CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Jack Hampton wearily passed a hand across his eyes. Would they never sight the oasis at which Ali had promised they would arrive at the end of the day’s march? Even after many days of travel on camel-back, Jack had not become sufficiently accustomed to the soft-footed swaying brute to make a long day’s ride a pleasure.
And this was a long day’s ride indeed. Except for a brief halt at noon the caravan had been on the march across the lifeless sand dunes of the desert, unbroken by trees, rocks, animals or human beings, unbroken by anything, in fact, except occasional stunted bushes, since dawn. In another half hour the sun would descend, and if the promised oasis were not sighted by then, they would be forced to spend another night on the desert.
Looking back from his position at the head of the column, Jack could see Bob Temple and Frank Merrick, both mounted as was he, behind them a half dozen shuffling camels with astride each among the bundles a swarthy Arab enfolded in the inevitable jillab, from the folds of which stuck out a long-barrelled rifle, and bringing up the rear Jack’s father and Ali, his head man, both engaged in conversation.
The loop aerial rigged up on Frank’s camel caught Jack’s gaze, and his eyes brightened. He decided he would break the monotony of this desert travel by kidding his friend. And with that purpose in view, he halted his camel, to await Frank’s approach.
To himself Jack chuckled as he thought of the bewilderment and wonder which Frank had aroused amongst the camel drivers by his aerial. Attached to a light frame strapped to the camel’s hump, ground wire trailing between the animal’s feet, Frank had rigged up the set the day before upon Ali’s declaration that another day would see them at the Oasis Aiz-Or. He wanted to be in a position to receive any message which Professor Souchard, a Swiss savant, who awaited their coming, might send out. For with him Professor Souchard had a duplex radio apparatus for both sending and receiving, which the boys jointly had devised.
Many months before Professor Souchard had entered the Sahara to prepare for their coming. Not that it was his first visit to the Great Desert, however. On the contrary, twenty years of his life had been spent in poking about its endless reaches in search of the ruins of an incredibly ancient city which he had reason to believe had been founded in prehistoric times by colonists from the lost continent of Atlantis, that fabled land in the Atlantic ocean which had been the seat of all civilization and had been swallowed up in a tremendous cataclysm of Nature giving rise to the universal legends of The Flood.
Toward the end of his period of explorations, Professor Souchard had come to an oasis lying far from the few known routes, the Oasis of Aiz-Or, inhabited by a small desert tribe. From it he had glimpsed far to the southward the peaks of a mountain range. When he asked the Arabs what mountains lay there, they had replied it was the Land of Shaitun, which in English means Satan. The mountains were accursed said the Arabs, and all who ventured near were never heard of again.
At least five days’ travel intervened, said Professor Souchard’s hosts, with no water holes in the direct route, although three small springs bubbling from beneath great rocks lay somewhere between the oasis and the mountain wall. But without guides, a traveller would be unable to find them.
Nothing daunted, Professor Souchard accompanied by his faithful companion, Ben Hassim, had set out. For the mountains of Shaitun, he believed, were unknown to geographers. And the ancient Egyptian inscriptions which spoke of the great city of the past for which he had been searching through the years referred to the mountains surrounding it. Perhaps, therefore, the city he sought was within that mountain wall.