“You have married Devene’s daughter. Poor man! Poor man! Poor man!”
That was their song through England, France, and Italy. Then the thudding of the screw took up its burden, and chanted it until he saw the low coasts of Egypt outlined before him and set his face to duty once again.
CHAPTER XI.
AN OFFERING TO THE GODS
About six weeks after he had said farewell to Edith at Charing Cross Station, Rupert found himself once more upon the banks of the Nile and staring by the light of the full moon at the colossal statues that sit upon the façade of Abu-Simbel. So much had happened to him since last he contemplated their gentle, stony smile that its unvarying sameness struck him as irritating and almost strange. Somehow, he expected that they would look different.
Certainly Rupert looked different; so much so, that if they had been endowed with remembrance, the statues would scarcely have known him again, for now he was dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab sheik. These could not, as he knew, suffice to disguise his Western origin. Still, in a desert land, devastated by war, through which few travelled, they might, he hoped, render him less conspicuous to the keen eyes of wandering Arabs, or even of spies surveying his little caravan from the shelter of a bush or the top of a sand-hill a mile or two away.
For the rest, it was his intention, if accused, to declare himself a European, of the German race, making a journey to sell merchandise to certain sheiks whom he had been informed were anxious to buy at good prices. For this purpose he had a licence to trade, signed by the authorities at Cairo, in favour of one Mahommed, a German who had turned Mussulman, and whose European name was Carl Gottschalk. This merchandise of his, which was loaded upon eight camels, consisted of cotton goods, sugar, copper wire, and oddly enough, a certain quantity of guns and ammunition, also what was a strange possession for a trader setting out upon a trip, about £1,000 in gold. All these things, it is scarcely necessary to explain, were in reality designed to be used as presents to propitiate the wavering frontier chiefs, to whom he was the accredited envoy, and to dispose them to assist instead of opposing the forward movement which was then in contemplation as a first step in the re-conquest of the Soudan.
He had started some days before from Derr, opposite to Korosko, with his caravan of about thirty camels and some five-and-twenty trained and trusted men, most of them Soudanese, all of whom had seen military service, although they were disguised as drivers and attendants. At Abu-Simbel he was to receive certain reports from spies, who had been sent on to collect information, and then to strike out into the desert to fulfil the object of his mission.
In order that he might be able to think over the hazardous details of the work before him in quiet—for even at night the grumbling of the camels about his camp, which was pitched a few hundred yards away, disturbed him—Rupert entered the hypostyle hall of the rock-hewn temple and seated himself upon the dry sand that had drifted into it, resting his back against the third of the northern row of the huge effigies of Rameses II., which are clothed in the wrappings of Osiris and bear his crook and scourge. Here the darkness was relieved only by a faint ray of moonlight, which crept up the solemn, central aisle, and the silence was that of a tomb.
When he had been in the place for half an hour or so, weary with thinking, Rupert began to doze, but was awakened suddenly by the sound of feet moving over sand, and looking up, saw two figures glide past him, one of them somewhat taller than the other, to vanish into the recesses of the temple so quietly that they might well have been ghosts of its ancient worshippers. For a while he remained still, wondering who these were, and what they could be doing in such a place at midnight, or near it, when all men slept.
At first he thought that he would follow them, then remembered that he was not seeking adventures, and that, after all, it was no business of his to interfere with them, so long as they left him alone. Therefore, being now wide awake again, he pursued his cogitations, purposing to rise presently and return to his camp to sleep. A few minutes later, ten perhaps, chancing to glance up the great temple, Rupert perceived far, far away, a tiny star of light. From where he was it looked no stronger than that of a distant planet in a cloudy sky, or of a glow-worm amongst the tall grasses of a bank. This light roused his curiosity, as he guessed that it must have to do with the figures that had passed him. Probably they were treasure-seekers, he reflected, engaged in digging in the sanctuary, which in the day-time they did not dare to do. They might even have found the secret of the crypt that he always believed to exist under Abu-Simbel, wherein very possibly its gold and silver treasures were still hidden from the eyes of men. The thought excited him who, as Edith had good cause to know, was an ardent Egyptologist.