CHAPTER III
THE PROFESSOR GOES OUT SHOOTING
Of all our tremendous journey across the desert until we had passed
the forest and reached the plains which surrounded the mountains of
Mur, there are, I think, but few incidents with which the reader need
be troubled. The first of these was at Assouan, where a letter and
various telegrams overtook Captain Orme, which, as by this time we had
become intimate, he showed to me. They informed him that the
clandestine infant whom his uncle left behind him had suddenly
sickened and died of some childish ailment, so that he was once again
heir to the large property which he thought he had lost, since the
widow only took a life interest in some of the personalty. I
congratulated him and said I supposed this meant that we should not
have the pleasure of his company to Mur.
"Why not?" he asked. "I said I was going and I mean to go; indeed, I
signed a document to that effect."
"I daresay," I answered, "but circumstances alter cases. If I might
say so, an adventure that perhaps was good enough for a young and
well-born man of spirit and enterprise without any particular
resources, is no longer good enough for one who has the ball at his
feet. Think what a ball it is to a man of your birth, intelligence,
record, and now, great fortune come to you in youth. Why, with these
advantages there is absolutely nothing that you cannot do in England.
You can go into Parliament and rule the country; if you like you can
become a peer. You can marry any one who isn't of the blood royal; in
short, with uncommonly little effort of your own, your career is made
for you. Don't throw away a silver spoon like that in order, perhaps,
to die of thirst in the desert or be killed in a fight among unknown
tribes."
"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "I never set heart much on spoons,
silver or other. When I lost this one I didn't cry, and now that I
have found it again I shan't sing. Anyway, I am going on with you, and
you can't prevent me under the agreement. Only as I have got such a
lot to leave, I suppose I had better make a will first and post it
home, which is a bore."
Just then the Professor came in, followed by an Arab thief of a
dealer, with whom he was trying to bargain for some object of
antiquity. When the dealer had been ejected and the position explained
to him, Higgs, who whatever may be his failings in small matters, is
unselfish enough in big ones, said that he agreed with me and thought
that under the circumstances, in his own interest, Orme ought to leave
us and return home.
"You may save your breath, old fellow," answered the Captain, "for
this reason if for no other," and he threw him a letter across the
table, which letter I saw afterwards. To be brief, it was from the
young lady to whom he had been engaged to be married, and who on his
loss of fortune had jilted him. Now she seemed to have changed her
mind again, and, although she did not mention the matter, it is
perhaps not uncharitable to suppose that the news of the death of the
inconvenient child had something to do with her decision.
"Have you answered this?" asked Higgs.
"No," answered Orme, setting his mouth. "I have not answered, and I am
not going to answer it, either in writing or in person. I intend to
start to-morrow for Mur and to travel as far on that road as it
pleases fate to allow, and now I am going to look at the rock
sculptures by the cataract."
"Well, that's flat," said Higgs after he had departed, "and for my
part I am glad of it, for somehow I think he will be a useful man
among those Fung. Also, if he went I expect that the Sergeant would go
too, and where should we be without Quick, I should like to know?"
Afterwards I conversed with the said Quick about this same matter,
repeating to him my opinions, to which the Sergeant listened with the
deference which he was always kind enough to show to me.
"Begging your pardon, sir," he said, when I had finished, "but I think
you are both right and wrong. Everything has two ends, hasn't it? You
say that it would be wicked for the Captain to get himself killed,
there being now so much money for him to live for, seeing that life is
common as dirt while money is precious, rare and hard to come by. It
ain't the kings we admire, it's their crowns; it ain't the
millionaires, it's their millions; but, after all, the millionaires
don't take their millions with them, for Providence, that, like
Nature, hates waste, knows that if they did they'd melt, so one man
dead gives another bread, as the saying goes, or p'raps I should say
gingerbread in such cases.
"Still, on the whole, sir, I admit you are right as to the sinfulness
of wasting luck. But now comes the other end. I know this young lady
what the Captain was engaged to, which he never would have been if he
had taken my advice, since of all the fish-blooded little serpents
that ever I set eyes on she's the serpentest, though pretty, I allow.
Solomon said in his haste that an honest woman he had not found, but
if he had met the Honourable Miss--well, never mind her name--he'd
have said it at his leisure, and gone on saying it. Now, no one should
never take back a servant what has given notice and then says he's
sorry, for if he does the sorrow will be on the other side before it's
all done; and much less should he take back a /fiancée/ (Quick said a
'finance'), on the whole, he'd better drown himself--I tried it once,
and I know. So that's the tail of the business.
"But," he went on, "it has a couple of fins as well, like that eel
beast I caught in the Nile. One of them is that the Captain promised
and vowed to go through with this expedition, and if a man's got to
die, he'd better die honest without breaking his word. And the other
is what I said to you in London when I signed on, that he won't die a
minute before his time, and nothing won't happen to him, but what's
bound to happen, and therefore it ain't a ha'porth of use bothering
about anything, and that's where the East's well ahead of the West.
"And now, sir, I'll go and look after the camels and those half-bred
Jew boys what you call Abati, but I call rotten sneaks, for if they
get their thieving fingers into those canisters of picric salts,
thinking they're jam, as I found them trying to do yesterday,
something may happen in Egypt that'll make the Pharaohs turn in their
graves and the Ten Plagues look silly."
So, having finished his oration, Quick went, and in due course we
started for Mur.
The second incident that is perhaps worth recording was an adventure
that happened to us when we had completed about two of our four
months' journey.
After weeks of weary desert travel--if I remember right, it was
exactly a fortnight after the dog Pharaoh, of which I shall soon have
plenty to say, had come into Orme's possession--we reached an oasis
called Zeu, where I had halted upon my road down to Egypt. In this
oasis, which, although not large in extent, possesses springs of
beautiful water and groves of date-trees, we were, as it chanced, very
welcome, since when I was there before, I had been fortunate enough to
cure its sheik of an attack of ophthalmia and to doctor several of his
people for various ailments with good results. So, although I was
burning to get forward, I agreed with the others that it would be wise
to accede to the request of the leader of our caravan, a clever and
resourceful, but to my mind untrustworthy Abati of the name of
Shadrach, and camp in Zeu for a week or so to rest and feed our
camels, which had wasted almost to nothing on the scant herbage of the
desert.
This Shadrach, I may add here, whom his companions, for some reason
unknown to me at that time, called the Cat, was remarkable for a
triple line of scars upon his face, which, he informed me, had been
set there by the claws of a lion. Now the great enemies of this people
of Zeu were lions, which at certain seasons of the year, I suppose
when food grew scarce, descended from the slopes of a range of hills
that stretched east and west at a distance of about fifty miles north
of the oasis, and, crossing the intervening desert, killed many of the
Zeu sheep, camels, and other cattle, and often enough any of the tribe
whom they could catch. As these poor Zeus practically possessed no
firearms, they were at the mercy of the lions, which grew
correspondingly bold. Indeed, their only resource was to kraal their
animals within stone walls at night and take refuge in their huts,
which they seldom left between sunset and dawn, except to replenish
the fires that they lit to scare any beast of prey which might be
prowling through the town.
Though the lion season was now in full swing, as it happened, for the
first five days of our stay at Zeu we saw none of these great cats,
although in the darkness we heard them roaring in the distance. On the
sixth night, however, we were awakened by a sound of wailing, which
came from the village about a quarter of a mile away, and when we went
out at dawn to see what was the matter, were met by a melancholy
procession advancing from its walls. At the head of it marched the
grey-haired old chief, followed by a number of screaming women, who in
their excitement, or perhaps as a sign of mourning, had omitted to
make their toilette, and by four men, who carried something horrid on
a wickerwork door.
Soon we learned what had happened. It seemed that hungry lions, two or
three of them, had broken through the palm-leaf roof of the hut of one
of the sheik's wives, she whose remains were stretched upon the door,
and, in addition to killing her, had actually carried off his son. Now
he came to implore us white men who had guns to revenge him on the
lions, which otherwise, having once tasted human flesh, would destroy
many more of his people.
Through an interpreter who knew Arabic, for not even Higgs could
understand the peculiar Zeu dialect, he explained in excited and
incoherent words that the beasts lay up among the sand-hills not very
far away, where some thick reeds grew around a little spring of water.
Would we not come out and kill them and earn the blessing of the Zeus?
Now I said nothing, for the simple reason that, having such big
matters on hand, although I was always fond of sport, I did not wish
any of us to be led off after these lions. There is a time to hunt and
a time to cease from hunting, and it seemed to me, except for the
purposes of food, that this journey of ours was the latter. However,
as I expected, Oliver Orme literally leaped at the idea. So did Higgs,
who of late had been practising with a rifle and began to fancy
himself a shot. He exclaimed loudly that nothing would give him
greater pleasure, especially as he was sure that lions were in fact
cowardly and overrated beasts.
From that moment I foreboded disaster in my heart. Still, I said I
would come too, partly because I had not shot a lion for many a day
and had a score to settle with those beasts which, it may be
remembered, nearly killed me on the Mountain of Mur, and partly
because, knowing the desert and also the Zeu people much better than
either the Professor or Orme, I thought that I might possibly be of
service.
So we fetched our rifles and cartridges, to which by an afterthought
we added two large water-bottles, and ate a hearty breakfast. As we
were preparing to start, Shadrach, the leader of the Abati camel-
drivers, that man with the scarred face who was nicknamed the Cat,
came up to me and asked me whither we were going. I told him, whereon
he said:
"What have you to do with these savages and their troubles, lords? If
a few of them are killed it is no matter, but as you should know, O
Doctor, if you wish to hunt lions there are plenty in that land
whither you travel, seeing that the lion is the fetish of the Fung and
therefore never killed. But the desert about Zeu is dangerous and harm
may come to you."
"Then accompany us," broke in the Professor, between whom and Shadrach
there was no love lost, 'for, of course, with you we should be quite
safe."
"Not so," he replied, "I and my people rest; only madmen would go to
hunt worthless wild beasts when they might rest. Have we not enough of
the desert and its dangers as it is? If you knew all that I do of
lions you would leave them alone."
"Of the desert we have plenty also, but of shooting very little,"
remarked the Captain, who talked Arabic well. "Lie in your beds; we go
to kill the beasts that harass the poor people who have treated us so
kindly."
"So be it," said Shadrach with a smile that struck me as malicious. "A
lion made this"--pointing to the dreadful threefold scar upon his
face. "May the God of Israel protect you from lions. Remember, lords,
that, the camels being fresh again, we march the day after to-morrow,
should the weather hold, for if the wind blows on yonder sand-hills,
no man may live among them;" and, putting up his hand, he studied the
sky carefully from beneath its shadow, then, with a grunt, turned and
vanished behind a hut.
All this while Sergeant Quick was engaged at a little distance in
washing up the tin breakfast things, to all appearance quite
unconscious of what was going on. Orme called him, whereupon he
advanced and stood to attention. I remember thinking how curious he
looked in those surroundings--his tall, bony frame clothed in semi-
military garments, his wooden face perfectly shaved, his iron-grey
hair neatly parted and plastered down upon his head with pomade or
some equivalent after the old private soldier fashion, and his sharp
ferret-like grey eyes taking in everything.
"Are you coming with us, Sergeant?" asked Orme.
"Not unless ordered so to do, Captain. I like a bit of hunting well
enough, but, with all three officers away, some one should mount guard
over the stores and transport, so I think the dog Pharaoh and I had
best stop behind."
"Perhaps you are right, Sergeant, only tie Pharaoh up, or he'll follow
me. Well, what do you want to say? Out with it."
"Only this, Captain. Although I have served in three campaigns among
these here Arabians (to Quick, all African natives north of the
Equator were Arabians, and all south of it, niggers), I can't say I
talk their lingo well. Still, I made out that the fellow they call Cat
don't like this trip of yours, and, begging your pardon, Captain,
whatever else Cat may be, he ain't no fool."
"Can't help it, Sergeant. For one thing, it would never do to give in
to his fancies now."
"That's true, Captain. When once it's hoist, right or wrong, keep the
flag flying, and no doubt you'll come back safe and sound if you're
meant to."
Then, having relieved his mind, the Sergeant ran his eye over our
equipment to see that nothing had been forgotten, rapidly assured
himself that the rifles were in working order, reported all well, and
returned to his dishes. Little did any of us guess under what
circumstances we should next meet with him.
After leaving the town and marching for a mile or so along the oasis,
accompanied by a mob of the Zeus armed with spears and bows, we were
led by the bereaved chief, who also acted as tracker, out into the
surrounding sands. The desert here, although I remembered it well
enough, was different from any that we had yet encountered upon this
journey, being composed of huge and abrupt sand-hills, some of which
were quite three hundred feet high, separated from each other by deep,
wind-cut valleys.
For a distance, while they were within reach of the moist air of the
oasis, these sand-mountains produced vegetation of various sorts.
Presently, however, we passed out into the wilderness proper, and for
a while climbed up and down the steep, shifting slopes, till from the
crest of one of them the chief pointed out what in South Africa is
called a pan, or /vlei/, covered with green reeds, and explained by
signs that in these lay the lions. Descending a steep declivity, we
posted ourselves, I at the top, and Higgs and Orme a little way down
either side of this /vlei/. This done, we dispatched the Zeus to beat
it out towards us, for although the reeds grew thick along the course
of the underground water, it was but a narrow place, and not more than
a quarter of a mile in length.
Scarcely had the beaters entered the tall reeds, evidently with
trepidation, for a good many of them held back from the adventure,
when a sound of loud wailing informed us that something had happened.
A minute or two later we saw two of them bearing away what appeared to
be the mangled remains of the chief's son who had been carried off on
the previous night.
Just then, too, we saw something else, for half-way down the marsh a
great male lion broke cover, and began to steal off toward the sand-
hills. It was about two hundred yards from Higgs, who chanced to be
nearest to it, and, therefore, as any big-game hunter will know, for
practical purposes, far out of shot. But the Professor, who was quite
unaccustomed to this, or, indeed, any kind of sport, and, like all
beginners, wildly anxious for blood, lifted his rifle and fired, as he
might have done at a rabbit. By some marvellous accident the aim was
good, and the bullet from the express, striking the lion fair behind
the shoulder, passed through its heart, and knocked it over dead as a
stone.
"By Jingo! Did you see that?" screamed Higgs in his delight. Then,
without even stopping to reload the empty barrel, he set off at the
top of his speed toward the prostrate beast, followed by myself and by
Orme, as fast as our astonishment would allow.
Running along the edge of the marsh, Higgs had covered about a hundred
yards of the distance, when suddenly, charging straight at him out of
the tall reeds, appeared a second lion, or rather lioness. Higgs
wheeled round, and wildly fired the left barrel of his rifle without
touching the infuriated brute. Next instant, to our horror, we saw him
upon his back, with the lioness standing over him, lashing her tail,
and growling.
We shouted as we ran, and so did the Zeus, although they made no
attempt at rescue, with the result that the lioness, instead of
tearing Higgs to pieces, turned her head confusedly first to one side
and then to the other. By now I, who had a long start of Orme, was
quite close, say within thirty yards, though fire I dared not as yet,
fearing lest, should I do so, I might kill my friend. At this moment
the lioness, recovering her nerves, squatted down on the prostrate
Higgs, and though he hit at her with his fists, dropped her muzzle,
evidently with the intention of biting him through the head.
Now I felt that if I hesitated any more, all would be finished. The
lioness was much longer than Higgs--a short, stout man--and her hind
quarters projected beyond his feet. At these I aimed rapidly, and,
pressing the trigger, next second heard the bullet clap upon the great
beast's hide. Up she sprang with a roar, one hind leg dangling, and
after a moment's hesitation, fled toward the sand-hill.
Now Orme, who was behind me, fired also, knocking up the dust beneath
the lioness's belly, but although he had more cartridges in his rifle,
which was a repeater, before either he or I could get another chance,
it vanished behind a mound. Leaving it to go where it would, we ran on
towards Higgs, expecting to find him either dead or badly mauled, but,
to our amazement and delight, up jumped the Professor, his blue
spectacles still on his nose, and, loading his rifle as he went,
charged away after the wounded lioness.
"Come back," shouted the Captain as he followed.
"Not for Joe!" yelled Higgs in his high voice. "If you fellows think
that I'm going to let a great cat sit on my stomach for nothing, you
are jolly well mistaken."
At the top of the first rise the long-legged Orme caught him, but
persuade him to return was more than he, or I when I arrived, could
do. Beyond a scratch on his nose, which had stung him and covered him
with blood, we found that he was quite uninjured, except in temper and
dignity. But in vain did we beg him to be content with his luck and
the honours he had won.
"Why?" he answered, "Adams wounded the beast, and I'd rather kill two
lions than one; also I have a score to square. But if you fellows are
afraid, you go home."
Well, I confess I felt inclined to accept the invitation, but Orme,
who was nettled, replied:
"Come, come; that settles the question, doesn't it? You must be shaken
by your fall, or you would not talk like that, Higgs. Look, here runs
the spoor--see the blood? Well, let's go steady and keep our wind. We
may come on her anywhere, but don't you try any more long distance
shots. You won't kill another lion at two hundred and fifty yards."
"All right," said Higgs, "don't be offended. I didn't mean anything,
except that I am going to teach that beast the difference between a
white man and a Zeu."
Then we began our march, following the blood tracks up and down the
steep sand-slopes. When we had been at it for about half-an-hour our
spirits were cheered by catching sight of the lioness on a ridge five
hundred yards away. Just then, too, some of the Zeus overtook us and
joined the hunt, though without zeal.
Meanwhile, as the day grew, the heat increased until it was so intense
that the hot air danced above the sand slopes like billions of midges,
and this although the sun was not visible, being hidden by a sort of
mist. A strange silence, unusual even in the desert, pervaded the
earth and sky; we could hear the grains of sand trickling from the
ridges. The Zeus, who accompanied us, grew uneasy, and pointed upward
with their spears, then behind toward the oasis of which we had long
lost sight. Finally, when we were not looking, they disappeared.
Now I would have followed them, guessing that they had some good
reason for this sudden departure. But Higgs refused to come, and Orme,
in whom his foolish taunt seemed still to rankle, only shrugged his
shoulders and said nothing.
"Let the black curs go," exclaimed the Professor as he polished his
blue spectacles and mopped his face. "They are a white-livered lot of
sneaks. Look! There she is, creeping off to the left. If we run round
that sand-hill we shall meet her."
So we ran round the sand-hill, but we did not meet her, although after
long hunting we struck the blood spoor afresh, and followed it for
several miles, first in this direction, and then in that, until Orme
and I wondered at Higgs's obstinacy and endurance. At length, when
even he was beginning to despair, we put up the lioness in a hollow,
and fired several shots at her as she hobbled over the opposing slope,
one of which hit her, for she rolled over, then picked herself up
again, roaring. As a matter of fact, it came from the Captain's rifle,
but Higgs, who, like many an inexperienced person was a jealous
sportsman, declared that it was his and we did not think it worth
while to contradict him.
On we toiled, and, just beyond the ridge, walked straight into the
lioness, sitting up like a great dog, so injured that she could do
nothing but snarl hideously and paw at the air.
"Now it is my turn, old lady," ejaculated Higgs, and straightway
missed her clean from a distance of five yards. A second shot was more
successful, and she rolled over, dead.
"Come on," said the exultant Professor, "and we'll skin her. She sat
on me, and I mean to sit on her for many a day."
So we began the job, although I, who had large experience of this
desert, and did not like the appearance of the weather, wished to
leave the beast where it lay and get back to the oasis. It proved
long, for I was the only one of us who had any practical knowledge of
flaying animals, and in that heat extremely unpleasant.
At length it was done, and, having doubled the hide over a rifle for
two of us to carry in turns, we refreshed ourselves from the water-
bottles (I even caught the Professor washing the blood off his face
and hands with some of the precious fluid). Then we started for the
oasis, only to discover, though we were all sure that we knew the way,
that not one of us had a slightest idea of its real direction. In the
hurry of our departure we had forgotten to bring a compass, and the
sun, that would have been our guide in ordinary circumstances, and to
which we always trusted in the open desert, was hidden by the curious
haze that has been described.
So, sensibly enough, we determined to return to the sand crest where
we had killed the lioness, and then trace our own footprints backward.
This seemed simple enough, for there, within half-a-mile, rose the
identical ridge.
We reached it, grumbling, for the lion-skin was heavy, only to
discover that it was a totally different ridge. Now, after reflection
and argument, we saw our exact mistake, and made for what was
obviously the real ridge--with the same result.
We were lost in the desert!
