“Whose eyes?”
“Perchance those of the woman of mystery, of crime, of death.”
Ralph Trenchard looked over his shoulder towards the tent of the woman he loved, then back at the man.
“Tell the men to have their rifles ready, I am coming to inspect them,” he said abruptly, then turned away and stood looking out across the desert.
CHAPTER VIII
“A person sat demanding from God the rise of morn—when morn rose he became blind.”—Arabic Proverb.
“I wish the stars could be seen,” Sir Richard said irritably, three nights later, as he looked up at the sky, across which hung a heavy purple cloud. Due to the intense heat, it obliterated the stars, thereby trying the patience of the old man to the uttermost. “This delay is simply abominable. To think, just to think, that this wind has been blowing for nearly a week, clouding the sky and blotting out the stars—the stars by which, if they could have been seen, I could have proved, absolutely proved, that we are camped upon the exact spot, between the mountains of Hareek and the Jebel Akhaf, from where the Holy Fathers turned due south. We could have followed in their footsteps, started to-night; think of it, could have started to-night, if only this wind hadn’t blown. What? Try to find out what the firing meant the other night? Nonsense, man, nonsense! We don’t want to go over all that again. Some Arab, a solitary one. Sound carries for miles, miles in the desert, the slightest sound. If you let a pin drop it could be almost heard in Hutah. Absurd! The thing to do is to get on.” He spread out, with an angry slap, the copy he had made of the vellum inscribed by the Holy Palladius, and read out the Latin words by the light of an electric torch. “It absolutely tallies,” he cried enthusiastically. “You see, ab-so-lutely tallies! Another week, perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more, and we should see the Sanctuary before us, if we could only start!”
“But, Grandad,” interrupted Helen, who sat fanning herself with her topee in an endeavour to bear with the terrible heat, which had encircled her eyes with deep violet shadows and caused her collar bones to show with undue prominence. “How can you be sure that that range of mountains is the one in which the water is hidden? It seems to me to be too near the beginning of the desert not to have been discovered before, if it is. In fact, Abdul told me that his own brother had been within five miles of it.”