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THE TREASURE OF THE TIGRIS
A TALE OF MESOPOTAMIA
BY LIEUT.-COLONEL A. F. MOCKLER-FERRYMAN
AUTHOR OF "LIFE STORY OF A TIGER"
"HEMMED IN" ETC.
WITH EIGHT FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR BY ALLAN STEWART
A. & C. BLACK LTD.
4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.1
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
_First published in 1908_
[Illustration: "I BALANCED IT EXACTLY, AND SLOWLY AND STEADILY DREW IT
UP"]
CONTENTS
I. INSTRUCTIONS
II. ACROSS MESOPOTAMIA
III. INTO THE DESERT
IV. GUESTS OF THE AENIZA
V. RAIDERS
VI. THE SHEIK'S STORY
VII. THE FIRE OF THE GODS
VIII. RASPUL, THE SEER
IX. IN THE TEMPLE OF SOPHANA
X. A DASH FOR FREEDOM
XI. ONLY HALF A CAPTURE
XII. RIVAL DOCTORS
XIII. WAR'S ALARM
XIV. THE BURST OF THE STORM
XV. FATE
XVI. RESCUE
XVII. THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT
XVIII. TRUE FRIENDSHIP
XIX. IN CLOVER
XX. RE-UNION
XXI. A DESPERATE PLUNGE
XXII. BROTHERS AND CONSPIRATORS
XXIII. DAUD'S ADVENTURES
XXIV. THE DEVIL'S WELL
XXV. FOR DEAR LIFE
XXVI. A HAVEN OF REST
XXVII. VISITORS
XXVIII. MYSTERIES, SOLVED AND UNSOLVED
XXIX. A PROPHECY FULFILLED
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
BY ALLAN STEWART
"I BALANCED IT EXACTLY, AND SLOWLY AND STEADILY DREW IT UP!"
"THAT THIS WAS THE SHEIK HIMSELF WE INSTANTLY REALISED"
"HE PROSTRATED HIMSELF BEFORE THE GODDESS, AND BESOUGHT HER TO GIVE HEAT
TO THE FIRE"
"'BY THE WILL OF ALLAH,' HE SAID, 'THE CHILD IS SICK'"
"WHEN NEXT I AWOKE, EDWARDS WAS SITTING BY MY SIDE"
"DAYLIGHT SHOWED US, IN THE FAR DISTANCE, THE MOUND OF THE BIRS NIMROUD"
"WE COULD SEE BELOW US ... THE FIGURE OF A MAN LYING ACROSS THE GUNWALE"
"THE TWO OF THEM AS PROUD AS PEACOCKS"
THE TREASURE OF THE TIGRIS
CHAPTER I.
INSTRUCTIONS.
First of all, I must explain how it happened that I, Walter Henderson,
whom, I have every reason to believe, my masters regarded as a very
ordinary kind of boy, should have blossomed within a couple of years of
leaving school into a person of some importance. I say this with all
modesty, though my enemies will doubtless cast it in my teeth that no
modest man would write a book about himself.
On events which prevented my getting a commission in the Army, after
nearly having completed my course at Sandhurst, I do not propose to
dwell. At the time I considered the whole affair to be an error of
judgment, though my father ascribed it to lack of brains and too much
cricket. Be all that as it may, the fact remains that before I was
twenty, all my military ambition had been nipped in the bud, and I was
incarcerated in the back premises of that imposing but dreary-looking
old building, the British Museum. My uncle, Professor Ambrose Wentworth,
had taken compassion on me, and had appointed me his private secretary,
at a nominal salary. It was not at all the sort of life that I had
mapped out for myself, as I had fully made up my mind to be a soldier,
as most of my ancestors had been; and, as a matter of fact, had it not
been for my mother's entreaties, I should have enlisted directly I left
Sandhurst.
My uncle's particular line was Babylonian history, and probably no
living man knew more about history tablets, cylinder seals, and such
like things, than did he. As was, perhaps, only natural in a man whose
whole existence was wrapped up in deciphering cuneiform inscriptions and
hieroglyphics, he wrote an almost illegible hand, and it was my duty to
make fair copies of all his letters and documents--a task which I found
not only most uncongenial but also decidedly difficult. However, I did
my best, and my uncle was always kind and considerate; but I could see
that he was disappointed that he had been unable, at the end of a year,
to make me enthusiastic in the matter of his hobby. At last came the day
when I really thought that I could stand the life no longer. It was
towards the end of November; we had had a fortnight of dreary fogs and
drizzling rain, during which time I had worked by artificial light
continuously, and as I took my seat at my desk I made up my mind that
this day should be my last at the British Museum. Whether my uncle
observed my dejection, or whether his archaeological researches had
produced in him the faculty of seeing through a brick wall, I cannot
say, but when he entered the room in which I was at work, he came up to
me and laid his hand gently on my shoulder.
"Walter, my boy," he said, "you don't like this sedentary life, I can
see."
"It is the weather, uncle," said I. "I think it has got on my nerves."
"Well," said my uncle, "I have been meaning to speak to you for some
time. You have stuck to your uninteresting work for months without a
murmur, and you have proved to me that you have plenty of grit. I can
now offer you a change. Mr Jenkins and I have been talking matters
over, and we want someone to go to Babylon for us. We have come to the
end of our arm-chair researches, and we can do nothing more without a
man on the spot. If you like to undertake to study hard for six months,
we will send you out on a voyage of discovery for us. You will have to
make up your mind to real hard work, but I promise you that you will
have a thoroughly interesting trip, and will see a good deal of the
world. I will tell you plainly what you will have to do. In the first
place, you must be able to read cuneiform inscriptions and translate
them readily; secondly, you will have to learn a certain amount of
Arabic, so as to be able to converse with the natives; and lastly, you
will be required to go on an expedition to Babylon by yourself, and
follow up the work that Layard and others commenced. You can think it
over for twenty-four hours, and let me know whether you will undertake
it, or whether we shall have to look out for someone else."
I need, perhaps, hardly say that, as I was only too keen to travel, I
accepted the offer, and I began my six months' course of instruction
forthwith. It was hard work, as my uncle had foretold, and nearly nine
months passed before I was considered fit to start on my voyage of
discovery. But, at the end of that time, my study had resulted in making
quite an enthusiast of me, and I was most eager to get away to the land
which had already given to the world so many historical treasures.
Then arrived the eventful evening when I was to receive my final
instructions, and I was closeted with my uncle and Mr Jenkins for
several hours, listening to the great scheme that I was intended to
attempt to carry through. Up till then I had had no inkling that my trip
was to be anything more than an ordinary digging undertaking, in the
hope of finding something new; but when I entered my uncle's sanctum, I
soon saw that he and his assistant had something important to discuss
with me.
"Well, Walter," my uncle began, "the time has come at last; you are off
to-morrow, and now we are going to tell you the great secret that is
known only to Mr Jenkins and myself. If either of us were young enough
to undertake the work, you may be sure that we should not have let you
do it. But it wants a young and an energetic man to carry it through,
and that is why we have gone to the trouble of training you. What we are
going to disclose to you is absolutely in confidence; you must reveal it
to no one; for, as you will see, on the keeping of the secret depends
the whole success of your expedition."
My uncle now unlocked a safe, from which he took a tin despatch-box.
Then, unfastening a bundle of papers, he began:--
"THE GIRDLE OF SOPHANA, THE GREAT QUEEN. That is what we want you to
find. It exists, or it did a few years ago, beyond a doubt. If you can
discover it and bring it to England, you will be a made man. If you
fail, we shall not blame you. But I will tell you what we know about it.
Mr Jenkins and I have devoted years to the matter, and, from what we
have been able to gather from scraps of information, collected from
history tablets and other sources, we know that Queen Sophana was
possessed of a girdle of solid gold. Exactly what it was like we do not
know, though several life-like snakes are said to have been embossed
upon it, and it was supposed to have been possessed of certain magic
properties. We have not much to go upon, but we will not keep anything
from you, and you shall hear how we have put two and two together. In
the first place, the ancient representations, on cylinder seals and such
like things, of the queen, always show the girdle or belt round her
waist; secondly, the old writers, in describing the queen, frequently
refer to the magic belt; thirdly, on a fragment of a history tablet we
have found clear evidence that, on the death of the queen, her favourite
handmaiden dressed her mistress in pure white clothes and carefully
fastened on the girdle before the corpse was laid in the coffin of baked
clay.
"Then there are several other tablets on which mention is made of the
girdle; and we have copies of all these things ready for you to take
with you. But we should never have thought of trying to unearth this
treasure, had it not been for information of a much more recent date
that has come to us. Barely sixty years ago, some members of an Arab
tribe ransacking the ruins of Babylon, found, bricked up in a solid wall
many feet underground, a substantial tomb; inside the tomb were several
coffins, and within one of these, encircling a shrivelled corpse, lay a
belt of golden snakes--massive and of great weight. Now comes the
difficulty; for, according to the story which the Arabs relate, the
finders of the treasure, from the moment that they took possession of
it, suffered every species of calamity. But of all this you must read in
the manuscripts which we are handing over to you; it is too long a story
to go into now, and I need only tell you the end. The golden girdle was
eventually buried in the place where it had been found, by the sole
survivor of a family of the Shammar tribe, in whose possession it had
been for some years; and, in order that no one should notice that the
ground had recently been turned over, the man obliterated all trace of
his work by setting fire to the scrub jungle far and wide. Lastly, we
have the climax; the Arab committed suicide on the bank of the
Euphrates, by falling on the point of his broken spear.
"What you have to do is to endeavour to find out the spot where the man
buried the girdle; dig it up, and bring it home. Mr Jenkins and I have
written down our views as to how we think this can best be done; but you
must consider what we have written as mere suggestions, and you must be
guided by circumstances. We do not pretend to be anything more than
students and theorists; and, unhappily, such men as Layard and
Rawlinson, who could have helped us, have long since passed away. In
reading through your papers, you will, of course, come across a deal of
Eastern superstition; but I think that you are matter-of-fact enough to
pay no attention to the supposed magical properties of the girdle, or
any nonsense of that kind."
The remainder of the conversation it is unnecessary to give. I received
lengthy instructions as to the voyage, as to secrecy, and as to more
commonplace matters of business--how I was to draw money for my
expenses, and so forth. No detail had been forgotten by my uncle and his
assistant, who, I discovered, were staking their reputations on the
success of my quest.
I was handed a despatch-box containing, as I was told, all papers
bearing on the object of my journey; and then, like many another, I,
Walter Henderson, buoyed up with hope and puffed up with pride, left the
Museum under the impression that I was fairly on the road to fame.