His whilom friend, conscience, came back and gibbered at him. Once she had said: "Don't do it!" and now she was saying quite humanly: "I told you so!" Hadn't she warned him? Hadn't she swung her red lantern under his very nose? Well, she hoped he was satisfied. His reply to this brief jeremiad was that if ever he got his hands upon the rug again, he would hang on till the crack of doom, and conscience herself could go hang. Mere perverseness, probably. And where was it, since he was now certain that Mahomed had it not? It was Ryanne; Ryanne, smooth and plausible of tongue. Not being satisfied with a thousand pounds, he had stolen it again to mulct some other simple, trustful person. George, usually so unsuspicious, was now quite willing to believe anything of anybody.
He felt himself being lifted to his feet. The rope round his ankles was thrown off. His feet stung under the renewed flow of blood. He waited for them to liberate his hands, but the galling rope was not disturbed. It was evident that the natives still entertained some respect for his fighting ability. Next, they boosted him, flung a leg here and a leg there; then came a lurch forward, a lurch backward, the recurrence of the pain in his side, and he knew that he was upon the back of a camel, desert-bound. There were stirrups, and as life began to spread vigor once more through his legs, he found the steel. The straps were too short, and in time the upper turn of the steel chafed his insteps. He eased himself by riding sidewise, the proper way to ride a camel, but with constant straining to keep his balance without the use of his hands. Fortunately, they were not traveling very fast, otherwise, what with the stabbing pains in his side, produced by the unvarying dog-trot, he must have fallen. He was miserable, yet defiant; tears of anger and pain filled his eyes and burned down his cheeks in spite of the cloth.
And he, poor fool, had always been longing for an adventure, a taste of life outside the peaceful harbor wherein he had sailed his cat-boat! Well, here he was, in the deep-sea water; and he read himself so truly that he knew the adventure he had longed for had been the cut-and-dried affairs of story-tellers, in which only the villains were seriously discommoded, and everything ended happily. A dashing hero he was, to be sure! Why hadn't he changed his clothes? Was there ever such an ass? Ryanne had told him that there was likely to be sport; and yet he had left the hotel as one dressed for the opera. Ass! And to-morrow the Ludwig would sail without him.
The wind blew cold against his chest, and the fact that he could neither see, nor use his tongue to moisten his bruised lips, added to the discomforts. Back and forth he swayed and rocked. The pain in his side was gradually minimized by the torture bearing upon his ankles, his knees, across his shoulders. Finally, when in dull despair he was about to give up and slide off, indifferent whether the camels following trampled him or not, a halt was called. It steadied him. Some one reached up and untied the thong that strangled the life in his hands. Forward again. This was a trifle better. He could now ease himself with his hands. No one interfered with him when he tore off the bandages over his eyes and mouth. The camels were now urged to a swifter pace.
Egyptian night, well called, he thought. He could discern nothing but phantom-like grey silhouettes that bobbed up and down after the fashion of corks upon water. Before him and behind him; how many camels made up the caravan he could not tell. He could hear the faint slip-slip as the beasts shuffled forward in the fine and heavy sand. They were well out into the desert, but what desert was as yet a mystery. He had forgotten to keep the points of the compass in his mind. And to pick out his bearings by any particular star was to him no more simple than translating Chinese.
Far, far away behind he saw a luminous pallor in the sky, the reflected lights of Cairo. And only a few hours ago he had complained to the head-waiter because of the bits of cork floating in his glass of wine. Ah, for the dregs of that bottle now; warmth, revival, new courage!... Curse the luck! There went one of his pumps. He called out. The man riding in front and leading George's camel merely gave a yank at the rope. The camel responded with a cough and a quickened gait.
Presently George became aware of a singular fact: that he could see out of one eye better than the other; and that the semi-useless orb shot out little stars with every beat of his heart. One of his ears, too, began to throb and burn. He felt of it. It was less like an ear than a mushroom. It had been a rattling good mix-up, anyhow; and he accepted the knowledge rather proudly that the George Percival Algernon, who but lately had entered the English-Bar sprucely and had made his exit in a kind of negligible attire, had left behind one character and brought away another. Never again was he going to be afraid of anything; never again was he going to be shy: the tame tiger, as it were, had had his first taste of blood.
Dawn, dawn; if only the horizon would brighten up a little so that he could get his bearings. By now they were at least fifteen or twenty miles from Cairo; but in what direction?
Hour after hour went by; over this huge grey roll of sand, down into that cup-like valley; soundless save when the camels protested or his stirrup clinked against a buckle; all with the somber aspect of a scene from Dante. Several black spots, moving in circles far above, once attracted George; and he knew them to be kites, which will follow a caravan into the desert even as a gull will follow a ship out to sea. Later, a torpid indifference took possession of him, and the sense of pain grew less under the encroaching numbness.