The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

Ibrahim sat up upon his camel and opened his mouth to answer, but there was something in the stern, fateful bearing of the Englishman which seemed to quiet him. At any rate, he turned the beast and urging it to a trot, departed swiftly across the desert.

“A very dangerous man,” reflected Rupert. “I will report the matter at once and have him looked after. I wish they had left his sheep alone and taken him, as no doubt he knows I said that they ought to do. Somehow, I don’t feel as though I had seen the last of that fellow.” Then dismissing the matter of this rebel sheik from his mind, he continued his walk and crossed the mountain plateau.

Presently Rupert came to the path by which he intended to descend. It was a strange one, none other indeed than a perfect waterfall of golden sand set at so steep an angle that the descent of it appeared dangerous, if not impossible, as would doubtless be the case had that slope been of rock. Being of sand, however, the feet of the traveller sink into it and so keep him from slipping. Then, if he is fortunate, for this thing does not always happen, he may enjoy a curious experience. As he moves transversely to and fro across the face of the slide, all about him the sand begins to flow like water, till at length it pours itself into the Nile below and is swept away. More, as it flows it sings, a very wild song, a moaning, melancholy noise that cannot be described on paper, which is caused, they say, by the vibration of the mountain rocks beneath the weight of the rolling sand. From time to time Rupert paused in his descent and listened to this strange, thrilling sound until it died away altogether, when wearying of the amusement, he scrambled down the rest of the hill-side and reached the bank of the Nile.

Here his reflections were again broken in upon, this time by a woman. Indeed he had seen her as he descended, and knew her at once for the old gipsy who for the past year or two had lived in a hovel close by, and earned, or appeared to earn her living by cultivating a strip of land upon the borders of the Nile. As it chanced, Rupert had been able a month or so before to secure repayment to her of the value of her little crop which had been eaten up by the transport animals, and the restoration of her milch goats that the soldiers had seized. From that moment the old woman had been his devoted friend, and often he would spend a pleasant hour in talking to her in her hut, or while she laboured in her garden.

To look at, Bakhita, for so she was named, was a curious person, quite distinct from the Egyptian and Soudanese women, being tall, thin, very light-coloured for an Eastern, with well-cut features and a bush of snow-white hair which hung down upon her shoulders. Indeed she was so different from themselves that she was known as the Gipsy by all the natives in the district, and consequently, of course, credited with various magical powers and much secret knowledge—with truth in the latter case.

Rupert greeted her in Arabic, which by now he spoke extraordinarily well, and held out his hand for her to shake. She took it, and bending down touched it with her lips.

“I was waiting for you, my father,” she said.

“Supposing you call me ‘your son,’” he answered, laughing, with a glance at her white locks.

“Oh!” she replied, “some of us have fathers that are not of the flesh. I am old, but perhaps your spirit is older than mine.”

“All things are possible,” said Rupert gravely. “But now, what is the business?”