“Hah!” cried the professor, “that’s right. Now let’s understand one another at once. No, Ibrahim, I have not.”
“Not come, Excellency?” cried the Sheikh, in a disappointed tone, and his hands flew up to his long flowing grey beard, but he did not tear it, contenting himself with giving two slight tugs.
“No, not come to explore.”
“But, your Excellency, I and my people have found a fresh temple with tombs, and deep in the sand where no one has been before.”
“Yes, and you know too that the authorities have given strict orders that no expeditions are to be made right out in the desert on account of the danger?”
“It is true, O Excellency,” said the Arab, with a sigh, “and I and mine will starve. We had better have been driving our sheep and goats here and there for pasture far away yonder, than waiting for English travellers. All who are here go up the river in boats. There are no journeys into the wilds this year. I have been stopped twice.”
Frank glanced at the professor, and saw that his eyes were glittering as he spoke in a low tone.
“Yes, Sheikh,” he said; “it is very ill for you, and it is bad for me. There are those stones cut into and painted that we left buried in the sand.”
“Yes, Excellency; hidden safely away, waiting for your servants to dig them out. Why not let me gather my people and let us go so many days’ journey out into the wilderness and carry them off, before some other learned traveller to whose eyes all the mysteries of the past are like an open book shall come and find them?”
“That would be bad, Ibrahim,” said the professor slowly.