I spent the next two days in absolute solitude, and got through a tremendous quantity of toil. In fact, I added two whole chapters to my treatise on the Nile monuments and I arranged the details of a third. By the end of that time, however, I was ravenously hungry. I had been too engrossed in labour to think of eating anything but biscuits. And appetite at last turned me out of the tent. I looked around for my Arabs and saw sand and sky—no living thing—oh, yes, there was my donkey. The little beast had eaten his way through a truss of straw, and was asleep. Strolling over to the ruined pylon, I glanced down into the hole my Arabs had excavated. It was empty. "Gad!" I exclaimed. "They must still be working for Ottley." I had to build a fire and turn cook, willy nilly. Later, fortified with the pleasant conviction of a good dinner, I turned my telescope on the Hill of Rakh. An Arab stood on the treeless summit leaning on a rifle whose barrel glittered in the sunlight. I was puzzled. He was manifestly posted there as sentinel, but why? I watched him till dark, but he did not move. That night I shot a jackal—omen of disaster. It was long before I slept. Yet I seemed only to have slumbered a moment or two when I awoke. A voice called my name aloud. "Dr. Pinsent! Dr. Pinsent!" I started upright and listened, nerves on edge.
"Dr. Pinsent!"
"Who calls?" I shouted.
"I—May Ottley."
"Miss Ottley!" I hopped out of my bag bed like a cricket. "Just a moment." I struck a light and, grabbing at my clothes, proceeded to dress like mad. Thus for thirty seconds; then I remembered how I had been treated, and went slower. Then I thought—"Pinsent, you're a cad—she's a woman, and perhaps in trouble." So I got up steam again and called out, "Nothing wrong, I hope?"
"Yes," said Miss Ottley. Well, here was a woman of business, at any rate. She seemed to know the use of words, and valued them accordingly. Waste not, want not. I drew on my jacket and lifted the flap. An Arab rustled past me.
"Hello!" said I. "Not so fast, my man."
But it was Miss Ottley. I stepped back, bewildered. Her hair was tucked away in a sort of turban, and she was wrapped from head to heel in a burnous that had once been white—very long ago. But the costume, though dirty, was becoming. She sank upon a camp stool and asked at once for water. She seemed very tired. My bag was empty. I hurried off without a word to the barrel in the temple. When I returned she was asleep where she sat. I touched her shoulder and she started up, suppressing a scream. "Now," said I, as she put down the cup. Miss Ottley stood up. "A bad thing has happened," she began. "The sarcophagus was filled with treasure, gold and silver in bars, and other things. The Arabs went mad. My father fought like a paladin and held them off for a day and a half. But soon after dark this evening a caravan arrived. The fight was renewed and my father was wounded. The Arabs secured the treasure and fled into the desert. The dragoman only kept faith with us. He has gone by the river to Khonsu for troops. I hurried here for you. I ran almost all the way. Will you come? Father is very ill. He has lost a lot of blood. He was shot in the shoulder."
I nodded, caught up my revolver and surgical pack and rushed out of the tent. In two minutes I had saddled the donkey. Miss Ottley was standing by the door of the tent. I lifted her on the beast and we started off in silence. An hour later she spoke.
"There is one thing I like about you," she announced. "You haven't much to say for yourself, but you are a worker."