“All raight, effendi?” he asked again.
“All right,” I said. “You have done well to find this place on such a night, Jakoub.”
“The camels have the wisdom that Allah has bestowed,” he answered quite simply and humbly.
I came nearer liking him then than at any moment of our short intercourse. But I distrusted him profoundly all the same, and the pressure of Edmund’s revolver against my hip was a kind of comfort to me.
“This way, effendi,” he said, making a kind of servile sweep with his lantern.
I followed him into what I took at first to be a cave. But there was a hot draught and sand blowing through it, and the swinging light of Jakoub’s lantern lit up great blocks of stone that must have been placed there by human agency. I don’t know why, but I followed him more willingly when I realised that I was among the work of human hands, however many thousand years they had been dead, than I would have followed into some crevice that represented a mere process of Nature. My feeling about Jakoub demanded human allies, however remote in time.
I realised that this was some gateway or entrance in the vast building that had saved us from the sand-storm.
Jakoub turned sharply to the left, and I followed him through a narrow entrance where I had to stoop among enormous blocks of stone.
I found myself in a moderate-sized chamber. As far as I could see by the feeble light it was built entirely of stone. Some of the stone was blackened as though by fire. There was another opening in the great stone-work that looked like the beginning of a narrow staircase. But I was too tired for exploration. The floor was soft sand, and there was no wind blowing here.
I sat down thankfully and began scooping dust out of my eyes.