At nightfall, every evening, Cortes fired his rifle, and this enabled his brother and the two boys to keep upon his track. The route taken by the sheikh was not a straight one: the course he followed was in the shape of the letter S. Harry and his party were often able to take short cuts, completing one side of a triangle when the Arab and his pursuer had accomplished the other two. Thus it was that upon the twentieth day they came to the place where the younger guide was encamped.
"He is close ahead?" asked Fernando.
Cortes pointed to the west.
"He is in the valley yonder," said he. "To-night he sleeps in the jungle that lies on the edge of the plateau."
They were now in a part of the globe of which little is known. They had left the cattle far behind them. This country is uninhabited except by wild animals, and is visited only by the caravans that come south-east from Timbuctoo.
The Black Dog, with the Sunstone in his possession, still held his course towards the north, setting forth across the illimitable, barren waste. He journeyed for two days without halting. Then he crossed a river, and, passing over a plateau, descended into the true desert, where the sun blazed like a furnace.
[CHAPTER XXIX—The Temple]
On the skirting of the desert lay a small Arab village—a place of a few dilapidated huts, accommodating not more than a score of inhabitants. For the most part these were people sunk to the lowest depths of poverty, living in a state of dirt unimaginable to those who are not acquainted with the Arab.
To this village came Harry and Braid and the elder guide. The headman of the village came forward on their approach, followed by a few children.
Fernando, who had an intimate knowledge of Arabic, was able to act as interpreter. The headman said the village had been rich in the possession of two camels; but, late on the previous evening, an Arab had come from the plateau who had purchased one of these camels. Early that morning had come another man, a white man—as he said—who, having purchased the other, had set forward without delay in the same direction as the Arab.