Good-bye to the Nile
The Englishman was evidently something of a gourmet. I found foie gras,
camembert cheese, pressed sheep's tongues and bottled British ale in
his private locker. But he was as sullen as a sore-headed grizzly. He
sourly declined to eat even though I offered to free his hands, and he
strove to make my dinner unpleasant by volunteering pungent information
on the punishment provided by law for the crimes of piracy, robbery
under arms, burglary, assault and battery, and false imprisonment.
Those, it seems, were the titular heads of some of my delinquencies.
He felt sure that I would get ten years' hard labour, at least. I did
not argue the point with him. After dinner I examined the sarcophagus.
The lid was fastened on with crosswise-running bands of hinged steel,
padlocked in the centre. But it was, strange to say, wedged at one
end with iron bolts about an inch ajar, as if on purpose to allow air
to pass into the coffin. After a little search I discovered a toolbox
in the shallow hold of the punt; and I attacked the bands with cold
chisels and a mallet. Ten minutes' work sufficed. I tossed the broken
bands aside and levered off the lid. My heart beat like a trip-hammer
as I looked into the coffin. I was prepared for a surprise. I received
one. My Arab gazed up at me. The mysterious Arab with the three broken
ribs, who had frightened Miss Ottley and tried to throttle me and
whom I had last seen lying--a corpse--in the cave temple at Rakh. Of
course, Sir Robert Ottley had declared the corpse in the temple to
be identical with that of Ptahmes, the four thousand years dead High
Priest of Amen-Ra. But that was ridiculous. I had only had time to make
a cursory examination of the dead Arab in the cave temple, it is true,
but I am a surgeon, and I had convinced myself that the fellow, so
far from being a mummy, had not been long dead. I had yet to discover
an essential error in my cave temple investigation. My very first
impression had been not death, but suspended animation. And I must have
been right. The later speedy diagnosis had, in sober truth, misled me.
The man was not dead. It had been a case of suspended animation. The
Arab lying in the sarcophagus before me was alive. His broken ribs
were neatly set and bandaged. Otherwise he was swathed from head to
foot in oiled rags. He was lying in an easy position on his back--upon
a doubled feather tick. He was breathing softly but unmistakably. And
he was awake. His extraordinary eyes--they were set fully five inches
apart in his abnormally broad skull--were wide open and staring at me
in a way to make the flesh creep. They were horrible eyes. The whites
were sepia-coloured, the pupils were yellowish, and the iris of each a
different shade of black flecked with scarlet spots. His cone-shaped
forehead was moist and glistening with oil or perspiration. His mouth
was held open by two small rubber-tipped metal bars joined together,
against which his teeth--great brown fangs--pressed with manifest
spasmodic energy.
Now what was Ottley's purpose in taking such extraordinary pains to
transport a living Arab in a dead man's coffin from Rakh to Cairo, and,
perhaps, London?
Perhaps the Arab could tell me. Burning with curiosity, I stooped down
and took from his mouth the mechanical contrivances which held the
jaws apart. The Arab uttered on the instant a deep, raucous sigh. His
eyeballs rolled upwards and became fixed. He appeared to have fainted.
I rushed away to procure some water. That water was in the hold.
Seizing a dipper, I sprang down the steps, hurried to the cask and
filled it. The whole business occupied only a few seconds. I certainly
could not have been away from the deck half a minute, but when I
returned the sarcophagus was empty. The Arab had disappeared. Utterly
astounded, I gazed about me. Had the whole thing been a dream? It
appeared so, but no--I caught sight of a tall, dark figure making off
hot foot across the promontory. He had leaped ashore, a distance of
twelve feet or more, and was running towards the desert. In a second
I was after him. I thought of the crocodiles while in mid air; but it
was too late to turn back at that juncture. My feet landed in a patch
of oozy sand. I scrambled out of it and up the slope among the reeds.
A loud rustle and a stink of musk warned me of a saurian neighbour. I
gave a mighty leap and cleared the reeds. Then I ran as I had never run
before, for my Arab was in front, and a hungry monster came hard upon
my heels. A log lay in my path. It was another crocodile. I cleared it
with a bound and gained the desert. I was hunted for some seconds, I
believe, but I never looked back, so I do not know at what point the
saurian gave up the chase. The Arab was a marvel. He had a lead of one
hundred yards and he maintained it. He had three broken ribs and I was
as sound as a bell. Yet, at the end of twenty minutes not his breath
but mine gave out. I was forced to pause for a spell. He ran on. His
lead doubled. Setting my teeth, I resumed the chase. But I might have
spared myself the trouble. He gradually grew farther and farther away
from me. I did my best, but at last I was compelled to admit myself
beaten. The Arab's tall form grew less and less distinguishable against
the stars. Finally it melted into the mists of the horizon. I was alone
on the desert. I sat down to rest and took counsel with myself. I had
turned pirate and committed, technically, a number of other atrocious
crimes for absolutely nothing. Plainly I could not return to the punt.
First of all, in order to reach it I should have to face the
crocodiles. And even should I escape their jaws again, what could I
do on the river? Sooner or later I should be caught. And I had a very
strong suspicion that Sir Robert Ottley would not hesitate, once I was
in his power, to plunge me into an Egyptian prison. He had evidence
enough to get me a long term of hard labour, and I felt little doubt
but that he would go to a lot of trouble for that, and _con amore_
after the way that I had served him. It did not, therefore, take me
long to resolve to risk the desert rather than rot in an Egyptian gaol.
I had spilt a lot of milk. I was foodless, waterless, and Gods knows
where. Also, I was as thirsty as a lime kiln. But no use crying. What
to do? That was the question. For a start, I lay down and pressed my
cheek against the ground. The horizon thus examined showed a faintly
circled unbroken level line in all directions except the northwest.
There it was interrupted for a space by a mound that was either a
cloud-bank or a grove of trees. It proved to be the latter. I found
there water to drink and dates to eat. Next morning I took my bearings
from the sun, and giving the river a wide berth I pressed on north for
two days and nights on an empty stomach. Then I shot an ibis with my
revolver in a reedy marsh and ate it raw. Next day I climbed into the
mountains and looked back on Assuan and Philæ. But it is not my purpose
to describe my wanderings minutely. It would take too long. Suffice it
to say that I changed clothes with an Arab near Redesieh and entered
Eonah dyed as a Nubian a week later, after crossing the river at El-Kab
in a fisherman's canoe. The Nile was still ringing with my doings, so
I judged it best to proceed on foot to Luqsor. But there I got a job
in a dahabeah that was conveying a party of French savants back from
Elephantine to Abydos. I stayed with them three weeks, hearing much
talk, meanwhile, of a certain rascally Scotch doctor named Pinsent. It
was supposed he had perished in the desert. One day, however, hearing
that Sir Robert Ottley, who had been lying at Thebes, had been seen
at Lykopolis, I deserted from my employ, and walked back to Farschat.
There I bought a passage on a store-boat and came by easy stages
to Beni Hassan. Thence I tramped to Abu Girgeh, where I lay for a
fortnight, ill of a wasting fever, in the house of a man I had formerly
befriended. A large reward had been offered for my arrest, but he
was an Arab of the better sort. So far from betraying me to outraged
justice, he cashed my cheque for a respectable amount and procured me
a passage to Cairo on a river steamer. I entered the ancient city of
Memphis one day at dusk, a wreck of my old self and as black as the
ace of spades. Not daring to reclaim my goods at my lodging-house, I
proceeded forthwith to Alexandria with no wardrobe save the clothes
upon my back, and so anxious was I to escape from Egypt that I shipped
as stoker on a French steamer bound for Marseilles. I could find none
that would take a negro as passenger. The dye pretty well wore off my
face and hands during the voyage, but the circumstance only excited
remark among the motley scum of the stokehole, and I was permitted
to land without dispute. Heavens! how beautiful it was to dress once
more as a European, to eat European food, to sleep on a European bed,
and not to be afraid to look a European in the face. In Europe I did
not care a pin for Sir Robert Ottley and all that he could do to hurt
me. In Egypt his money and influence would have left me helpless to
resist him; but I felt myself something more than his match in the
centre of modern civilisation. He had the law of me, of course, but I
had a weapon to bring him to book. I could hold him up to public scorn
and ridicule. Were he to prosecute me I could put him in the pillory
as a wretch ungrateful for his life saved by my care and skill, a
promise-breaker and something of a lunatic. On the whole, I decided he
would not venture to put me in the dock. And so sure did I feel on that
head that I proceeded to London as fast as steam could carry me.