CHAPTER X
In Great Danger
There was a gasp from the members of the party at Zeta Phalos’ words, and Don bounded to his feet.
“My father!” he cried.
“What makes you think my brother knew anything about this?” asked the captain, with as much agitation as he ever permitted himself to show.
“Mr. Sturdy and I were firm friends when he was here on his first exploring expedition,” replied Phalos. “I admired him because of his fine intellect; and then, too, his passion for research along the same lines as my own drew us together. Many a time he has been a guest in my home, and, seated right on this balcony, we have discussed the things we had in common. More than once we had spoken of Ras-Ameses and the mystery concerning his burial place. I had at that time made my discovery of the inscription, but was keeping it a safely guarded secret.
“It happened that we were once both at the Valley of the Kings at the same time, though with different parties. One day, while riding along at the foot of the cliff on which I had discovered the inscription, a piece of paper fluttered down from the rock. I wondered where it could have come from. I picked it up and found that it bore creases in it that resembled hieroglyphics. I knew that they formed part of the inscription. You can imagine something of my surprise and consternation at the thought that perhaps some one else was the sharer of my secret.
“I had a pair of powerful glasses with me and unslung them and focused them upon the rock. I could distinctly see other bits of paper on various portions of the inscription. Then I understood, and, although I was chagrined, I was filled with admiration for some one’s ingenuity.
“The man, whoever it was, had approached the matter from the top of the cliff. He had wet broad sheets of paper and lowered them from the top with a flat board behind them so as to press them against the inscription. The letters made creases in the wet paper. As soon as the paper was dry, he had drawn it up and probably filled in the creases with ink or pencil. Thus he would eventually have a complete copy of the inscription, and could decipher it at his leisure.”
“An extremely ingenious method,” commented the professor, “and one that makes me proud of my brother-in-law, if he were the author.”
“What makes you think that my father was the one who did it?” asked Don.
“My thought would have leaped to him at once because of his brilliancy,” replied Phalos. “But I had something a little more definite than that. I turned over the bit of paper I had in my hand and saw that a name had been scribbled on it. Only a few of the letters remained, but I could make out ‘urdy.’”
“Fairly conclusive,” agreed the captain.
“Later on, when I met Mr. Sturdy,” resumed Phalos, “I could see that he was intensely excited over something. I tried to sound him out casually, but he evaded me. I was sure that he had made what he thought was a great discovery.”
“That’s what he must have had in mind when he kept talking to mother about the Tombs of Gold!” exclaimed Don.
“Did he really speak of them?” asked Phalos, much interested. “That goes still further toward confirming my suspicion. The thought that had been with him on and off for years must have taken full possession of him when his mind became deranged, to the exclusion of everything else.”
“That makes it all the more likely,” observed the captain, “that we’ll find him somewhere in the vicinity of the Valley of the Kings, where the inscription was discovered.”
“Precisely so,” agreed the old Egyptian. “However, the search may lead him far afield, for I have reason to believe that the tombs themselves are at some distance from the place where the inscription was found. That inscription was placed there because the towering cliff offered the spot where it was most likely to endure for ages.”
“It was certainly a lucky day for us when we met you on the steamer,” declared Don enthusiastically.
“A luckier day for me,” returned Phalos, with a smile. “Is it understood then?” he asked, turning to Don’s uncles, “that we join hands and prosecute our search together?”
“Most gladly on our part,” replied the captain and the professor in one breath.
“Then we’ll consider it settled,” said the old Egyptian. “I have a steam dahabiyeh moored in the river, and if you are agreeable, we will sail on that up the river to Luxor. I think you will find it the most pleasant mode of traveling, and there will be plenty of room for the baggage and supplies we shall need to take along.”
“That will be fine,” replied the captain. “And who knows but that the wishes of all our hearts may be fulfilled in the finding of my brother and also of the Tombs of Gold.”
“All things are in the hands of Allah,” replied Phalos, who, although a cosmopolite, clung to the formula of his Mohammedan faith.
The next two days were busy ones for the adults of the party, as much had to be purchased in the way of implements and supplies for what might prove a long sojourn in the desert.
Don and Teddy had a good deal of time on their hands, and the professor suggested that they go out to Gizeh to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx. They needed no urging, for these mighty wonders of the world had long made a strong appeal to their imaginations. The boys had seen them pictured many times, but that was nothing compared to seeing the marvelous constructions that were old when Rome was young, and under whose shadows Cæsar and Napoleon had paced and been reminded of their own littleness.
Their elders were too busy to go with them, and besides had seen them before. So Don and Teddy secured a native guide and rode on donkeys toward the massive creations, the greatest built by human hands, that loomed up in the brightness of the Egyptian sunshine.
They were prepared to be impressed, but that word was too weak to express their feeling of awe when they stood before the largest pyramid of the three and gazed aloft at its towering top. Overpowered would have come nearer to their actual state of mind.
There the greatest of the three pyramids, that of King Cheops, reared itself toward the skies, originally nearly five hundred feet in height and with a base so broad that the boys had to trudge through the sands for half a mile before they had compassed it. It stood there, apparently as immutable as time itself, a tremendous monument of the great civilization that had once flourished on the banks of the Nile.
“How on earth could they build anything like that?” asked Teddy, under his breath.
“Uncle Amos says that nobody knows,” replied Don. “He says that it’s doubtful whether modern engineers could do it at all, even with the tools they have to-day and that they didn’t have when these were built six thousand years ago. Probably it was done almost altogether by man power.
“Uncle Amos says that it took a hundred thousand men ten years just to build the sloping road that led up to it. And it took that many men thirty years to build this one Pyramid. They must have had ropes with thousands of men hauling the stones along on rollers and then pulling them up and piling them on each other.”
“If one of the ropes broke, the stones tumbling down must have crushed hundreds at a time,” remarked Teddy. “I guess it wasn’t peaches and cream to be a laborer in those days.”
“I guess not,” agreed Don. “Little old America is good enough for me.”
Five hundred yards away from the Great Pyramid was the head of the Sphinx, that lion-bodied, human-headed mystery of the ages, carved out of the mother rock that forms the floor of the desert. Nearly two hundred feet from the tip of its paws to the end of its back, it rose sixty-five feet in the air, gazing out over the desert in immutable stony silence.
“What that could tell if it could speak,” murmured Don.
After some further explorations the two boys turned toward the city, which lay white-walled and glittering in the afternoon sun.
That evening the captain, looking over one of his suitcases, noted the absence of one of his revolvers.
“I was cleaning and oiling some of my weapons down in the dahabiyeh,” he said, after looking about fruitlessly for a time. “I thought I’d brought them all back here but I must have left that 38-caliber there. Would you mind running down there, Don, and taking a look for it? You’ll find one of the men in charge.”
“Sure, I will,” responded Don, and went off at once.
The dahabiyeh of Zeta Phalos was perhaps a quarter of a mile away moored to a wharf. Don had already visited it that morning, and had no trouble in reaching it. The native watchman, Ismillah, greeted him with a smile that showed all his gleaming teeth and helped Don look for the revolver, that had slipped behind one of the cushions.
With a word of thanks, Don turned to go back. As in most ports, the district along the waterfront was low and disreputable. The streets were narrow and ill-lighted.
As Don was passing along one of the darkest of the streets, two men stepped out from an alley and confronted him.
Don’s heart gave a sudden bound as he recognized them.
They were Tezra and Nepahak!