But when the morrow came his horse was useless. Having money, he went out to hire another. But while he was about the business, soldiers came to him and asked to be shown the permission by which he travelled.

He produced a doc.u.ment, but it was out of date. They told him so. In some alarm, he swore by Allah he was in the service of an English prince as mighty as the Sultan. They straightway asked to see the prince in question; and Elias had to own that he was not forthcoming.

Then they laughed him to scorn--the dragoman without a tourist. One took a fancy to the knife that decked his waist-band. Another admired his whip, and promptly took it. His pistol too was gone. In vain he looked for help or sympathy; the crowd of fierce-eyed, turbaned Muslims only jeered at his despair. At a threat to put him in prison, he flung them all the money he possessed, then cast himself upon the ground with face buried in his arms. Seeing he was finished, his tormentors left him thus; and the crowd, when they were gone, advised him friendly, bidding him look to Allah for redress.

Scared in his very soul, Elias rose at last and crept back to the house of his co-religionist. There he sat and moaned through all that day, refusing food and every other comfort. Disarmed and penniless, he could proceed no further in that lawless region. It was all Iskender's fault--the cunning devil! The valley of the gold seemed now his legal birthright, of which he had been defrauded by a wicked malefactor, who, not content with that, was leading out the good Emir to kill him in the desert. Iskender had bribed Aflatun and Faris; Iskender had lamed his horse; Iskender had set on the soldiers to despoil him. By the time he started on his homeward way, the world was poisoned by Iskender's wickedness; he could not look at rock, or myrtle-bush, or wayside flower without groans and gnashing of teeth; and wherever he reposed at noon, or spent the night, he told his wrongs. The story ran before him through the countryside. When he came at last to his own door, it was to find a crowd awaiting him, anxious to know the truth of strange reports. Several of the dragomans were there, including Abdullah, uncle of Iskender, who questioned Elias in no peaceful tone.

Awed by the sternness of so respectable a man, Elias dissembled his rage, and spoke in sorrow:

"Alas! it is too true. Allah knows, it grieves my soul to relate it.

Iskender, whom I loved as my own eyes, has led the good Emir into the wilderness, meaning to rob him there and take his life."

"It is a lie!" cried Abdullah furiously. "Take back those words this instant, or thy blood shall pay for it. Allah knows thou wast ever the chief of liars."

"That is true," agreed the bystanders.

"That is true, perhaps," Elias owned; "yet in this case I speak the truth. Those two had learnt the hiding-place of a great treasure, and Iskender means to have the whole of it. I had secret warning of his wicked purpose, and went to bring good honest men to defeat it. But he, suspecting what I was about, persuaded the Emir to start without me. Moreover, he dismissed the muleteer whom I had chosen, engaging in his stead a murderous ruffian. My soul died within me when I heard of their departure. Allah witness how I strove to overtake them. But the rogue had set every one upon the road against me. I was delayed at every turn, flouted and finally robbed of my weapons and all my money."

He exhibited his empty belt. "So I returned, despairing. May G.o.d have mercy on that kind Emir, and let his soul find peace."

These words, and still more the heart-broken manner of their utterance, made a profound impression upon all who heard them. They were received as true by every one there except Abdullah, who talked of hiring ruffians to a.s.sa.s.sinate the wicked slanderer. He swore at once to clear his nephew's honour. But his excitement was regarded with mere pity, as natural to a man afflicted in so near a relative.

CHAPTER XIX

Abdullah's furious indignation with Elias was complicated by a strain of keen anxiety upon his own account. Though most of the story seemed absurd to his intelligence, there remained enough of possible and even probable to justify dismay in so respectable a man. It seemed more than likely that his nephew, that unlucky boy, had led a British subject into lawless regions quite unknown to him; if harm ensued there would be trouble with the consul; and the power called Cook was so careful for its dragomans that the mere relationship to one whose face was blackened might involve dismissal. The bare idea of this contingency swamped Abdullah's intellect in pure amazement, for since his vision of the Blessed Virgin years ago he had believed that the breath of scandal could not come near him. He crossed himself repeatedly and muttered prayers. But these misgivings were secreted from the world, before which he appeared as the intrepid champion of his absent nephew, prepared to refute the story in its entirety.

His first thought was to make Elias eat his words either by bribes or violence; but a little reflection sufficed to show it worthless. For, once p.r.o.nounced, those words were all men's utterance; the town, the countryside, was now ablaze, and Elias but a fuse that had done its work. Abdullah demanded on behalf of Iskender that all who professed any knowledge of the matter should be called and questioned in the hearing of the group of dragomans. The proprietor and servants of the khan, who had beheld Iskender's mad excitement on the morning of the start, the discarded muleteer, Aflatun and Faris, who still lingered in the town in hopes to recover their expenses from Elias, with others quite unknown, bore witness to the suspicious manner of the young man's flight, and the dance he had led each and all of them. Abdullah gnawed his heavy grey moustache, with eyes downcast, when Elias turned towards him with expressive hands.

From the scene of this inquiry, which was the tavern in the ruined cloister, looking through shadowed arches on the purple sea, a professional errand led Abdullah to the hotel of Musa el Barudi. The sons of Musa sat on stools before the door, as did also the priest Mitri, taking coffee with them. "What news?" they asked. Abdullah hid his face. Could it be that they had not yet heard those wicked lies about Iskender? He enlightened them forthwith with fervent crossings of himself and prayers to Allah; and confessed that he was at his wits'

end, since all the evidence obtainable tended strongly to confirm the insane story. The laughter of his hearers did him good. They ridiculed the very notion of Iskender's guile; and they were men of position, respectable men, whose opinion was worth having, while the rest were riff-raff. Abdullah went home greatly comforted.

But the story spread and grew in all the land, with variations and most wonderful additions. People came to Abdullah for the rights of it, and were visibly disappointed and incredulous at receiving a flat denial.

They wanted the true story to replace the false, and Abdullah knew no more than that Elias was a liar. He sat still in his house for hours together, gnawing his thick moustache and staring at the ground. Then he bethought him to call on the mother of Iskender, who might have knowledge of her son's true purpose in this mad excursion. If he had abstained from visiting her till now, it was in the hope to keep from her a scandal which was sure to wound her. Now the time had come to try her value as a witness. Though the weather was bad, he could not wait for sunshine, but, taking his umbrella, walked out on to the sandhills through the pelting rain. His boots were caked with mud when he reached the little house; he would not enter therefore, but spoke from the doorway, sheltered by his umbrella. It seemed she had nothing to tell him. It was only from the voice of common rumour that she knew that her precious son had left the town, and since then reports had reached her which made her wash her hands of him for ever. When those reports came to the ears of the missionaries, as they were sure to do, it would ruin his mother in their eyes for ever.

"Take no thought for him, O Abdullah!" she cried furiously. "He is no son of mine, but a changeling of the children of the Jann. Doubtless my true son, whom I loved and nursed, is with the devils somewhere in the Jebel Kaf. Allah knows he was too good for me; my pride in him was too great! And so they took him, and put a miscreant, a devil, in his place. They say he has a mighty treasure written in his name, so that none but he can free it from the spell that guards it; that shows us what he really is, for who but a jinni, a vile changeling, would hide so glad a secret from his loving mother? Thou sayest, Has he killed the good Emir? He may have done so, for I say he is no child of mine; he is a devil. Tell all the world my son is lost to me, carried off to the Jebel Kaf or some lone ruin; and a jinni masquerades in his likeness, doing evil."

She screamed her parrot-scream; she could not talk. It was one of her black days when the world was turned to madness. Abdullah retired from the vain attempt to get some sense from her with hopelessness increased instead of lessened.

That same evening, as he sat in his house, enjoying a ray of pallid sunshine sent through the branches of a leafless fig-tree which stretched its gnarled, grey twisted arms before his door, Yuhanna Mahbub came to him with an angry brow.

"What is this I hear about Iskender?" he inquired. "Within this hour I have returned with my party from El Cuds. He has gone with the Emir to find a treasure; is it true? I came at once to thee, his near relation. For know that he swore to me by the Blessed Sacrament, in the presence of witnesses, that he knew nothing of any treasure, nor was his trip with the Emir concerned with aught save pleasure. This I tell thee that thou blame me not hereafter if I take dire vengeance on the perjured dog."

"Wait a little, O 'Hanna," said Abdullah pacifically, "thou wilt learn, in sh' Allah, that he did not swear falsely. All this scandal is the produce of Elias, whom all men know for the very father of lies. Wait, I tell thee, and the poor lad's innocence will be seen."

"Aye, wait I must perforce, for he is absent. Were he here among us, I should not have had recourse to thee unless as bearer of his dead body.

He swore, I tell thee, by the Blessed Sacrament! Shall such a wretch live on, to practise sacrilege?"

"May Allah, of his mercy, show the truth to us," replied Abdullah, while Yuhanna went off, breathing threats against the perjurer. He prayed to G.o.d that his nephew might not have sworn falsely and so incurred the punishment of everlasting fire. Yet there was much treasure lying undiscovered in the land, and it might be that his nephew had got wind of some of it. He knew not what to think, but spent most of the night in prayer, prostrate before that tiny picture of the Mother of G.o.d which he had set up to commemorate his radiant vision.

In the morning came the finishing blow. He stood in the doorway, watching his chickens pecking amid the wet litter of refuse round the trunk of the fig-tree, when the sound of a horse's hoof-beats reached his ears, and presently from a narrow opening in the neighbouring wall emerged a Frank in black clothes, black, leaf-shaped hat and yellow riding-boots--the Father of Ice in person. The missionary dismounted, tied his horse by the head-rope to a loose stone of the wall, and came forward, stooping to escape the branches of the fig-tree.

"Welcome, sir!" exclaimed Abdullah, smiling and bowing, though his mind misgave him. "My house a boor one, sir, but at your service."

"Good day to you," replied the missionary coldly, and pa.s.sed in before him.

"I have come about this shocking business of your nephew," he observed, declining to sit down, though Abdullah brought forth cushions. "The news reached me only yesterday, and I have been this morning to see that man Elias. His story seems quite clear, in spite of all the nonsense about buried treasure. The young Englishman doubtless took a considerable sum of money with him, and Iskender has beguiled him by the story of the treasure, meaning to rob him, if not worse."

"Oh, sir, it's all a lie, by G.o.d!" exclaimed Abdullah; but the Father of Ice paid no attention to him.

"I grieve to think of that misguided boy. He was like a child of our own at the Mission, till bad companions led him into evil ways. Of course, now he must pay the penalty of his transgression. You natives must be taught once more that the life and property of British subjects are not to be lightly made away with. I wrote to the consul last night, directly I had news of this atrocious affair. Iskender, poor misguided boy, will bear the punishment. But in my opinion, and in the sight of G.o.d, there are others more to blame than he in the matter. I mean those who led him astray, who first suggested to him a life of fraud and peculation." The missionary looked straight into Abdullah's eyes with the sternness of a righteous judge. "It is of no use to deny your own part in it, for I have spoken with the mother of the wretched lad, and she has told me how you were the first to propose that he should attach himself to this young English visitor with a view to making money, how you egged him on and taught him all the tricks of the trade. Are you not ashamed of yourself, an old man, with death close before you? But all you natives are alike conscienceless, blind to the truth as if a curse from G.o.d was on you. Be sure that I, for one, am not blind to your guilt in this affair, and that I shall mention it to Cook's agent at the first opportunity. You have led the boy to renounce his faith, and now to crime! I hope you are proud of your handiwork! Good-day!"

Abdullah found not a word. He stood staring at his feet, stunned and trembling. The whole structure of his pride caved in on him. He, the Sheykh of the Dragomans, the respectable of respectables, made so by especial favour of the Blessed Virgin, to hear such words from one of those very English whose esteem upheld him! He soiled his face with mud and camel's dung and sat in his house, lamenting, refusing every comfort that his wife or the sympathising neighbours could devise to offer. Some two hours after noon there came a storm with terrifying flashes. The thunder shook the house, the solid earth. At one moment the gnarled and twisted branches of the fig-tree were seen black against a sharp illumination, the next smoke-grey and weird amid the inky gloom. They seemed like snakes approaching stealthily, and then like loathsome arms intent to seize his soul. The storm gave place to steady rain; the world was lightened somewhat, but without relief.

Abdullah, though a prey to all the horrors, sat there quite still till evening, when suddenly the force of life returned to him. He rushed out to the nearest tavern, called for arac, and drank heavily. The honour which had resulted from his vision now seemed torn from him; and since She withdrew her favour, he was free to break his vow. That night, returning home, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the sacred picture from its shelf and trod it under foot, to his wife's terror.

CHAPTER XX

Southward and eastward rode Iskender with his loved Emir. Crags succeeded crags; the sky was turquoise. At noon the very gorges held no shade; but in the morning and the evening there were halls of coolness, while the sunlight made the heights as bright as flower-beds.

Wild-flowers shone everywhere among the rocks; and in the open places blew wide fields of them. Whenever they came to a village, and pitched their tent beside the well, the inhabitants bustled out to do them service in return for stale sc.r.a.ps of news from the outer world; and Iskender told them of the greatness and the power of his Emir, till they esteemed it a rich reward merely to peep through the hangings of the tent at such a potentate. Even supposing that they never found the Valley of the Kings, this ramble together through delightful solitudes was worth the money spent, it seemed to him. The valley full of gold was a pretext only, giving the taste of purpose to their doings and clothing them in the glamour of romance. And his patron seemed to view it in the same reasonable light, for he evinced no hurry, but when they reached some pleasant spot, would waste a day there, prowling among the gullies with his gun, while Iskender sketched. If the worst came to the worst, Iskender considered, he could always declare in anguished tones that he had lost the way--a matter of no wonder in the pathless desert. And he still trusted that Allah, of His boundless mercy, would lead them straight to the gold.

But one night there came a sudden storm of wind and rain when they were encamped upon the summit of a rocky mound at the junction-place of two wild gorges. Their tent was blown away, and they were drenched to the skin. It was found impossible to raise the tent again because of the strong wind hurtling through the ravines. The rain soon ceased, however; they managed to protect the fire, and sat close round it, trying to make a joke of the disaster. But in the morning the Emir's face had changed its colour, he kept shivering till his teeth chattered, and was very cross. Happily they had with them a supply of quinine. Iskender, who knew something of the ways of English people, administered a dose at once. He was for going back, seeing that the theatre of these misfortunes was a place remote from any dwelling; he warned his friend that they would find no village in the waste before them--nothing but scattered wells, and chance encampments of the Bedu, who might or might not prove friendly. But the Emir announced his fixed intention to go on, whatever happened; and when Iskender ventured to remonstrate, told him angrily to hold his tongue. Was it likely he was going to turn back now, having come so far? He drank some whisky neat, and then felt strong enough to mount his horse.

They went forward miserably in the chill, wet morning. The sky was nowhere seen; damp mists obscured every feature of the landscape. The muleteer, with head wrapped up in a shawl, intoned a kind of dirge, pausing sometimes to ask Allah to improve his plight. The Emir's teeth chattered and he cursed at intervals. But most hapless of all three was Iskender, who now knew that his lord was bent on finding the gold, and valued the pleasant days already spent, their adventures by the way, their friendly converse, solely as conducing to that end.

About the fourth hour the sun made itself felt; the mists began to disperse, and depths of blue appeared. The afternoon was fine and, in the sunshine, the Emir recovered cheerfulness. He apologised for his ill temper of the morning to Iskender, who strove to regard the stern resolve he had expressed to see the Valley of the Kings as likewise part of the attack of fever; but his mind misgave him.

That evening, after supper, the Emir remarked that they had come an eight days' journey at the lowest estimate, so, by the guide's own showing, must be near the place. He spread out his map between them, and asked Iskender to point out its exact position. Forced to decide that instant, or arouse his friend's distrust, the poor youth breathed a heart-felt prayer to Allah for direction and, after some show of examining the chart, laid finger firmly on a certain spot. The Emir then marked the place in pencil with a tiny cross, and reckoned up the distance by the scale provided.

"It is quite near," he cried. "We ought to be there to-morrow before midday."

He talked of nothing else till sleeptime. Iskender listened with an anxiety that was physical pain. He wished to Allah that Elias had been there to a.s.sure him that the place had real existence. Lying on the ground, wrapped in his coverlet, he spent the night in prayer. Allah is all-powerful; at His mercy all things are and are not; even if the valley lay not where Iskender had placed it, Allah could convey it thither in the twinkling of an eye; even if no such place existed in the world, Allah could create it as easily as a man can yawn. By dwelling thus in imagination on that Boundless Power, he gained at length a certain comfort in dependence such as the baser sort of slaves enjoy.

This mood of resignation was still upon him when he rose at daybreak.

There remained nothing possible for him to do; and in the fresh morning, when the rocks in sight presented each its separate ma.s.s of living colour, he could not believe that the Emir would quarrel with him, even if he knew the worst. The Emir was a rich man; what did he want with gold? And had not Iskender proved himself his faithful servant? Surely the great one felt some love for him, sufficient to condone a little fiction which had been kept up simply for his Honour's pleasure.

But the Frank had his map before him in the saddle, and he more than once dismounted to consult the compa.s.s on his watch-chain.

After three hours they reached a plain of alternating sand and rocks, where nothing grew except some p.r.i.c.kly shrub. On one side, not far off, a lake was seen, with many palm-trees mirrored in its tranquil waters. The Frank stared at it in amazement, remarking that it was not in the map. Iskender guessed it was mirage, and was soon confirmed in that opinion by the gradual disappearance of both lake and palm-trees.

But the vision tended to rea.s.sure him, seeming a word from the Most High. If Allah, he thought, could thus imprint a perfect likeness of trees and water on the hot, still air, He would have no difficulty in painting a few rocks golden.

The sun was fierce. For miles they saw no shade, but only strange rock-ledges rising no higher than a doorstep above the sand, which grew low, p.r.i.c.kly shrubs. A range of hills before them seemed hopelessly remote. Near the middle of this waste, the Emir drew rein.

"The valley should be here," he said with finger on the map; and Iskender in the tension of his nerves was going to shout out "Praise to Allah," for the sand just there was full of shining particles; when the next words came and froze him to the marrow: "There's no valley; nothing but this beastly plain. Are you a liar?"

A trace of kindness or dry humour in his tone would have compelled Iskender to confess the truth, with self-accusal. As it was, he cried: