The shock he had received affected his physical as well as his mental condition. An overwhelming desire came to him to get off his high seat and throw himself down on the sand and go to sleep for ever and ever. That hateful flag, those smiling tents! whose whiteness had brought a vision of Millicent's tent floating before his eyes.
"There are three tents, Effendi. Shall we journey towards them?" Abdul's voice sounded far away. What was he talking about? Michael tried to concentrate his thoughts.
"Oh yes, of course!" His voice was listless. "We must go on. You may be wrong." He struggled for mind-control.
He urged his camel to a quicker pace. They rode on in silence. Abdul was now convinced that the harlot—or, in other words, Mohammed Ali's "golden lady"—had wreaked her vengeance on his master. He had taken into his camp the fever-stricken saint; she had slipped away in the night and discovered the treasure. With a comprehensiveness which would have astounded the impurest of Western ears, he cursed Millicent and her vile offspring into the third and fourth generations.
CHAPTER XI
As Michael got off his kneeling camel, a young Englishman left a tent, the outer one of the three which formed the excavation-camp, the white tents which Michael had seen from his high seat, and came quickly forward. It was obvious that strangers might come thus far and no further. In a voice of official authority, yet by no means ungraciously, he said to Michael:
"Can I do anything for you? What do you want? I'm afraid you can't come any nearer."
Michael looked blankly into the thin, intelligent face, a sunburnt face, which any woman would have described as attractively ugly. For a moment or two neither man spoke. There was an unpleasant silence. It was significant of the atmosphere of the meeting. It expressed to the excavator strain, rather than shyness, on the traveller's part. He had told Michael that he might come no further; he had asked him if he wanted anything.
At both remarks Michael almost laughed hysterically. He was not allowed to come any closer to his own treasure, to the gift of Akhnaton, to the legacy of the Pharaoh, which had been divinely revealed to him! This interloper had asked him if he wanted anything!
Quicker than light these thoughts flashed through his bewildered brain, while between himself and this representative of the Government the figure of the world's first divinely-inspired man, with the rays of Aton shining brilliantly from behind his head, became clearer and clearer. It obliterated the figure of the excavator.