“You are a very clever woman, mother,” he said, “but be careful that they don’t arrest you as a Mahdist spy, for you won’t be able to call the Nile and the Campsine wind as witnesses.”
“Ah! you laugh at me,” she answered, shaking her old head, “but you wonderful white folk have still much to learn from the East that was grey with time when the first of your forefathers yet lay within the womb. I tell you, Rupert Bey, that all Nature has its voices, and that some of them speak of the past, some of the present, and some of the future. Yes; even that moving sand down which you climbed but now has its own voice.”
“I know that well enough, for I heard it, but I can’t explain to you the reason in Arabic.”
“You heard it; yes, and you would tell me that it is caused by sand rubbing up against rocks, or by rocks singing to the sound of the sand like a harp to the wind, and so, without doubt, it is. You heard the voice, wise white father, but tell me, did you understand its talk? Listen!” she went on, without waiting for an answer, “I, seated here watching you as you climbed, I heard what the sand said about you and others with whom your life has to do. Oh, no; I am not a common fortune-teller. I do not look at hands and make squares in the dust, or throw bones and pebbles, or gaze into pools of ink. Yet sometimes when the voice speaks to me, then I know, and never so well as of him whose feet are set upon the Singing Sand.”
“Indeed, mother; and what was its song of me?”
“I shall not tell you,” she answered, shaking her head. “It is not lawful that I should tell you, and if I did, you would only set me down as a common cheat—of whom there are many.”
“What had the song of the sand to say of me?” he repeated carelessly, for he was only half-listening to her talk.
“Much, Rupert Bey,” she answered; “much that is sad and more that is noble.”
“Noble! That should mean the peerage at least. Well, everything considered, it is a pretty safe prophecy,” he muttered to himself, with a laugh, and turned to leave her, then checked himself and asked: “Tell me, Bakhita, what do you know of the lost temple in the desert yonder?”
Instantly she became very attentive, and answered him with another question: