"Yes. Sorry, but I can't make it any less."
"Then you may give Sheikh Abdur Kad'r my compliments and tell him I predict either a thunderstorm or some unusual disturbance before night. Mrs. Haxton has a very effective smile, I admit, but it requires exceptional charm to make a smile distinctly visible at—how far did you say?—two miles?"
The lady in question was certainly bending towards Mr. Fenshawe, and the smile was a reasonable conjecture. But they had tacitly agreed to forget their earlier conversation. They chatted freely now with the friendly ease that was their wont ever since the exigencies of camp life had thrown them together far more than was possible on board ship. Five weeks ago the Aphrodite dropped anchor off Pajura after crossing from Aden, where Mr. Fenshawe had despatched his cablegrams and obtained a portion of the equipment needed for the desert tour. The arrival of such a large party occasioned no little excitement at the French port. That tiny station had not seen so many white faces at one time since its establishment, and, when its polite Commandant recovered from his voluble surprise, he warned Mr. Fenshawe that the interior was somewhat unsafe. But stories of Arab unrest were familiar to the veteran. He had heard them regularly during the preceding thirty years, and he was more than ever bent on outwitting the jealous rivals who had placed such obstacles in his path.
The French officers at Pajura thought he was rather cracked to take ladies with him, yet they were obliged to admit that desert travel was healthy and enjoyable, provided supplies were ample, and, on this score, the skilled explorer of Soudan by-ways showed that he had lost none of his cunning. Before the caravan started news came from Aden that the Cigno had been dragged off her sandspit. This gave an added value to the land route, as the coast of Erythrea was assuredly closed to them; the French authorities, on the other hand, rendered every assistance in their power.
And now, after a month of steady marching, the caravan was well within Italian territory. The route lay parallel with the sea, but nearly a hundred miles distant from it. It traversed the interminable wadys and shelving table-lands leading down to the coast from the granite and pink Nubian stone foothills of the inner range of giants which guarded the fertile valleys of Abyssinia. Thus far, no unexpected difficulties had cropped up. The few nomads encountered were only too anxious to be friendly. The weather, scorching by day and intensely cold by night, was quite bearable. Indeed, to any one in good health, it supplied a marvelous tonic. Travelers less admirably equipped might have suffered annoyance from the snakes and scorpions which seem to thrive in the midst of sunburnt desolation, but these voyageurs de luxe slept in hammocks slung in roomy tents, and assiduous servants dislodged every stone before they spread the felt carpets on which the heaven-born deigned to sit at meals.
Yet—as Irene had guessed correctly—this magnificent progress through the desert contained a canker that threatened its destruction. Either von Kerber's calculations were at fault, or the papyrus was a madman's screed. The caravan was already two marches beyond the point agreed on by every authority consulted as that fixed by the Greek who survived the massacre of the Roman legion. The unhappy Austrian could no more identify the Five Hills mentioned in the papyrus as the essential clue to the whereabouts of the treasure than a man in an unknown forest can distinguish a special group of five trees. That is to say, he may blunder on them by chance, but he cannot find them by using his judgment. As Irene put it, here were not five, but five thousand hills. The mortal puzzle before von Kerber was to pick his five.
When the caravan arrived at the halting-place the tense solitude gave way to pandemonium. Camels grunted and squealed in eager plaint to be relieved of their loads, horses neighed and fought for the best tufts of grass, men raged at each other as though the work of preparing the camp were something new and wholly unexpected.
Through the turmoil strode Abdur Kad'r, a lean, saturnine Arab, who anathematized all his assistants indiscriminately, only varying his epithets according to the nationality of the man under the lash of his tongue at the moment.
"Bestir yourself, illegitimate one. Are we to await the setting sun ere the tents are fixed?" he shouted at a negro who was bothered by a knotted rope. A crash behind him told that a too-zealous Arab had tumbled a box to the ground.
"Oh, you owl, what evil have you done?" roared the Sheikh, transfixing the culprit with a glittering eye.