Tales of Secret Egypt Part 24

And now I cursed the stupidity which had prevented me from following this weird guide; I even thought wrathfully of the poor frightened child, whose weakness had necessitated the delay and whose fears had contributed considerably to this later misunderstanding.

The pursuing party, numbering four, and led by Sad Mohammed, was no more than five hundred yards away when I came to my senses. The hermit now was tugging at my arm with frightful insistence; his eyes were glaring insanely, and he chattered in an almost pitiable manner.

"Quick!" I cried, throwing my arm about Sakina, "up to the rocks. This man can hide us!"

"No, no!" she whispered, "I dare not----"

But I lifted her, and signing to the singular being to lead the way, staggered forward despairingly.

The distance was greater than it appeared, the climb incredibly difficult. My guide held out his hand to me to a.s.sist me to mount the slippery rocks; but I had much ado to proceed and also to support Sakina.

Her terror of the man and of the place to which he was leading us momentarily increased. Indeed, it seemed that she was becoming mad with fear. When the man paused before an opening in the rocks not more than fifteen or sixteen inches in height, and wildly waving his arms in the air, his elfin locks flying about his shoulder, his eyes gla.s.sy, intimated that we were to crawl in--Sakina writhed free of my grasp and bounded back some three or four paces down the slope.

"Not in there!" she cried, holding out her little hands to me pitifully. "I dare not! He would devour us!"

At the foot of the slope, Sad Mohammed, who had dismounted from his horse, and who, far ahead of the others, was advancing towards us, at that moment raised his gun and fired....

Can I go on?

It is more years ago than I care to count, but it is fresher in my mind than the things of yesterday. A lonely old age is before me, my friends--for I have been a solitary man since that shot was fired. For me it changed the face of the world, for me it ended youth, revealing me to myself for what I was.

Something more nearly resembling human speech than any sound he had yet uttered burst from the lips of the wild man as the report of Sad Mohammed's shot whispered in echoes through the mysterious labyrinths beneath us.

Fate had stood at the Sheikh's elbow as he pulled the trigger.

With a little soft cry--I hear it now, gentle, but having in it a world of agony--Sakina sank at my feet ... and her blood began to trickle over the black rocks on which she lay.

The man who professes to describe to you his emotions at such a frightful moment is an impostor. The world grew black before my eyes; every emotion of which my being was capable became paralysed.

I heard nothing, I saw nothing but the little huddled figure, that red stream upon the black rock, and the agonized love in the blazing eyes of Sakina. Groaning, I threw myself down beside her, and as she sighed out her life upon my breast, I knew--G.o.d help me--that what had been but a youthful amour, was now a life's tragedy; that for me the light of the world had gone out, that I should never again know the warmth of the sun and the gladness of the morning....

The cave man, with a dog-like fidelity, sought now to drag me from my dead love, to drag me into that gloomy lair which she had shrunk from entering. His incoherent mutterings broke in upon my semi-coma; but I shook him off, I shrieked curses at him....

Now the Bedouins were mounting the slope, not less than a hundred yards below me. In the growing light I could see the face of Sad Mohammed....

The man beside me exerted all his strength to drag me back into the gallery or cave--I know not what it was; but with my arms locked about Sakina I lay watching the pursuers coming closer and closer.

Then, those persistent efforts suddenly ceased, and dully I told myself that this weird being, having done his best to save me, had fled in order to save himself.

I was wrong.

You have asked me for a story of the magic of Egypt, and although, as you see, it has cost me tears--oh! I am not ashamed of those tears, my friends!--I have recounted this story to you. You say, where is the magic? and I might reply: the magic was in the changing of my false love to a true. But there was another magic as well, and it grew up around me now at this moment when I lay inert, waiting for death.

From behind me, from above me, arose a cry--a cry. You may have heard of the Bedouin song, the 'Mizmne':

"Ya men melek ana deri waat sa jebb, Id el' ish hoos' a beb hatsa azat ta lebb."

You may have heard how when it is sung in a certain fas.h.i.+on, flowers drop from their stalks? Also, you may have doubted this, never having heard a magical cry.

_I_ do not doubt it, my friends! For I _have_ heard a magical cry--this cry which arose from behind me! It started some chord in my dulled consciousness which had never spoken before. I turned my head--and there upon the highest point of the rocks stood the cave man. He suddenly stretched forth his hands.

Again he uttered that uncanny, that indescribable cry. It was not human. It was not animal. Yet it was nearer to the cry of an animal than to any sound made by the human species. His eyes gleamed with an awful light, his spare body had a.s.sumed a strange significance; he was transfigured.

A third time he uttered the cry, and out from one of those openings in the rock which I have mentioned, crept a jackal. You know how a jackal avoids the day, how furtive, how nocturnal a creature it is? but there in the golden glory which proclaimed the coming of the sun, black silhouettes moved.

A great wonder possessed me, as the first jackal was followed by a second, by a third, by a fourth, by a fifth. Did I say a fifth?...

By five hundred--by five thousand!

From every visible hole in the rocks, jackals poured forth in packs.

Wonder left me, fear left me; I forgot my sorrow, I became a numbed intelligence amid a desert of jackals. Over a sea of moving furry backs, I saw that upstanding crag and the weird crouching figure upon it. Right and left, above and below, jackals moved ... and all turned their heads towards the approaching Bedouins!

Again--again I heard that dreadful cry. The jackals, in a pack, thousands strong, began to advance upon the Bedouins!...

Not east or west, north or south, could you hope to find a braver man than was the Sheikh Sad Mohammed; but--he fled!

I saw the four hors.e.m.e.n riding like furies into the morning sun. The white mare, riderless, galloped with them--and the desert behind was yellow with jackals! For the last time I heard the cry.

The jackals began to return!

Forgive me, dear friends, if I seem an emotional fool. But when I recovered from the swoon which blotted out that unnatural spectacle, the wizard--for now I knew him for nothing less--had dug a deep trench--and had left me, alone.

Not a jackal was in sight; the sun blazed cruelly upon the desert.

With my own hands I laid my love to rest in the sands. No cross, no crescent marks her resting-place; but I left my youth upon her grave, as a last offering.

You may say that, since I had sinned so grievously, since I had betrayed the n.o.ble confidence of Sad Mohammed, my host, I escaped lightly.

Ah! you do not know!

And what of the strange being whose grat.i.tude I had done so little to merit but yet which knew no bounds? It is of him that I will tell you.

Years later--how many it does not matter, but I was a man with no illusions--my restless wanderings (I being still a desert bird-of-pa.s.sage) brought me one night to a certain well but rarely visited. It lay in a depression, like another well that I am fated often to see in my dreams, and, as one approached, the crowns of the palm trees which grew there appeared above the mounds of sand.

I was alone and tired out; the next possible camping-place--for I had no water--was many miles away. Yet it was written that I should press on to that other distant well, weary though I was.

First, then, as I came up, I perceived numbers of vultures in the air; and I began to fear that someone near to his end lay at the well. But when, from the top of a mound, I obtained a closer view, I saw a sight that, after one quick glance, caused me to spur up my tired horse and to fly--fly, with panic in my heart.

The brilliant moon bathed the hollow in light and cast dense shadows of the palm stems upon the slope beyond. By the spring, his fallen face ghastly in the moonlight, in a clear s.p.a.ce twenty feet across, lay a dead man.

Even from where I sat I knew him; but, had I doubted, other evidence was there of his ident.i.ty. As I mounted the slope, thousands of fiery eyes were turned upon me.

G.o.d! that arena all about was alive with jackals--jackals, my friends, eaters of carrion--which, silent, watchful, guarded the wizard dead, who, living, had been their lord!

II