Queen Sheba's Ring. H. Rider Haggard
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preferred his wooden-soldier attitude against the wall, “as a humble five-per-cent. private in this very adventurous company I’ll ask permission to say a word.”
Permission was given accordingly, and the Sergeant proceeded to inquire what weight of rock it was wished to remove.
I told him that I did not know, as I had never seen the Fung idol, but I understood that its size was enormous, probably as large as St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“Which, if solid, would take some stirring,” remarked the Sergeant. “Dynamite might do it, but it is too bulky to be carried across the desert on camels in that quantity. Captain, how about them picrates? You remember those new Boer shells that blew a lot of us to kingdom come, and poisoned the rest?”
“Yes,” answered Orme; “I remember; but now they have stronger stuffs—azo-imides, I think they call them—terrific new compounds of nitrogen. We will inquire to-morrow, Sergeant.”
“Yes, Captain,” he answered; “but the point is, who’ll pay? You can’t buy hell-fire in bulk for nothing. I calculate that, allowing for the purchase of the explosives and, say, fifty military rifles with ammunition and all other necessaries, not including camels, the outfit of this expedition can’t come to less than £1,500.”
“I think I have that amount in gold,” I answered, “of which the lady of the Abati gave me as much as I could carry in comfort.”
“If not,” said Orme, “although I am a poor man now, I could find £500 or so in a pinch. So don’t let us bother about the money. The question is—Are we all agreed that we will undertake this expedition and see it through to the end, whatever that may be?”
We answered that we were.
“Then has anybody anything more to say?”
“Yes,” I replied; “I forgot to tell you that if we should ever get to Mur, none of you must make love to the Walda Nagasta. She is a kind of holy person, who can only marry into her own family, and to do so might mean that our throats would be cut.”
“Do you hear that, Oliver?” said the Professor. “I suppose that the Doctor’s warning is meant for you, as the rest of us are rather past that kind of thing.”
“Indeed,” replied the Captain, colouring again after his fashion. “Well, to tell you the truth, I feel a bit past it myself, and, so far as I am concerned, I don’t think we need take the fascinations of this black lady into account.”
“Don’t brag, Captain. Please don’t brag,” said Sergeant Quick in a hollow whisper. “Woman is just the one thing about which you can never be sure. To-day she’s poison, and to-morrow honey—God and the climate alone know why. Please don’t brag, or we may live to see you crawling after this one on your knees, with the gent in the specs behind, and Samuel Quick, who hates the whole tribe of them, bringing up the rear. Tempt Providence, if you like, Captain, but don’t tempt woman, lest she should turn round and tempt you, as she has done before to-day.”
“Will you be so good as to stop talking nonsense and call a cab,” said Captain Orme coldly. But Higgs began to laugh in his rude fashion, and I, remembering the appearance of “Bud of the Rose” when she lifted her veil of ceremony, and the soft earnestness of her voice, fell into reflection. “Black lady” indeed! What, I wondered, would this young gentleman think if ever he should live to set his eyes upon her sweet and comely face?
It seemed to me that Sergeant Quick was not so foolish as his master chose to imagine. Captain Orme undoubtedly was in every way qualified to be a partner in our venture; still, I could have wished either that he had been an older man, or that the lady to whom he was recently affianced had not chosen this occasion to break her engagement. In dealing with difficult and dangerous combinations, my experience has been that it is always well to eliminate the possibility of a love affair, especially in the East.
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