
in the world.”
“With a very good chance of getting my throat cut thrown in,”
grumbled Higgs.
“As to what I want you to do,” I went on, “I want you to find
someone who understands explosives, and will undertake the business of
blowing up the Fung idol.”
“Well, that’s easy enough, anyhow,” said the Professor,
pointing to Captain Orme with the bowl of his pipe, and adding, “he is
an engineer by education, a soldier and a very fair chemist; also he
knows Arabic and was brought up in Egypt as a boy—just the man for
the job if he will go.”
I reflected a moment, then, obeying some sort of instinct, looked up and
asked:
“Will you, Captain Orme, if terms can be arranged?”
“Yesterday,” he replied, colouring a little, “I should have
answered, ‘Certainly not.’ To-day I answer that I am prepared to
consider the matter—that is, if Higgs will go too, and you can
enlighten me on certain points. But I warn you that I am only an
amateur in the three trades that the Professor has mentioned, though,
it is true, one with some experience.”
“Would it be rude to inquire, Captain Orme, why twenty-four hours have
made such a difference in your views and plans?”
“Not rude, only awkward,” he replied, colouring again, this time
more deeply. “Still, as it is best to be frank, I will tell you.
Yesterday I believed myself to be the inheritor of a very large fortune
from an uncle whose fatal illness brought me back from South Africa
before I meant to come, and as whose heir I have been brought up.
To-day I have learned for the first time that he married secretly, last
year, a woman much below him in rank, and has left a child, who, of
course, will take all his property, as he died intestate. But that is
not all. Yesterday I believed myself to be engaged to be married;
to-day I am undeceived upon that point also. The lady,” he added with
some bitterness, “who was willing to marry Anthony Orme’s heir is
no longer willing to marry Oliver Orme, whose total possessions amount
to under £10,000. Well, small blame to her or to her relations,
whichever it may be, especially as I understand that she has a better
alliance in view. Certainly her decision has simplified matters,” and
he rose and walked to the other end of the room.
“Shocking business,” whispered Higgs; “been infamously
treated,” and he proceeded to express his opinion of the lady
concerned, of her relatives, and of the late Anthony Orme, shipowner,
in language that, if printed, would render this history unfit for
family reading. The outspokenness of Professor Higgs is well known in
the antiquarian world, so there is no need for me to enlarge upon it.
“What I do not exactly understand, Adams,” he added in a loud
voice, seeing that Orme had turned again, “and what I think we should
both like to know, is _your_ exact object in making these proposals.”
“I am afraid I have explained myself badly. I thought I had made it
clear that I have only one object—to attempt the rescue of my son, if
he still lives, as I believe he does. Higgs, put yourself in my
position. Imagine yourself with nothing and no one left to care for
except a single child, and that child stolen away from you by savages.
Imagine yourself, after years of search, hearing his very voice, seeing
his very face, adult now, but the same, the thing you had dreamed of
and desired for years; that for which you would have given a thousand
lives if you could have had time to think. And then the rush of the
howling, fantastic mob, the breakdown of courage, of love, of
everything that is noble under the pressure of primæval instinct, which
has but one song—Save your life. Lastly, imagine this coward saved,
dwelling within a few miles of the son whom he had deserted, and yet
utterly unable to rescue or even to communicate with him because of the
poltroonery of those among whom he had refuged.”
“Well,” grunted Higgs, “I have imagined all that
high-faluting lot. What of it? If you mean that you are to blame, I
don’t agree with you. You wouldn’t have helped your son by getting
your own throat cut, and perhaps his also.”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I have brooded over the
thing so long that it seems to me that I have disgraced myself. Well,
there came a chance, and I took it. This lady, Walda Nagasta, or
Maqueda, who, I think, had also brooded over things, made me an
offer—I fancy without the knowledge or consent of her Council.
‘Help me,’ she said, ‘and I will help you. Save my people, and I
will try to save your son. I can pay for your services and those of any
whom you may bring with you.’
“I answered that it was hopeless, as no one would believe the tale,
whereon she drew from her finger the throne-ring or State signet which
you have in your pocket, Higgs, saying: ‘My mothers have worn this
since the days of Maqueda, Queen of Sheba. If there are learned men
among your people they will read her name upon it and know that I speak
no lie. Take it as a token, and take also enough of our gold to buy the
stuffs whereof you speak, which hide fires that can throw mountains
skyward, and the services of skilled and trusty men who are masters of
the stuff, two or three of them only, for more cannot be transported
across the desert, and come back to save your son and me.’ That’s
all the story, Higgs. Will you take the business on, or shall I try
elsewhere? You must make up your mind, because I have no time to lose,
if I am to get into Mur again before the rains.”
“Got any of that gold you spoke of about you?” asked the Professor.
I drew a skin bag from the pocket of my coat, and poured some out upon
the table, which he examined carefully.
“Ring money,” he said presently, “might be Anglo-Saxon, might
be anything; date absolutely uncertain, but from its appearance I should
say slightly alloyed with silver; yes, there is a bit which has
oxydized—undoubtedly old, that.”
Then he produced the signet from his pocket, and examined the ring and
the stone very carefully through a powerful glass.
“Seems all right,” he said, “and although I have been greened
in my time, I don’t make many mistakes nowadays. What do you say,
Adams? Must have it back? A sacred trust! Only lent to you! All right,
take it by all means. _I_ don’t want the thing. Well, it is a risky
job, and if any one else had proposed it to me, I’d have told him to
go to—Mur. But, Adams, my boy, you saved my life once, and never sent
in a bill, because I was hard up, and I haven’t forgotten that. Also
things are pretty hot for me here just now over a certain controversy
of which I suppose you haven’t heard in Central Africa. I think
I’ll go. What do you say, Oliver?”
“Oh!” said Captain Orme, waking up from a reverie, “if you
are satisfied, I am. It doesn’t matter to me where I go.”