The entire topography had changed. Wily old Dimitrino! To tuck his tomb away in this shifting, evasive landscape where he was literally here today and gone tomorrow!
Thank Heavens my compass could not run down and I still had my records. At the thought of the return trip memory re-illumined the flame of anger but, close on its searing glow, burst the effulgence of love. Faint from hunger but buoyed by my inextinguishable passion I stumbled through the distorted territory where, verily, as the old Hebrew says, “the little hills skip like rams.”
Chapter XIV
Love Lost
Chapter XIV
Early in the dawn I began my return. The wind had fallen and progress was not difficult. Once out of the curious hill country which had again taken the lost Valley of Bulls into its embrace it was a simple matter to locate my camp which was the only visible object in the open desert. My companions were overjoyed at my return for, though an overnight absence on my part was not unusual, they were always anxious until I put in an appearance.
But their welcome was submerged in their wonder at my orders for an immediate return to Assouan.
“What’s the idea?” questioned Swank, “we’ve just got here, we’ve accomplished nothing; it’s....”
I cut him short with a severe glance vouchsafing only the remark “Foul play is afoot. Make haste.”
He saw that something serious had happened and obeyed unquestioningly. The rank and file of my safari were delighted at the prospect of getting back to the comforts of the more civilized river-life. More than once it was on my lips to tell my American companions the story of my entombment with all its possibilities of future riches and fame, but the thought of Lady Sarah lay too heavily on my heart. This burden of apprehension I must carry alone. Weighed down with my individual anguish I plodded silently across the sand, my mind too busy with pictures of what might have happened to even note the signs of our progress, the merging of the desert into the fertile fields with their long lines of irrigation ditches, the flourishing plantations of capsicum and marrows alive with chattering apteryxes and flocks of four-horned sheep.
With a start I realized that we were on the outskirts of Assouan.