“According to the stars,” said Cyril solemnly, “the fate of your Princess is linked with mine. If we meet, it will be a very good thing for both of us; if not, great disasters will follow.”
“Say, Count, pile it on!” murmured Mr Hicks, in ecstasies of admiration. “Guess I’ll most believe you myself soon. He says that even if you get to Sitt Zeynab, that wouldn’t help you to see the Princess or make a treaty with her.”
“Tell him I’ll take my chance of that.”
“He says the Princess is safe to imprison you and hold you to ransom.”
“Let her. I am going to Sitt Zeynab.”
“He concludes to give in, Count; but he is using improper language about the day he inaugurated this personally conducted trip business.”
“Quite possible and very natural. Tell him to make his men dismount, Hicks, and let one of them bring their horses over here. Then he can go back with them to their side of the fire. Point out to him the space between the horses and that rock over there. If any of them cross that before daybreak we shall not hesitate to shoot. On the march he himself will ride between you and Mansfield, his men in single file in front of me.”
The contest was over, to the unbounded admiration of the Arabs, who began to regard Cyril as a being little short of miraculous, since he could see and hear in his sleep. That this feeling on their part was to a certain extent a guarantee of safety to the travellers became evident the next day, when a large body of mounted Arabs swooped down upon the party as they approached the wells at which the unwilling guides suggested a mid-day halt. It was clear that the new-comers were prepared to congratulate their sheikh on his success in misleading a fresh band of Roumi spies, and it was a shock to them to perceive that the spies had not yet allowed themselves to be shaken off. The sheikh displayed extreme tact in making the best of the situation. He explained matters to his followers in a speech which was designed to show that he was effecting a long-planned coup in carrying off the Prince of the Jews to Sitt Zeynab to hold him to ransom, without so much as allowing the captive to suspect that he was a prisoner. But whether the sheikh’s hearers were equally accomplished liars with himself, and thus naturally prone to discount his assertions, or whether his two original followers failed to corroborate him as they should, the awe with which Cyril was regarded spread quickly to the larger circle. This was highly satisfactory, since, as Mr Hicks pointed out to Mansfield, the tribe might easily have annihilated the three intruders without a possibility of resistance, in one of the paroxysms of powder-play and spear-flourishing with which they celebrated the sheikh’s return. Portents began to multiply around Cyril. At one time it was a stray stork, called by the Arabs the father of luck, which stood meditatively behind him for some time, undisturbed by the eager whispers around; at another a scorpion, which had ensconced itself under one of his boots for the night. It left the marks of its claws on his finger when he took up the boot in the morning, but Mansfield killed it with a stone before it had time to turn round and sting him.
Four days longer the march lasted, crossing a strip of desert more sandy, stony, sunny, hot, and thirsty than any passed hitherto. This pathless, waterless tract was the true defence of Sitt Zeynab, the real reason why neither Roumi nor hostile tribesman had ever succeeded in making his way thither. The Beni Ismail knew their desert as well as if it had been traversed by a high road, but they economised their stock of water and curtailed their halts as far as possible while they were passing through it. This added discomfort pressed with special severity upon those unaccustomed to desert travelling. Mr Hicks and Mansfield, riding on in the baking sun hour after hour, with dry mouths and parched tongues, were both heartily sick of the adventure; but neither of them breathed a word of complaint or remonstrance to Cyril. Nor—which was a far stronger testimony to their loyalty—did they even exchange murmurs with one another; their nearest approach to doing so was an occasional lament over the joys of civilisation. If a bath was Mansfield’s ideal of unattainable happiness, Mr Hicks’s was a sherry cobbler. His dreams, he averred, were haunted by the pleasant tinkle of the ice in the glass, and as he lifted the straw to his parched lips the thought would cross his mind that it was worth while to have a real thirst on, for the pleasure of quenching it; but at this point he invariably awoke. Cyril alone appeared unconscious of the fresh hardships of this portion of the journey. Riding by himself, he was nevertheless ready, when his companions addressed him, to exchange with them the grim pleasantries which suited the situation. It was clear, however, that his thoughts were not bounded by the present scene, and Mr Hicks hazarded the suggestion that his brain was evolving schemes of universal dominion. The Arabs viewed him with ever-increasing respect, and it was with genuine awe that the sheikh rode up to him one afternoon, and, pointing out a hill upon the horizon, the summit of which seemed more regular in form than those on either side, said—
“Behold, O Prince of the Jews, the house of Sitt Zeynab!”