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 With an impatient sigh I turned to the papyrus. "See how clear are the directions," resumed Hugh. "Having started from the spot, we evidently have many days' march before us, due west, across the desert, for we see the multitudes wandering, and one or two dead on the way, but soon we come to this figure, a man rejoicing—can you see it? it is very clear—look at the arms! and now the words: 'Then when to be seen is the Rock of Anubis not is barred against him the way, and opened are before him the gates of ground of wheat and barley of the land of Kamt.'"

"How do you explain that, Girlie?" I asked.

"The Greek priest saw that rock. I imagine its shape is something like a jackal's head—Anubis, old Mark, was the jackal-headed god of ancient Egypt—or there may actually be a figure of the god carved into the living rock. We shall see when we get there."

It was a fairy tale, of course. My reason stood up confronting me, and telling me that the idea was preposterous beyond what words could say; it told me that, even granting that those Egyptians had found and established themselves, in some distant and fertile oasis, in the heart of the most arid wilderness on the globe, future generations would have heard about or from them, and recorded their existence or extinction. It told me that no people could have lived on any one spot on earth for five thousand years and have been content not to extend their dominions, with their growing population; that they could not have gone there without wanting to come back; that Rholf's, Caillaud, Cat, any of the great desert explorers, would have found some traces of the route to this unknown land, if route there was. It told me that, and a hundred other arguments besides, and yet, as Hugh Tankerville talked, explained and argued, I listened more and more eagerly;