“For three years did I labor in the mountain, and by the mercy of God I slew my guard with his own sword of gold, which I have with me. Once more with a camel provided by the goodness of the Virgin, I went toward the sea, along a road that is marked with the skulls of men.
“Again thirst has pursued me, and the evil power of the golden gods. The camel is dead, and I am a cripple; so I can never leave these mountains, in which I have found a spring. In this cave I shall die, and I pray that the vengeance of God shall fall soon upon the golden land, to purge it of idolatry and evil.”
Price sat staring at the dry and brittle parchment, trying to fill out in his imagination the epic of desperate adventure that its faded letters outlined. The old Spaniard must have been made of stern stuff, to do what he had done, and to dress the camel’s hide and make ink and write his memoirs—driven by some obscure impulse of egotism—even after he had resigned himself to death.
Garth’s deep voice broke the spell: “What do you think of it?”
“Interesting. Very much so. But it might be a forgery, of course. Plenty of old parchment to work on.”
“I found that,” said Garth, “near a human skeleton, in a cave in the Jebel Harb.”
“That doesn’t answer my objection.”
Garth smiled, grimly. “Perhaps this will. It would not be easily forged.”
He went back to the locker, and drew out the yellow blade. Wondrously it scintillated in the dim cabin; the ruby blazed hot in the serpent’s mouth. A gem-set, golden yataghan!
“Look at this!” he boomed, in the deep voice that was so hypnotically compelling. “Gold! Pure gold! And tempered hard as steel! Look at it!”
He swung it in a hissing circle, then handed it to Price.
A weird weapon, heavy, its broad, double-curved blade razor-keen. Price thumbed it, realized that it carried an edge no ordinary gold or alloy of gold could keep. The handle was a coiled serpent of soft gold, grasping in the fanged mouth a great, burning blood ruby.
Leaning across the table, Jacob Garth looked as extraordinary as the weapon; thick-bodied, immensely broad of shoulder, skin soft and white as a child’s, cold eyes glittering strange and hard and eager above the tangle of curling red beard.
“Yes, it’s gold,” Price admitted. No denying that—or that it was harder than any gold he had ever seen. “And the ruby is genuine.”
“You are satisfied?” Garth demanded.
“Satisfied that you have something unusual—the manuscript was rather fantastic in spots. But what’s your proposition?”
“I’m organizing another expedition. I’m going to take a force strong enough to break through the guarded pass, and to smash whatever resistance the people of Anz may offer, beyond. A small army, if you please.”
“Central Arabia has never been conquered—and a good many nations have tried it, in the last fifty centuries or so.”
“It won’t be easy,” Garth agreed, “but the reward will be incalculable! Think of the Spaniard’s house of gold! I know the desert; you do, too. We won’t be tenderfeet.”
“And your proposition?”
“I need about $140,000 to finish equipping the expedition. I understand that you are able to advance such a sum.”
“Possibly. And in return?”
“You would be second in command—I am the leader, of course, and de Castro third. Half the loot will have to be divided among the men. The remainder we shall divide in twelve shares, of which five are mine, four are yours, and three de Castro’s.”
Gold for its own sake meant nothing to Price. His own fortune, which he had not striven to increase, approximated four million dollars. But, at thirty-one, he found himself a wanderer, weary of life, oppressed by killing ennui, driven by vague, formless longings that he did not understand. For a decade he had been an unresting, purposeless wanderer through the tropic East, seeking—what, he did not know.
The swarthy and hostile mystery of the mountain-rimmed, barren sand-desert of the Rub’ Al Khali—“Empty Abode” which the nomad Bedouins themselves fear and shun—held an obscure challenge for him. He had learned Arabic; he knew something of desert life; he had seen the fringes of the unconquered desert.
The lure of treasure was nothing. The promise of action meant more. Of struggle with nature at her cruelest. Of battle—if Garth’s story were indeed true—with the strange power reigning in the central desert.
The adventure appealed to him as a sporting proposition, as a daring and difficult thing, that men had not done before. And the gold of which Garth talked meant no more than a trophy.
Price was suddenly eager, more interested and enthusiastic than he had been over anything in many months. Decision came to him instantly. But something about him rebelled at taking second place in anything, at taking orders from another.
“I will have to be in command,” he said. “We can share equally—four and a half shares each.”
Pale and hard, Jacob Garth’s eyes scanned Price’s face. His deep voice rang out, almost angrily:
“You heard my proposition.” And he added: “You needn’t fear dishonesty. You may pay out the money yourself. You know that I wouldn’t risk the Rub’ Al Khali unless I believed.”
“I can’t go,” said Price, quietly, “except as the leader.”
And Garth at last had surrendered. “Very well. You take command, and we share equally.”
For two months the Iñez crept stealthily between ports of eastern Europe and the Levant, while Price and Jacob Garth accumulated by the devious negotiations required in such matters, the cargo listed on the manifests as agricultural machinery, and the score of men who called themselves the “Secret Legion.”
The transactions completed and the cargo aboard, she slipped through the canal and down the Red Sea, and eastward along the Arabian coast, to the spot that Jacob Garth had designated as the rendezvous with his questionable Arab allies.
3. THE ROAD OF SKULLS
THE SHEIKH Fouad el Akmet appeared painfully surprised to learn that he was expected to accompany an expedition into the forbidden heart of the Rub’ Al Khali. Jacob Garth, it developed, had engaged his services upon the promise of two hundred and fifty pounds a day, and rich plunder, without specifying where the plundering was to be done.
“Salaam aleikum! [peace be unto you!]” he cried, in the age-old formula of desert greeting, when Price Durand and Jacob Garth entered his black tent, on the night after the sinking of the Iñez.
“Aleikum salaam,” Price returned, thinking at the same time that the old Bedouin’s pious greeting would have little meaning if he ever found it feasible to attack his farengi allies.
Price and Garth seated themselves upon the worn rugs spread against camel-saddles on the sand. Fouad sat facing them, supported by a dozen of his renegade followers, squatting in a semicircle. One of the Arabs served thick, viscid, unsweetened coffee, poured from a brass pot into a single tiny cup, which passed from hand to hand.
Price sipped the coffee, delaying the opening of negotiations; Garth’s bland, pale face was inscrutable. The glitter of curiosity burned stronger in Fouad’s dark, shifting eyes, and at last he could contain himself no longer.
“We ride soon?” he asked.
“Truly,” Price assented. “Soon.”
“Raids,” the old sheikh suggested, “against the El Murra? They have many camels, of the fine Unamiya breed.” His eyes glittered. “Or perhaps we will make war even on the farengi?”
Jacob Garth’s hand went to the leather scabbard at his belt. Slowly he drew the golden sword, held it up.
“What think you of this?” he asked in Arabic as fluent as Price’s own.
Fouad el Akmet started to his feet and came forward eagerly, the gleam of the yellow blade reflected in his eyes.
“Gold?” he demanded. Then, at sight of the snake motif of the sword’s handle, of the great ruby held in the serpent’s fangs, he leapt back, with a muttered “Bismillah!”
“Yes, it is gold
,” Garth told him.
“The thing is accursed!” he cried. “It is of the forbidden land!”
“Then perhaps you know the road of skulls?” Garth asked, his sonorous voice slow and even. “You perhaps have heard of the treasures that lie at the end of that road, beyond the Jebel Harb?”
“No, by Allah!” the old Bedouin cried, so vehemently that Price knew he lied.
“Then I shall show you the road,” Garth told him, “for we ride to plunder the land at its end.”
“Allah forbid!” The sheikh was nervously twisting a finger in his sparse, rusty beard; fear was plain in his eyes.
“Every camel will be laden with gold!” Garth predicted.
“It is forbidden the faithful go beyond the Jebel Harb,” the sheikh exclaimed with unwonted religious fervor, fondling the hijab suspended from his neck. “Beyond is a land of strange evil; Allah and his prophet are unknown there.”
“Then shall we not wage a jehad, a holy war?” said Price, maliciously.
An agitated whisper ran along the line of squatting men. Price caught mention of djinn and ’ifrits.
“What is there to fear, beyond the mountains?” he asked.
“I know not,” he replied, “but men whisper strange things of the Empty Abode.”
“And what are those things?” Price insisted.
“Of course I do not believe,” Fouad disclaimed his superstition, half-heartedly. “But men say that beyond the Jebel Harb is a great city, that was old when the prophet came. Its people, though Arabs, are not of the faithful, but worship a golden snake, and are ruled, not by men, but by evil yellow djinn, in the shape of men.
“The yellow djinn ride upon a great tiger, to hunt down those who cross the mountains, and take their skulls to mark their evil caravan-track to the sea. And they dwell in a castle of shining gold, upon a black mountain that is called hajar jehannum [the rock of hell].
“Such are the desert tales. But of course I do not believe!” Fouad insisted again, when it was quite evident that he did.
“I see now,” Price remarked aside to Garth, “where our old Spanish friend got the material for his fantastic diary.”
“I have seen queer things in the Jebel Harb,” the other returned. “Fouad’s story is more truth than he imagines. Nothing supernatural, you understand. Modern science was born in this part of the world, you know, when Europe was still in the Dark Ages. My theory is that we have to deal with an isolated offshoot of the classic Arabic civilization, on a lost oasis.”
Price turned back to Fouad el Akmet, who was sitting again on his rugs, staring fascinated at the golden yataghan.
“We talk of the evil of the Empty Abode,” Price explained in Arabic. “There is nothing for our allies to fear, for we bring with us the weapons of the farengi. Even should there be such things beyond the accursed mountains as men say there are, we can destroy them.”
“On the morrow we shall show you our weapons,” Garth agreed suavely. He and Price rose from the rugs, and returned to their own tents, leaving the old sheikh muttering uncertainly, obviously torn between fear of the desert’s unknown terrors and greed for its equally unknown treasures.
At sunset on the following day, when the air was comparatively cool again. Price rode upon a borrowed camel with the old Bedouin and a group of his men to the summit of a dune above the camp. Jacob Garth had remained behind, to act as director of ceremonies.
“You have rifles,” Price said, indicating the muzzle-loading trade guns the Arabs carried. “But have you such rifles as these?”
He waved an arm, and the four Hotchkiss machine-guns, waiting on their tripods below, burst into staccato song, their hail of bullets lifting little clouds of sand along the beach.
“Your rifles fire swiftly,” Fouad admitted. “But what do djinn care for rifles?”
“We have greater guns.” Again Price waved.
The Stokes mortars and the two ancient mountain guns fired at once. The crashing detonations and the whine of shell fragments, the pits torn in the loose sand, were startling, even to Price. The more cautious of Fouad’s men drew their camels back behind the dune.
“And our chariot of death!” Price shouted, signalling again.
The tank, which the Arabs had not seen in motion, burst into roaring life and came lumbering up the slope of the dune, like some gray antediluvian monster, clattering, clanging, guns hammering viciously. For a moment the awe-struck Arabs held their ground; then, as one, they goaded their camels into sudden flight.
“I am sorry,” Jacob Garth greeted them, when they rode sheepishly back into camp, “that you did not remain to see our other weapons.”
“The camels were frightened,” replied Fouad. “We could not control them.”
“Even as the watchers in the desert will be frightened,” said Price. “Tomorrow we take the road of skulls?”
The old sheikh hesitated, muttering. “You will pay the gold you promised,” he asked Garth, at length, “even if we find no treasure?”
“Yes,” Garth assured him.
Price was ready. He called out a command, and four men came staggering from the camp, beneath the weight of a great teak chest. Silently, they set it on the sand in front of Price. Deliberately, he found the key, unlocked it, lifted the lid to display the splendor of glittering yellow sovereigns.
Two men might have carried the chest easily enough; but it contained five thousand pounds sterling, in gold, representing another advance from Price’s pocket. He held back the lid, let the Arabs feast avid eyes.
“For each day we will pay you this great wealth.” He counted two hundred and fifty coins into golden piles, and let Fouad feel them with trembling hands. “We carry the treasure with us,” he added, “in the chariot of death, and pay you when we have returned to the sea.”
The old sheikh haggled, insisting upon daily payment. But Price held to his terms, and that night, in the coffee-circle, Fouad surrendered.
“Wallah, effendi. Tomorrow we ride, and may Allah have mercy!”
It was a curious procession that left the landing-place next morning before sunrise. The Sheikh Fouad El Akmet was the leader, upon his magnificent white hejin, or racing-camel. A tall, sparse-bearded, hawk-nosed man was Fouad, with a predatory glitter in his dark eyes that did not belie his unsavory reputation.
The baggage-camels were strung out behind him, laden with cases still marked “spades” or “cultivators” or “farm implements.”
The Arabs rode among them; lean men, mostly, as if dried and shriveled by the desert sun, with dark stern faces, thin, tight lips and piercing eyes. Like Fouad, they wore flowing white kafiyehs, or head-cloths, and rough black abbas, or robes, of camel’s hair.
The white men were mostly in the rear, all of them save Price and Jacob Garth unused to camel-riding, and sitting their rolling, jerking mounts awkwardly and with much complaint.
Bringing up the rear came the tank, motor roaring, reeking of burning oil drifting from it. The camels were afraid of it—and the Arabs regarded it as a very dubious addition to the caravan. It would stiffen Fouad’s uncertain loyalty, Price thought—especially since it carried the gold.
They had risen before dawn, packed the complaining camels, and breakfasted hastily, the Arabs upon dates and flaps of half-raw dough, the others upon bacon and coffee and hardtack.
Price had put himself near the head of the long line of laden beasts that wound over the first lines of dunes, away from the sea, toward the heart of the great unknown, the Empty Abode, toward desperate adventure.
It was all strong wine of life—the crisp, refreshing dawn-breeze; the glory of the scarlet sunrise, enchanting the desert with purple mystery; the strong, eager stride of the fine beast he rode; the shouting of the men, even the grumbling groans of the camels.
Caravan of strange adventure! Vague, rosy visions swam before him. He saw the “golden land” of the Spaniard’s manuscript, the lost city of Anz beyond the forbidden mountains. Disillusion and ennui slipp
ed from him. He felt young and free and powerful. He knew that he was not living in vain, that splendid deeds awaited to be done.
But the brief élan dropped away, as the sun rose higher. The illimitable expanse of crescent hills, dull-red and yellow, wavered and trembled in the heat, unreal. The air became stifling, almost unbreathable, laden with the alkali dust that rose from the trail in choking, saffron clouds.
Perspiration wet his body and the stinging dust clung to it. He soon felt unwashed, miserable. His eyes smarted with dust, ached from the pressure of blinding light that drove down from the sun and the blazing sky, beat back from the sand, shone dazzling from all the hot horizon.
The dry air parched his throat, and he refused himself water from his canteen to wet it—three days, Jacob Garth said it would be, to the first well. The saddle chafed him. His lip bled, where sun and alkali dust had already cracked it.
Even so, the strange urge in him did not completely die. He knew the fierce joy of conquest as he reached the crest of each new dune.
They were just losing sight of the sea, over the trackless, undulating plain of sand, when old Fouad rather apprehensively pointed out to Price a tiny white object that gleamed against the dull red waste ahead.
Reluctantly the old Bedouin turned his camel toward it. As they drew near, Price saw that it was a bleached human skull, set on a tall pole planted deep in the sand. From beside it, another was in view, perhaps a mile ahead.
“Who set it here?” Price asked the sheikh, curiously.
“How do I know?” said Fouad, nervously. “Men say the djinn of the accursed land leave here the heads of men they have lured to doom. Perhaps they mark the road to Eblis.”
Price rode toward the pole. His camel shied from the unfamiliar object; he dismounted and approached it on foot. The pole, some three inches in diameter, was of reddish brown wood, very hard. The skull was some ten feet above his head, but he could see bits of hair and gristle still clinging to it.
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