<h2><SPAN name="chap03"></SPAN>CHAPTER III.<br/> THE PROFESSOR GOES OUT SHOOTING</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Why not?” he asked. “I said I was going and I mean to go;
indeed, I signed a document to that effect.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“Have you answered this?” asked Higgs.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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 <i>fiancée</i> (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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>So, having finished his oration, Quick went, and in due course we started for
Mur.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Are you coming with us, Sergeant?” asked Orme.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps you are right, Sergeant, only tie Pharaoh up, or he’ll
follow me. Well, what do you want to say? Out with it.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Can’t help it, Sergeant. For one thing, it would never do to give
in to his fancies now.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>vlei</i>, 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 <i>vlei</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Come back,” shouted the Captain as he followed.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Well, I confess I felt inclined to accept the invitation, but Orme, who was
nettled, replied:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We were lost in the desert!</p>
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