Stephen Part 4

"Nay, but it is impossible that they be here. Pah! I cannot abide the odor of mummies."

"Yet must thou pa.s.s centuries in their company, if indeed thou art fortunate enough to die in a civilized land." And the speaker's lips widened till they revealed a row of yellow teeth.

Amu bent over and gazed steadily for a moment into the black opening that yawned at his feet, then he looked up at his companion. Something in his sombre eyes caused the yellow row of teeth to disappear. "I am going home," he said suddenly.

"'Tis good! Go back, fetch me a torch, and I will explore for the singing bird. I am not minded to move from this place till I shall seize her."

"Hast thou water?"

"Nay, but thou hast a bottle at thy girdle; give it me. Even at this moment I thirst."

"By Sechet! it is empty. But stay, there is a fountain beyond the crest of yonder hill; go quench thy thirst. I will remain till thou shalt return."

Besa hesitated; he looked steadily into the lowering face of Amu. "Thou art in a strange humor to-day, friend," he said at length. "I have been patient with thee, but I will bear no more. Give me thy flask; I will fill it at the fountain."

The face of Amu blanched to a sickly yellow hue. His eyes glowed with fury, but he said not a word; with a sudden quick movement, he seized the bridle of his mule, and leaping upon its back galloped away towards Memphis.

Besa looked after him quietly. "What may be the meaning of all this?"

he said to himself. "Stay, let me consider for a moment. The man comes to me and says in effect this: 'Thou art a dealer in slaves; I can procure for thee two of good value, a lad and a maiden. The maiden hath a voice like to the sound of nightingales; yet cannot I bring them to the proper purchasers.' At the same time I, Besa, am commissioned to procure a singing slave for the princess, who pineth in a sickly melancholy. But what have I suffered in the matter thus far? I have been half killed by a fall, now am I parched with thirst, and the man lies to me concerning his water-bottle. I saw him fill it before we started, therefore I ventured to leave mine own, which I could not at the moment lay my hands upon. There is no fountain behind the brow of yonder hill. For what purpose hath the man lied? There is something here that I cannot see. I will for the present forego the matter, but there are two things to be set down for the future, and Besa is not the man to forget."

Then he advanced to the opening of the tomb, which showed black in its setting of yellow sand; kneeling clown, he looked carefully at the stone stairway which led down into the depths. The sand was sifting in with each breath of the hot desert wind. "It has been opened but a short time," he remarked at length. "It will be a pious act for me to replace the stone; Anubis will reward me for it. One must not fail in duty to the sacred dead." Then he raised his voice, "Rest quietly, my children; there is nought to hurt thee in the abodes of the departed. Song and sunlight, laughter and air are needed no more by the slaves of Anubis.

His slave shalt thou be unless thou presently come forth in answer to my cry."

The sound of his voice echoed in dismal reverberations through the hollow blackness within, but there was no sign that his words fell upon other ears than those sealed to eternal silence within their swathings of spiced linen. The heavy odor of death ascended in stupefying clouds into the face of the man as he knelt at the edge of the tomb. He drew back a little, and the malignant smile faded from his face.

"The stone shall be put back," he said doggedly, "for I believe, by my life, that they be down there. They will live till I shall return with torches and men. If I secure them both, I shall be avenged also upon Amu."

Forthwith he bent over and laid hold upon the stone. It was heavy, and though the lad in his mad fear had succeeded in shoving it to one side, the man could with difficulty stir it a single inch. The sun beat down in fury upon his head, the hot wind sang in his ears with a strange sound of buzzing insects and humming wheels. He stepped down into the stairway, the better to grasp the stone for another mighty effort.

Suddenly a wave as of fire swept before his eyes, his hands relaxed their hold, he reeled a little, and then fell, a nerveless heap, into the darkness.

To Seth and Anat, who were crouching behind a huge sarcophagus, the sound at first signified nothing but some fresh horror.

"I must cry out," urged Seth in a vehement whisper. "We shall perish in this place, for I cannot move the stone from beneath."

But Anat held him fast. "Better slavery to death than to such a man."

Seth watched the shaft of yellow light that pierced the thick darkness.

"Presently," he thought shudderingly, "it will disappear." But the moments crept slowly by, and the sun still poured in, revealing the countless dancing atoms which had leapt up from the sleep of centuries beneath the feet of the fugitives.

"Anat," he whispered, "something has happened; I will go and see."

The blind girl held him fast for a moment longer. She bent her head.

There was no sound save the sighing of the wind outside and the hissing murmur of the sand as it drifted onto the stairway of their prison.

"Go," she said with a sigh of relief, "he has departed."

Seth rose cautiously to his feet and crept toward the opening; his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness now, and he could see on either side the vast gaudily-painted wooden cases in which dwelt the dead.

Their great eyes stared at him as he hurried past. He stumbled presently over something which lay at the foot of the stone steps.

Starting back with a cry he perceived that it was the body of a man. He had fallen upon his face in the sand and lay quite motionless. The lad stared at him for a moment in fascinated silence, then he bethought him that presently the man might recover his senses. Turning, he darted back into the darkness. "Come!" he said breathlessly in the ear of the blind girl.

Treading lightly that they might not awake the sleeper, the two crept up the stair, not without many a fearful backward glance at the quiet figure which still lay on its face, the monstrous staring eyes of the mummies looking on unmoved, and the stealthy wind already beginning to urge the uneasy desert to "Come, cover this man that hath lain him down to sleep unasked in the abode of kings!"

"Shall I put the stone in its place?" said Seth, when they had reached the upper air.

"Yes," said the girl, clenching her thin hands. "Let him bide there till the other shall seek him, and if that be never, then I care not. Would he not have left us to perish? But the G.o.ds stayed his hand."

The lad hesitated. "He hath no water."

"Fetch him water then and food also if thou wilt. Thou art soft-hearted; for myself I should leave him as he is. Dost thou not see that it is now that we must make good our escape? Once the man hath recovered himself we are lost. I can hear the bells of his beast, let us seize it and flee away into the desert that we may find the magician who can open the eyes of them that see not."

"We could not pa.s.s the wilderness, we should perish by the way."

Anat sat down in the sand. "Thou art a man," she said scornfully, "and therefore wise; I am as the dust under thy feet; I have no eyes to see with, yet shall I tell thee what shall come to pa.s.s. Go down now to our enemy whom the G.o.ds have smitten, raise him up and pour water into his mouth and upon his head, then when he shall come to himself say to him, 'Here now is thy beast, I will set thee upon it that thou mayest ride.

As for this maid whom thou didst covet, behold she is thine; I also will run before thee.'" And the girl laughed aloud, and tossed her head so that all the gold and silver coins of her necklace clinked musically together.

Seth looked at her indignantly. "All women have the poison of asps under their tongues," he muttered. "It hath been told me, and it is even true, I have seen men beat their women for less; it purgeth them from folly."

The blind girl sprang to her feet. "Wilt thou beat me because I have proved that thou art the fool?" she cried, her voice choking with rage.

"Yes, let it be so, I care not, but I had thought that thou wast not as others--that thou didst love me, blind, useless, helpless though I be,"

and she burst into a pa.s.sion of weeping.

The lad was at her side in a moment. "I do love thee," he murmured penitently. "I have no other on earth, thou art my all. Come! it shall be as thou hast said, here is the beast, with such a pretty saddle, little one, all of crimson velvet, and hung with bells of silver. It is thine, the G.o.ds have given it thee. We will go away towards the first halting place, I am sure that I can find it."

Anat checked her sobs after a due s.p.a.ce; she even allowed herself to be placed upon the back of the mule. "Have I the poison of asps under my tongue?" she said plaintively, but with a gleam of triumph.

"Not so, by Osiris, I was a brute to say such a thing. Rather hast thou a voice as sweet as the voice of fountains and as the voice of thrushes that sing by the river. But I shall place water where our enemy can drink when he awakens; and I will not close the stone altogether, I will leave a little s.p.a.ce where the sun may enter into that noisome place.

This shall be, shall it not, little sister?"

Anat tossed her head; she made no reply. Then Seth made haste and poured water into a cup and set it on the step where their enemy should see it when he awoke; he took also from his wallet a handful of parched corn and laid it beside the cup. Looking sidewise at the man, who still lay all along on his face just as he had been stricken, he fancied that he saw him stir a little, and the terror came back upon him so that he sprang up the steps two at a time, and with a mighty effort drew the great stone forward over the opening, forgetting in his fear to leave it open ever so little that the sun might look in.

After that the two fled away, their faces set towards the great and terrible wilderness, beyond which lay the land of their hope.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LORD OF THE SOUTH-LAND.

Abu Ben Hesed was a mighty man of war, he was also rich. Ten score of camels, swift dromedaries not a few, and horses, such that men paid great sums of gold to possess them; flocks of sheep and of goats; wives also and children in plenty; all of these things, together with the unquestioning obedience and devotion of his tribe, did this dweller in the desert call his own.

He was a tall man, and his beard descended upon his breast in waves of silvery whiteness. Yet were his eyes as keen as the eyes of a mountain eagle, and there was no one of all his tribe who could endure hunger and thirst as could Ben Hesed. Not that it was necessary for him to so endure, for was not he lord of all the land that lay betwixt the mountains on the south of the great wilderness of Shur, even unto the sea?

"To satisfy the appet.i.te is not always good," he was wont to say to his sons. "This will the beasts do whenever they find provender. Man alone can say to himself, thou shalt fast because I have willed it. Hunger thus endured maketh man king over the beasts; thus is he set apart from them, and so do his thoughts soar above the earth even unto the region of the heavens, where dwelleth Ja, the maker of the stars and also of man."

On this day Ben Hesed sat alone in the door of his tent; the sun was sinking, a ball of scarlet behind the purple rim of the horizon; a group of camels, browsing on the scanty desert growths, showed black against its fiery glow, their shadows stretching long and gaunt across the sand.

About the margin of a meagre pool close at hand a cl.u.s.ter of palm trees also meagre reared their heads, clasping their dusty fronds across the water as if to hide this sacred treasure of the desert from the fierce wooing of the sun.

The voices of the women, coming and going with their water-jars, and the laughter and cooing of half a score of naked brown babies, who lay contentedly kicking up their heels in the warm sand, came pleasantly to the ear of Abu Ben Hesed. He cared not that the pool was meagre and the palm trees stunted, this only made them the more precious and wonderful, more truly the works of Jehovah, who had set them thus in the midst of this great and terrible wilderness, like jewels of price. He had looked upon fruitful lands and great rivers, upon cities also, where men dwelt by hundreds and by thousands, and his soul had grown sick within him at the sight.