Murad had approached. The sight of the curious bottle, which did not seem to me to be worth a minute's talk, led him into a discussion of antiquities he had found in Egypt. The rector's eyes kindled. Here was a subject that had once been his chief interest. Suddenly he launched forth into a description of a treasure tomb he had literally stumbled upon in the desert—a tomb upon which a later tomb had been built, so that, while the later tomb had been plundered by Arabs, the earlier tomb had remained a secret until he pried up a stone in the wall and discovered it. The rector who had attended Oxford, and had gone forth from college to explore the ruins of countries along the historic Mediterranean coasts, had made a rough map of the location of this tomb. He now began to tell of the treasures he had found in the chamber: heavy gold masks, and breast-plates that, while barbarous in appearance, yet showed beauty of craftsmanship; bulls' heads wrought in silver with horns of gold; beautiful jugs and cups, wrought in ivory, alabaster and amber; mummies whose brows and wrists were encircled with gems—a hoard of riches priceless both to the scholar and the fortune hunter.
This description fired my imagination. It also stirred Murad. I saw his eyes glow and his fingers tremble. I wondered if his vehement demand that the rector should reveal the location of this cave was created by his interest in science or by pure lust for riches? As for myself, I confess that I thought only of the money into which these buried jewels and trinkets could be turned.
Later, the commodore told us why the rector had been so swift to end his tale of the buried treasure. After he had discovered the tomb, somewhere on the African shore of the Mediterranean, he had covered it up and joined a caravan bound for Tripoli, meaning to organize a special expedition for further searches. His caravan was attacked by a tribe of bandits. A blow from a spear knocked him unconscious. When he regained his senses, his wife and child were gone.
"They were taken as loot," said the commodore. "Women and children are nothing more than baggage to those Arabs!"
The husband wandered for months through the desert searching for his family. At last he was stricken with fever. Travelers found him and placed him aboard a ship bound for England. There he had plunged into religious work to keep from going mad. Blood-stained garments—proof that his wife and daughter had been slain—were sent him by an Arabian sheik. Later he had come to America as a missionary.
He was now rector of Marley Chapel. It is located about nine miles from Baltimore, near the bridge at Marley Creek, which enters into Curtis Creek, a tributary of the Patapsco River. This chapel had been built long before the Revolution. The minister kept his residence within the town limits of Baltimore because it extended his field of helpfulness. The journey to the chapel was made on horseback, and whenever he went to service Alexander and myself followed him on our ponies, through sun, rain, sleet or snow.
On fair-weather days, the church-yard resembled a race-course. The ladies, in gay clothes, had come in carriages. The men, mounted on fine horses and sumptuously arrayed, rode beside them. The carriage wheels rattled. The negro drivers cracked their whips and shouted. The gentlemen loudly admonished the slaves. Over such a tumult the church bell, which was suspended from a tree, rang out to warn the people that the service was about to begin; then a hush fell over the countryside, broken only by the stamping and snorting of the mettlesome horses in the shed, or by the chuckles of the negro boys who tended them.
To bring our story back to the present hour: Alexander had wandered off from our group with some of his shipmates. Suddenly there was an uproar. There were surly fellows in the crew and quarrelsome men in the crowd. Already Alexander had pointed out to me Black Peter, Muldoon, Swansen, and other sailors whom he avowed were the toughest men he had ever met.
These were now confronted by our town rowdies. We had a few men among our citizenship of whom we were heartily ashamed—men who knew how to fight in ways that surpassed for brutality those methods of warfare learned on shipboard. Eye-gouging, for instance; getting a man down; twisting a forefinger in the side-locks of his hair; thrusting, by means of this hold, a thumb into the victim's eye, thereby threatening to force the eyeball from the socket if the sufferer did not cry "King's cruse!" which, I suppose you know, meant "enough!"
The seaman who had been challenged by Steve Dunn, the bully, was Ezra Wilcox, Alexander's chum. He was a stranger in our town and Alexander was eager that he should think favorably of the people of Baltimore, who, everyone knows, are in the main, an open-hearted people. Angered at having his desire thwarted by the rowdy, Alexander rushed between Steve and Ezra, and himself took up Ezra's battle. He and the tough locked arms in a punching and wrestling match, and were soon rolling over each other on the wharf. Steve, finding that he was getting the worst of the tussle, reached his hands towards Alexander's side-locks.