IN GREAT DANGER
There was a gasp from the members of the party at Zeta Phalos’ words,
and Don bounded to his feet.
“My father!” he cried.
“What makes you think my brother knew anything about this?” asked the
captain, with as much agitation as he ever permitted himself to show.
“Mr. Sturdy and I were firm friends when he was here on his first
exploring expedition,” replied Phalos. “I admired him because of his
fine intellect; and then, too, his passion for research along the same
lines as my own drew us together. Many a time he has been a guest in
my home, and, seated right on this balcony, we have discussed the
things we had in common. More than once we had spoken of Ras-Ameses
and the mystery concerning his burial place. I had at that time made
my discovery of the inscription, but was keeping it a safely guarded
secret.
“It happened that we were once both at the Valley of the Kings at the
same time, though with different parties. One day, while riding along
at the foot of the cliff on which I had discovered the inscription,
a piece of paper fluttered down from the rock. I wondered where it
could have come from. I picked it up and found that it bore creases in
it that resembled hieroglyphics. I knew that they formed part of the
inscription. You can imagine something of my surprise and consternation
at the thought that perhaps some one else was the sharer of my secret.
“I had a pair of powerful glasses with me and unslung them and focused
them upon the rock. I could distinctly see other bits of paper on
various portions of the inscription. Then I understood, and, although I
was chagrined, I was filled with admiration for some one’s ingenuity.
“The man, whoever it was, had approached the matter from the top of
the cliff. He had wet broad sheets of paper and lowered them from the
top with a flat board behind them so as to press them against the
inscription. The letters made creases in the wet paper. As soon as the
paper was dry, he had drawn it up and probably filled in the creases
with ink or pencil. Thus he would eventually have a complete copy of
the inscription, and could decipher it at his leisure.”
“An extremely ingenious method,” commented the professor, “and one
that makes me proud of my brother-in-law, if he were the author.”
“What makes you think that my father was the one who did it?” asked Don.
“My thought would have leaped to him at once because of his
brilliancy,” replied Phalos. “But I had something a little more
definite than that. I turned over the bit of paper I had in my hand and
saw that a name had been scribbled on it. Only a few of the letters
remained, but I could make out ‘urdy.’”
“Fairly conclusive,” agreed the captain.
“Later on, when I met Mr. Sturdy,” resumed Phalos, “I could see that
he was intensely excited over something. I tried to sound him out
casually, but he evaded me. I was sure that he had made what he thought
was a great discovery.”
“That’s what he must have had in mind when he kept talking to mother
about the Tombs of Gold!” exclaimed Don.
“Did he really speak of them?” asked Phalos, much interested. “That
goes still further toward confirming my suspicion. The thought that had
been with him on and off for years must have taken full possession of
him when his mind became deranged, to the exclusion of everything else.”
“That makes it all the more likely,” observed the captain, “that we’ll
find him somewhere in the vicinity of the Valley of the Kings, where
the inscription was discovered.”
“Precisely so,” agreed the old Egyptian. “However, the search may lead
him far afield, for I have reason to believe that the tombs themselves
are at some distance from the place where the inscription was found.
That inscription was placed there because the towering cliff offered
the spot where it was most likely to endure for ages.”
“It was certainly a lucky day for us when we met you on the steamer,”
declared Don enthusiastically.
“A luckier day for me,” returned Phalos, with a smile. “Is it
understood then?” he asked, turning to Don’s uncles, “that we join
hands and prosecute our search together?”
“Most gladly on our part,” replied the captain and the professor in one
breath.
“Then we’ll consider it settled,” said the old Egyptian. “I have a
steam dahabiyeh moored in the river, and if you are agreeable, we will
sail on that up the river to Luxor. I think you will find it the most
pleasant mode of traveling, and there will be plenty of room for the
baggage and supplies we shall need to take along.”
“That will be fine,” replied the captain. “And who knows but that the
wishes of all our hearts may be fulfilled in the finding of my brother
and also of the Tombs of Gold.”
“All things are in the hands of Allah,” replied Phalos, who, although
a cosmopolite, clung to the formula of his Mohammedan faith.
The next two days were busy ones for the adults of the party, as much
had to be purchased in the way of implements and supplies for what
might prove a long sojourn in the desert.
Don and Teddy had a good deal of time on their hands, and the professor
suggested that they go out to Gizeh to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
They needed no urging, for these mighty wonders of the world had long
made a strong appeal to their imaginations. The boys had seen them
pictured many times, but that was nothing compared to seeing the
marvelous constructions that were old when Rome was young, and under
whose shadows Cæsar and Napoleon had paced and been reminded of their
own littleness.
Their elders were too busy to go with them, and besides had seen them
before. So Don and Teddy secured a native guide and rode on donkeys
toward the massive creations, the greatest built by human hands, that
loomed up in the brightness of the Egyptian sunshine.
They were prepared to be impressed, but that word was too weak to
express their feeling of awe when they stood before the largest pyramid
of the three and gazed aloft at its towering top. Overpowered would
have come nearer to their actual state of mind.
There the greatest of the three pyramids, that of King Cheops, reared
itself toward the skies, originally nearly five hundred feet in height
and with a base so broad that the boys had to trudge through the
sands for half a mile before they had compassed it. It stood there,
apparently as immutable as time itself, a tremendous monument of the
great civilization that had once flourished on the banks of the Nile.
“How on earth could they build anything like that?” asked Teddy, under
his breath.
“Uncle Amos says that nobody knows,” replied Don. “He says that it’s
doubtful whether modern engineers could do it at all, even with the
tools they have to-day and that they didn’t have when these were built
six thousand years ago. Probably it was done almost altogether by man
power.
“Uncle Amos says that it took a hundred thousand men ten years just to
build the sloping road that led up to it. And it took that many men
thirty years to build this one Pyramid. They must have had ropes with
thousands of men hauling the stones along on rollers and then pulling
them up and piling them on each other.”
“If one of the ropes broke, the stones tumbling down must have crushed
hundreds at a time,” remarked Teddy. “I guess it wasn’t peaches and
cream to be a laborer in those days.”
“I guess not,” agreed Don. “Little old America is good enough for me.”
Five hundred yards away from the Great Pyramid was the head of the
Sphinx, that lion-bodied, human-headed mystery of the ages, carved
out of the mother rock that forms the floor of the desert. Nearly two
hundred feet from the tip of its paws to the end of its back, it rose
sixty-five feet in the air, gazing out over the desert in immutable
stony silence.
“What that could tell if it could speak,” murmured Don.
After some further explorations the two boys turned toward the city,
which lay white-walled and glittering in the afternoon sun.
That evening the captain, looking over one of his suitcases, noted the
absence of one of his revolvers.
“I was cleaning and oiling some of my weapons down in the dahabiyeh,”
he said, after looking about fruitlessly for a time. “I thought I’d
brought them all back here but I must have left that 38-caliber there.
Would you mind running down there, Don, and taking a look for it?
You’ll find one of the men in charge.”
“Sure, I will,” responded Don, and went off at once.
The dahabiyeh of Zeta Phalos was perhaps a quarter of a mile away
moored to a wharf. Don had already visited it that morning, and had no
trouble in reaching it. The native watchman, Ismillah, greeted him with
a smile that showed all his gleaming teeth and helped Don look for the
revolver, that had slipped behind one of the cushions.
With a word of thanks, Don turned to go back. As in most ports, the
district along the waterfront was low and disreputable. The streets
were narrow and ill-lighted.
As Don was passing along one of the darkest of the streets, two men
stepped out from an alley and confronted him.
Don’s heart gave a sudden bound as he recognized them.
They were Tezra and Nepahak!