“Do we climb those peaks?” I asked the chief, as our followers prepared the camp.
“There are passes between them, which we follow for two days,” he answered, briefly. Ketti told me they were the Hammemat Mountains, composed of a hard, dark stone called breccia, and that the ancient Egyptians had quarries here, using the stone to form their statues from.
From this first night the native and American camps were separate. The Begas pitched low tents for our use, but on their side only one tent, for the use of Iva, was set up. The men, including the aged chief, when they slept simply rolled themselves in their abayeh or ragged blankets and lay down upon the sand.
Bryonia, having brought a couple of sacks of charcoal from Koser to use for fuel, managed to cook us a good supper. The Bega did no cooking, but satisfied their hunger with hard bread and dried goat’s flesh, washed down with a swallow or two of tepid water. We invited Gege-Merak and Iva to join us at our meal, but the chief curtly refused.
“I eat with my people,” he said.
This action seemed to worry the Professor and his face grew anxious and thoughtful.
“If Gege-Merak had broken bread with us, or eaten of our salt,” he remarked, “we might have depended upon his faithfulness at all times. It is a rather suspicious circumstance, to my mind, that he refuses to join us.”
“I don’t trust him at all,” said I.
“Nor do I,” added Uncle Naboth. “Seemed to me, first time I spotted the rascal, that he was playin’ a deep game. Don’t you think it was foolish, Professor, to pay him all that money?”
“Not at all. If we had refused to pay it he might have robbed us of it on the journey. Now he knows he can get nothing more from us until we return to the ship. That will be our salvation, I imagine. To get the balance of his payment he’ll be sure to return.”