“Is that so? That notion has struck you too!” Mr Hicks glanced round at Mansfield as the latter lowered his voice. “But don’t you go expecting a bust-up. The boss is not taking any. He’s the man to go fooling round in this desert until the Day of Judgment—sort of a dry land edition of the Flying Dutchman, so to speak—rather than turn tail and confess that he’s beaten. I’ve figured out that little mystery by this time. The boss has planked his whole pie on the table for this game, and he stands to win everything or go under. Sabe? Say you run across a soldier of fortune. You receive him as a man and a brother, until you get to know that he has not been above hiring his sword out to a crowd of pirates. Then you dry up. That’s how it is with the boss. If he comes to smash now he’s done on account of having sided with the Jews against his own colour. His world can never forgive that. But if he succeeds—why, then it’s as certain as things can be in this uncertain universe that he’ll become a real brand-new, properly organised, guaranteed by Europe, constitutional prince, with a part to play that will take all his time and be a thing of joy to him for ever. Do you guess he’ll let himself be fooled out of that by any dusky scarecrow of a nigger chieftainess that chooses to work the political racket and talk big about the Powers? No, sir!”
The march continued, with no diminution of its unpleasantness, and the travellers began to wonder when it would come to an end. Ordinarily, so they had understood from Yeshua, it was accomplished in a week; but to all appearance they were no nearer Sitt Zeynab now than they had been at the beginning of their journey.
“Guess I wish the desert wasn’t so like itself,” grumbled Mr Hicks to Mansfield on the eighth day after leaving Damascus. “The hog that Mark Twain came upon seven times over on the Riffelberg wasn’t a circumstance to it. I could lave sworn we had passed those sandhills before.”
“I’ve been thinking so all day,” said Mansfield; “but I had an idea that the heat and the monotony might be affecting my brain. Let’s ask the Count what he thinks. I see he is suggesting a halt to the sheikh.”
They followed Cyril, who had been riding ahead of them as usual, but had now dismounted, and was walking his horse towards a clump of bushes. Here he stopped, and appeared to brush away the sand and pick up something. As they came up, he turned to them, and held out a small metal match-box for their inspection.
“I buried it at the foot of that bush on the third morning after we started,” he said. “I suspected some trick of this sort.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOUSE OF THE LADY ZENOBIA.
The three men looked at each other and at the match-box. Mansfield broke the silence first.
“Then all this beastly journey has been for nothing?” he cried, with youthful outspokenness. “We are no nearer Sitt Zeynab than we were at first!”
“Look out, Count!” said Mr Hicks quickly. “Put that thing away, or the Arabs will twig that it was not here for its health.”