Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/64

 convictions told us, there lived the people who used the wilderness as a burying-place for their dead.

Hugh felt convinced that those people would appear before us in all the glory of ancient Egypt: I, less sanguine, dared hope no more than that they would prove to be a friendly desert tribe, who would give us the means of returning to civilisation once more.

The road, at first, had wound round a number of low and rugged boulders, but now, after a last sharp turn southward, it lay even and flat, stretching out for many miles before us; and as I looked straight along it, it seemed to me as if I saw an object moving in the distance.

"Can you see it too, Girlie?" I asked. But there was no need for a reply, for Hugh was staring, with eyes literally blazing with excitement, on that moving object.

"A bird?" I suggested. "No, a man!"

"Yes, a man! He seems to be gesticulating furiously." "Now he has started to run."

"It is becoming decidedly exciting, Girlie," I said.

We had paused beside our camels, who, hungry and half dead with thirst, had lain down in the road. We waited, hardly daring to speak.

Already we could see clearly the silhouette of the man, tall and gaunt, with long, thin arms, which he waved frantically in the air, brandishing what I at first took to be a club or axe. Then, through the silence of the air, we suddenly heard his cries, which seemed to me like the dismal howls of the carrion beasts of the desert. His hair, which was long, and looked dark, flew about his head. He was naked save for a tattered loin-cloth around him. A few more minutes of