After this Abdul Hashim began to pace nervously up and down the room, the floor of which was hard earth. Suddenly he paused.
“How many people came with you from Koser?” he demanded.
I was glad he asked the question that way, for it gave me an opportunity to answer truthfully and still mislead him.
“Gege-Merak, who guided us, had an escort of six Bega warriors; in our party were nine—fifteen in all,” said I.
“Gege-Merak!” he exclaimed, in an annoyed tone, and resumed his pacing. Evidently the news did not please him.
I acknowledge that I hardly knew how to conduct myself in so strange an emergency. The question was whether to try to make an ally of the sheik or to defy him. It naturally worried me to be separated from my uncle and his party of Americans, of whose fate I now stood in doubt. The treasure I believed to be seriously threatened by Gege-Merak, who had so inopportunely discovered our secret, and the chief would have no hesitation in murdering us all if he found an opportunity. With Abdul Hashim on our side we might successfully defy Gege-Merak, yet to set the Arab on the trail meant sure death to the Professor and a loss of much of the treasure, since the sheik would be sure to put forward his claim for a division, under the alleged compact existing between himself and Lovelace.
Truly we Americans were in double peril, from the Bega chief on one side and the Arab sheik on the other; and how we might extricate ourselves from the difficulties that beset us was a difficult problem. If we three boys were again with Ned and Uncle Naboth we could assist them to fight it out, but our loss must have weakened them greatly, and alone we three were well nigh powerless.
“Fifteen,” repeated Abdul Hashim, musingly; “fifteen. Are you Americans true men?” he then inquired, with an appearance of earnestness.
“True as steel,” I said.
“Will they deliver Van Dorn to my vengeance?”