The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate

XI – The Isle of the Elephant

Southward, league upon league, stretched the dusty road to Kush. It followed the broad blue rippling ribbon of the Nile, with its verdant margins of palm and papyrus, its strips and plots of farmland, and beyond these the tawny bluffs that marked the metes of the desert.

South of Opet, the valley opened out for a space. The air became hotter. At night, unknown constellations wheeled across the southern sky, and from the river came the grunting of the hippopotamus and the bellowing of the bull crocodile. The people became darker of hue and blunter of feature.

The road worsened. Myron and his companions showed a nervous awareness of the fact that the hardest part of their journey would soon be upon them. Back in Asia, time, money, and possibilities had seemed unlimited.

Now the journey had taken substantial bites out of time and resources.

The thought came into conversation again and again: Suppose the dragon proved uncatchable? Or suppose it lived somewhere other than at the headwaters of the Nile? Or suppose it did not exist?

"In that case," said Bessas firmly, "we have come on a sleeveless errand. We shall find out in due time, and meanwhile the next man who brings up the subject shall be ducked in the Nile!"

"B-b-but Chief!" sputtered Shimri. "If there be no—if there be no sirrush, what shall we do? Trick out a crocodile with false ears? Or——"

"Throw him in!" said Bessas. And it was done.

While the beasts of burden renewed their strength by eating, Bessas spent hours in practicing sword strokes and archery and in bullying the others into doing likewise.

Myron worked on his journal. He had bought a roll of papyrus, but he found that he soon had covered all of one side of the roll with writing and had to start on the back.

When not eating, Shimri asked foolish questions, told pointless jokes, and uttered loud meaningless laughs. On the other hand, being dexterous, he mended not only harness but also personal gear and garments.

Skhâ cheerfully fetched and carried. The rigors of the journey had banished some of the fat from his tubby form. He told more tales of the amatory exploits of his great-uncle Mizai, who, if the Karian was to be believed, must have left descendants in half a hundred countries.

Kothar, during this time, withdrew into lengthy silences. Sometimes his companions overheard him at night, praying to unknown gods or conversing with unseen presences. He questioned his fellow travelers about their dreams, which were many and vivid.

Bessas, for instance, dreamt that he was impaled on a stake, while a dragon tore at him, all the while uttering endearments in his mother's voice. But whatever the dream, Kothar's interpretation was the same.

"The gods are trying to warn us," he would say. "Supernatural beings from the world of spirits menace us. You must put your trust in me."

Dust devils appeared over sandy stretches beside the endless river, as if pursuing the travelers. After Kothar wrought a mighty incantation against them, they went away for a while.

The local Egyptian dialects began to give Kothar trouble. When Bessas asked him if he had ever been this far south before, he gave evasive replies until Bessas caught him by the front of his robe and roared:

"May the Corpse Fiend crunch you up! I want the truth, by Mithra!"

"I have in sooth been here," murmured the Syrian, "but in previous lives, not in this one."

This led to an argument on reincarnation. Bessas had heard much of it in India; and Myron said: "I am told that a philosopher of Samos, one Pythagoras, held such a doctrine."

"It's an idea," said Bessas, "but I see not what good it does you to have lived before if you cannot remember your previous lives. You would only make all the same stupid mistakes over again."

"Perchance you mortals cannot remember your previous lives," said Kothar.

"Meaning that you can, eh?"

The guide smiled enigmatically.

On the sixteenth of Simanu, the bluffs closed in until there were only narrow strips of verdure along the river. The Nile widened. Islands, large and small, rose from its placid surface and split it into many channels.

The town of Swenet appeared, hemmed in between the river and the bare buff-colored cliffs. In the market place they saw burly, shaven, linen-clad Egyptians; black-brown, leather-capped Nubians; mop-haired, surly black Bugaitae and Ophirites from the Red Sea; slender and voluble Dankalas from the Cataracts; and Kushites who had brought hides, tusks, and plumes up from the South to trade.

The Kushites were slight, black-skinned men in kilts of cloth or leather. Some had a strip of the skin of a yellow wildcat or other beast wound turbanwise around a mass of curly black hair. Every one had a set of tribal scars cut in his cheeks.

Kothar learnt in the market place that the satrap held court in his palace on the island of Yeb, a bowshot from the waterfront. Thither they took their way. At the ferry landing, Myron grasped Bessas' arm, saying:

"Well, grind me to sausage and feed me to Kerberos; look at those! We haven't seen them since we left Memphis."

He referred to a number of dromedaries, which lay in the sun and rhythmically moved their jaws. Among them squatted or lay a dozen skirted Arabs. These were easily distinguished from the Egyptians and Nubians by their slender build, sharp birdlike features, hawk noses, and pointed beards. They stank of rancid fat, which glistened on their long black hair. Some conversed in low tones; some stared blankly; some of them knitted caps or socks; some slept in patches of shade.

As Kothar approached the group, the Arabs raised their heads with a motion that made Myron think of snakes. Their expressions were sullen and wary; their dark eyes glittered. Hands strayed towards the hilts of daggers. But when the Syrian spoke to them in their own tongue, teeth flashed in sudden smiles.

"They say," said Kothar, "that they think the satrap has lured their shaykh to Yeb and treacherously seized him there. Short of causing the waters to part, as a Judean magician is once said to have done, they cannot think how to rescue him. They beg that the great rich lord"—he nodded at Bessas—"put in a word for their chief when he gets to the island."

"Who is this chief?" asked Bessas.

"Zayd ibn-Harith, shaykh of the Banu Khalaf."

"Tell them we'll do what we can. This boat looks fairly sound; make me a bargain with the boatman, Kothar. Skhâ. and Shimri, stay here,"

While they waited for Kothar to complete his haggle with the boatman, they were startled by unearthly shrieks from a nearby house. When they asked about this, they were told the noise was made by black boys captured by slave raiders, who were being castrated before being sent north to serve as eunuchs in the harems of Persian lords.

Myron winced as this explanation unfolded. "I always thought a eunuch a figure of fun, but I suppose that to the victim it is quite as dreadful a tragedy as the tale of Xerxes' brother Masistes."

"My dear old friend," said Bessas, "you are really too kindhearted for this rough, rude world, one of whose laws is that the strong shall rule and exploit the weak. Since we cannot change the world, let us make sure that we be counted amongst the strong."

The satrap's palace and other houses and temples lay on the isle, half hidden by a jungly growth of palm trees. Before the palace stood a pair of soldiers from Yeb's Judaean garrison: burly, black-bearded men in corselets of lizard mail.

Inside the palace was noise and turmoil. A pair of Judaean guards held by the arms a tall, thin old man with a long gray beard, wearing an Arabian robe and head shawl and silver hoops in his ears. Two more held a slender veiled woman. Both captives struggled and shouted. Several others in the room, including a trio of Nubians and the heavily rouged little man on the satrapal throne, were also shouting.

The small man at last leaped up, shaking his fists above his head, and screamed, "Quiet!" in Persian. Another man, an Egyptian from his appearance, yelled, "Silence!" in Egyptian and Aramaic.

The noise continued, however, until an accident interrupted it. The small painted man, in his agitation, stood on the seat of his throne. While hopping and shouting from this point of vantage, he caught his foot in his cloth-of-gold embroidered robe and fell to the dais on which the throne stood.

An awful silence descended upon the chamber. Soldiers and litigants looked uneasily at one another, as if momentarily fearing a massacre of all so unfortunate as to have witnessed the downfall of the satrap's dignity. The Egyptian leaped to help the small man up and dust him off. The latter, cherry-red of face, glared for half an ush about the room. At last, in a strangled voice, he said:

"Can anybody here speak both Arabic and Persian?" The Egyptian repeated the question in Aramaic.

"I can," said Kothar.

"Then," said the Egyptian, "in the name of the First Ennead, do! Be our interpreter. Our regular interpreter has been devoured by the crocodiles; His Lordship speaks nought but Persian; and our prisoners know neither Aramaic nor Egyptian to speak of."

"Who are you, anyway?" said the satrap.

Kothar introduced himself and his fellow travelers.

"Oh," said Astes, satrap of Kushia. "You should not have come in unannounced. But my usher had to leave his post to help out with this devil's dance. So My Excellency will pardon the affront. Ask this old sand thief what became of the young man who spoke some civilized languages."

Kothar repeated the question. After Shaykh Zayd had spoken, the Syrian explained:

"He says the clan held an all-night dance the night before last to celebrate the fullness of the moon. And this youth became so overwrought with the joy of the dance that he sought to lay lustful hands upon the shaykh's daughter—"

"This hussy here?"

"Aye, my lord. So, says the shaykh, there was nought to do but cut his throat."

"Ha!" snarled Astes. "Nought to do but cut his throat, eh? Who does he think he is, to go cutting people's throats? The satrap? But let us get on. with the current case. Say unto him: These Nubians, from the Fifty-League Oasis west of the Second Cataract, aver that, two moons ago, the Banu Khalaf rode out of the desert and fell upon the Nubians who dwelt in the oasis. Many they slew, for the Nubians were taken unawares and adread at the sight of the camels, which they had never seen before. Hence they could not fight so stoutly as is their wont. Of those who failed to escape, the Arabs put all the men to the sword and made slaves of the women and children. How answers he?"

There ensued a long dialogue between Kothar and Shaykh Zayd. At last the Syrian said:

"Shaykh Zayd replies as follows: O great governor, protector of the poor, lion of righteousness, camel of the province—"

"Yes, yes, omit all that. Get to the answer."

"Well, sir, he says that he did but carry out Your Highness' commands."

"What! By the beams of Mah, is he mad? I never commanded him to go about enslaving and murdering the Great King's subjects."

"The shaykh explains thus: Last year he was driven out of his grazing grounds in the land of Midian by a band of treacherous, murderous, bloodthirsty villains called Lihy-anites. So, finding no other neighbors weak enough to overcome and despoil of their lands, he led the Banu Khalaf into Egypt.

"In Midian the tribe had eked out its living by hiring out to merchants, to carry their goods on its camels. Since he found that the camel was almost unknown in Egypt, the shaykh has sought for some part of the land of Khem where he could use his beasts to advantage. His gods, he says, revealed to him that the trade routes running south from Swenet offered die best possibilities, as they pass through difficult desert country and are now plied only by a few hardy farers on asses or afoot.

"During his travels he learnt that, ere he began to ply these routes, he must needs get leave from the satrap. Wherefore he waited upon Your Excellency."

"All true," said Astes. "But what has it to do with his seizure of the Fifty-League Oasis?"

"We are coming to that, sir. Receiving Your Highness' gracious permission, he sought out oases along the routes in question. As a successful caravan business depends upon control of the oases, he says that you must have meant him to seize these oases, else why would you have sent him forth? To perish in the desert?"

Astes again turned dangerously red but merely said: "Continue."

"Discovering that the Fifty-League Oasis was inhabited by a handful of wretched, stinking, cowardly Nubian peasants—"

"Liar! Thief! Murderer!" howled the Nubians until quieted by shouts from the satrap.

"—the Banu Khalaf naturally took control of the oasis, as the gods plainly meant such a natural feature to be under the rule of those best fitted to use it. As for enslaving the surviving Nubae, that is but just, as they lost the battle; whereas, had they been as good men as the Banu Khalaf, they would either have defeated them or died fighting. And now, says Shaykh Zayd, how can Your Excellency eat bread and salt with a man, and entice him to this isle with promises of rewards, and then treacherously seize him and try him, as if he were a mere slave or peasant?"

"He accuses me?" screamed Astes. "To the House of the Lie with him! Throw the insolent scoundrel into a cell, and his daughter, too! I will dispose of this case later, when I have thought up a fitting punishment for their villainy." Still fuming, he turned to Bessas' company. "Now, you other people. What do you want, you great lout?"

"Did you speak to me, sir?" said Bessas, raising his bushy brows.

"Certes! Whom thought you that I spoke to?"

Bessas bit his lips with anger but, calmly enough, told of his mission. "I have here a letter from the Great King, signed by Artabanus, asking the help of all satraps. I also have a letter to Your Highness from the lord Achaemenes, asking that we be sped on our way to Meroê—"

"Bugger Achaemenes'" cried Astes. "You may not go."

"Not go to Meroê, my lord?"

"No, not go to Meroê. You would have to reach the Kushite outpost of Napata, and there have been raids and forays all along the bend of the Nile around Napata. It is a virtual undeclared war. If you go blundering about there, you will be slain either by mistake by our own troops or as Persian spies by the wild Kushites, and I shall be blamed."

"But, sir, the Great King commanded me—"

"The Great King knows not how things are in Kushia. You may either settle down here until order is restored, or return whence you came."

"But, my lord, I have another letter from the Great King to the king of Kush—"

"It is I who decide here, and I have decided that you shall not go. Dare you to question my decision, sirrah?"

"Nay, but—"

"No buts or ifs, you hairy barbarian! What My Lordship asserts, so shall it be! The audience is ended; you may go."

Astes swept out, leaving Bessas and his fellow travelers gaping.

Myron was sitting with Kothar in the tavern of Yeb, sipping a cup of heavy wine sweetened with date sirup and playing tjau. Bessas came in with one of the Judaean soldiers, whom he presented to the players:

"This is my friend, Deputy Captain Yehosha, whom I asked to have a drink with us."

The Judaean was a man of Bessas' age, shorter by half a head but fully as broad and brawny, with a large hooked nose and a flowing black beard. Both he and Bessas had evidently been drinking for some time already. Yehosha clapped Myron heavily on the back, saying:

"Who wins? Oh, I see, you do. You will have no chance, Master Kothar, so long as you leave your dogs scattered about the board in irregular groups, whilst your foe gathers his into a solid phalanx." He spoke fluent Aramaic, though with an odd accent.

"I resign," said Kothar glumly. "The spiritual forces fight against me today."

Myron drank. "I merely apply the lesson I learnt when I was trained as a hoplites in Miletos, long ago, namely: that a force of well-armored spearmen can repel any other troops in the world while they keep their formation—as the Athenians proved at Marathon."

"You Hellenes never cease boasting of that little border skirmish," said Bessas. "At that, the Athenians would have been smashed like a plover's egg beneath a horse's hoof if Darius' silly generals had not misused the world's best cavalry by making them fight on foot."

Myron said: "Why not tell Xerxes to challenge the Athenians to a return match, with everybody mounted this time? I can just hear the clatter of armored Athenians falling off their nags." He turned to Yehosha. "Didn't I see you at the palace this morning?"

"Aye; your servant had charge of the Nubae." The Judaean grinned. "How like you our little wasp of a satrap?"

"My dear sir, I have encountered many governors and other officials, but never one like this. Is he always in such a rage?"

"Usually." Yehosha lowered his voice. "Astes has three reasons for being wroth just now. One: he is fain to be a hero, so he tried to lead a squadron in person on the Kushite frontier, a fortnight ago; got ambushed and lost half his force. Two: he especially hates all large, tall men like Master Bessas. And three: he is exasperated by the case of the Fifty-League Oasis, because neither plaintiff nor defendant has any wealth that the satrap can extort in return for a favorable judgment. These poor Nubians-own nought but a few iron hoes, while the Arabs have only a few hundred mangy camels, which have no value here because the Egyptians fear the beasts."

With a faraway look, Bessas muttered: "On the northern frontiers, if a man spoke to me as has this unmannerly little knave, I'd break his neck."

"Many feel as you do." The Judaean smote his broad chest, so that the bronzen scales jangled. "Hoy! The great Yahveh must be wroth with us, to send us such governors. The one before this was drunk all the time, and the one before him slept all the time. This one is not only arrogant and ill-tempered, but also has his hand in everybody's purse. Truly we get the dregs of the Persian Court."

Bessas said: "I suppose the king cannot find good men who will take such an out-of-the-way post. This rascal is doubtless the brother-in-law of some member of the Council of Seven, who must be taken care of somehow—preferably far from Persepolis."

"Tell me," said Myron, "how came a garrison of Judaeans to be stationed here, so far from their native land?"

Yehosha replied: "It started long ago, when a king named Psamatik ruled Egypt. Some say he invaded Judaea, seized thousands of our folk, and settled them here as a shield against the Kushites. But we have been here for generations, so that the Isle of the Elephant is home to us."

"Is that what Yeb means?"

"Aye; though whether because the beast once roamed hereabouts, or because the Kushites fetch ivory hither to trade, I know not."

Myron asked about the sirrush, showing his sketches. Yehosha stroked his beard and said:

"I cannot aver that such a beast has come within our ken. True, many strange creatures are said to dwell in the south. There is the man-eating bull, whose eyes flash fire and whose horns move like the ears of a dog. There are serpents so vast that they coil about elephants, crush them to death, and swallow them whole. One must approach hills warily, lest a hill turn out to be one of these reptiles coiled up and sleeping off its last repast of elephants and hippopotami.

"To the southwest, in the land of the Eaters, live men with dogs' heads—"

"The land of whom?" interrupted Bessas.

"The Eaters, they call them; cannibals. Along the shores of the Red Sea, at certain times of year, swarms of winged serpents fly up the dry river valleys and would overrun Egypt, were it not for the ibises that gather there to devour these vermin. But I cannot truthfully say that I know your Babylonian cat-lizard."

"We must go on, natheless," said Bessas. "The Great King has so commanded. If Astes gainsays us, we shall have to evade him."

"Easier said than done," said Yehosha. "Astes, for all the paint on his face, is a shrewd and energetic man. His patrols scour the roads, inquiring into everything. The satrap ofttimes rides out with them to keep them up to the mark."

Myron said: "When will these border disturbances subside?"

"Not soon, if ever. No fixed border has ever been drawn. The region of the Nile bend forms a zone of raiding and counterraiding, to the ruin and destruction of the folk who dwell there. We raid as far as the Napatan reach of the Nile, whilst their war parties have pierced as far north as Buhen. Two years ago they overran that fortress and slew or carried off every mortal therein."

"Why don't the Persians and Kushites draw up a boundary, marked by monuments as in Hellas?"

"Because the Kushites will not admit our—that is, the Persians'—right to rule Egypt, let alone the satrapy of Kushia. Because their kings once ruled the land of Khem, they "assert they still should righteously do so. Even less will they acknowledge Persian rule over northern Kush, which their kings ruled until Darius' soldiers drove them out—or the gold mines of Kush, after which the Persians lust as a sailor home from the sea lusts after a wench.

"So, you see, you are not likely to get to Napata now, especially as you are not after booty of the sort that the satrap could get his claws into. Your chances were better if you were outfitting a slave-catching foray, or seeking the treasure of Takarta."

"What treasure?" asked Myron.

"Takarta, the last king to rule Kush from Napata. When the Persians captured his palace, their general was furious—my father, who fought in that campaign, told me how he raved—at failing to find the private hoard of the king. So the tale has grown up that Takarta, for all the haste of his flight, bore off his nest egg. It is fabled to have included the True Anthrax."

"Eh? What is that?" said Kothar suddenly, coming out of his meditations.

"You know, the gem that darkens when danger—"

"Yes, yes, I know the jewel's mystic properties. But how came the Kushite kings to possess it?"

"It is said that the Anthrax belonged to Egyptian kings who reigned before the Kushites conquered Khem. The Kushite kings seized it and, when driven out by the Assyrians, took it with them. But I think these are all mere fables. Belike some Persian rankers got to Takarta's treasure chest first, stuffed the baubles into their pantaloons, and held their tongues."

Kothar said: "Could we now go to the satrap and change our story, saying that we were really in pursuit of slaves or treasure?"

"Not with Astes! Being a very suspicious man, he would probably sentence the lot of you to the granite quarries."

Myron unfolded the sheet of parchment on which he had drawn a map of Egypt, saying: "If this be the disturbed frontier zone, why could we not go around it, to east or west? Neither Kush nor Kushia extends indefinitely into the desert."

Yehosha frowned at the sketch. "He'akh! There is, forsooth, the western route that passes through the Fifty-League Oasis, over which the Banu Khalaf and the Nubae quarrel. But that route is a horse killer, so widely spaced are the water holes. And if you miss one well, you are dead."

Myron burst out: "I have it! We'll hire Zayd to get us to Meroê with his camels. The money we pay him will enable him in turn to pay off Astes and the Nubae, so they should not object, and we shall avoid the fighting zone."

Bessas: "The very thing! See, Yehosha, what a wise lieutenant I have?"

Yehosha said: "A clever scheme. Be sure to take with you not only the shaykh but also his daughter Salimat."

"What's this? On such a hurried enterprise as ours, women are an encumbrance. They cause strife amongst the men, who vie for their favor. Why should we be burdened with one?"

"Because she is the real head of the clan, having wit for two. Zayd is a fine old fellow in his way, aside from the fact that he has never learnt that it is wrong to rob and murder. He has good friends amongst the Judaeans of Yeb, for we children of Shem must stick together in far lands. But the daughter is the real force of the twain."

Bessas shook his head. "I still like not that plan. But let's have a song. Know you The Lousy King of Lydia?"

"Aye, though I cannot remember all the words. How goes it?" The two deep bass voices rolled out:

The next day, they persuaded Astes to let them see the prisoners. The old shaykh listened with grave courtesy to Bessas' proposal and looked at his daughter. "What think you, my dear?"

Salimat was a rather small, slight girl, quick as a cat and lithe as an eel. Although nearly as swart as a Nubian, she had delicately aquiline features that would have graced a Greek vase. In the courtroom, these features had been hidden by a blue veil, but one end of this veil had now been unfastened so that it hung down to one side.

Besides the veil, Salimat wore a robe consisting of two long strips of cloth, fastened at shoulders and ankles but otherwise loose. Thus, whereas Salimat appeared fully clad from the front or the back, she was virtually nude from the side.

"How many men and beasts now comprise your company, Captain Bessas?" she asked. When Kothar had translated the question and the reply, she thought briefly and said: "A score of camels should carry fodder and water enough to get you all to Meroê. For that, we shall need five or six of our men."

Shaykh Zayd said: "Let us take Zuhayr and Amr and Shaddad—"

"Not Zuhayr!" cried Salimat. "He is a trouble-making loafer."

"Very well, my dear. You may choose the men. But someone must also go to command them. Naamil—"

"Uncle Naamil is too fat and sleepy, and you are too easy-going. I shall have to go, as I am the only one they really fear."

"Salimat! I am shocked by such an unladylike suggestion!"

"It is the only way, Father, and well you know it. No one else in the clan could do it."

"Then it were better not to undertake this rash journey, and to eat the bitter bread of poverty with the best grace we can muster."

"But Father! Think of the chance you will have of opening new trade routes!"

After a brisk dispute in guttural Arabic, Zayd gave in. He sighed: "But I cannot send you off alone, amid all these lustful men. I shall have to chaperone you, leaving Naamil to rule in my absence." He explained to the others: "You see, sirs, we Arabs are jealous beyond all other men of our women's virtue. Amongst other nations, women leave their proper place in the tent and engage in all kinds of lewd behavior. But not amongst us! With us, the man commands and the woman obeys, as the gods intended!"

"So I see," said Bessas, suppressing a smile.

The old man looked sharply at the Bactrian. "You are not, my young friend, having a quiet laugh at my cost? I will tell you a tale to show you how gravely we badawin take these matters.

"When I was a stripling, I visited a clan allied with ours, the Banu Aqil. The shaykh of this clan was Hira ibn-Kulthûm, a man of firm principles. So strict with his wives was he that he would not let either of them leave the tent by daylight, even for their most imperative needs, lest other men cast lustful eyes upon them.

"Now it happened that one morning I, being a poor nobody, had had no breakfast. As I strolled past the shaykh's tent, there wafted to my nostrils the most heavenly odors of cookery that I had ever known.

"Know that in a desert-dwelling clan, things are more or less owned in common. If a man need food or clothing, he may ask any fellow clansman, and his kinsman will deny him nought in reason. The same applies to guests from allied clans.

"So, thinking only of my ravening appetite, I thrust my head into Shaykh Hira's tent to beg a bite from him. And there he sat, with his wives on either side of him, eating. Then, too late, I remembered his strictness concerning his women.

"The shaykh looked up and uttered a greeting. Amongst us there are many greetings, and to each a certain reply must be given if one would not be known as a mannerless oaf. But so overcome with terror was I that, instead of returning Hira's greeting, I could only cast myself down upon my face and stammer a plea for mercy.

"Ere my heart had given three beats, the men of the Banu Aqil seized me, bound me, and dragged me to another tent, where they mounted guard over me. There I lay all day, commending my soul to Ilâh and Ilât and expecting every instant to be my last.

"But, as the sun was setting, in came the shaykh with orders to loose me. 'O Zayd ibn-Harith,' quoth he, 'long have I pondered this matter. At first I meant to have you slain, as I should have done to one of my own clan for taking such a monstrous liberty. But then, thought I, the fact that you returned not my greeting—albeit I have always known you for a well-mannered youth—gave me to believe that the gods must have taken away your wits. Since it were unjust to hold a madman to account for the deeds of his madness, I pardon you. But, lest another such seizure come upon you, it were better that you return to your own clan.' Needless to say, I acted upon this advice instanter."

They jounced along the desert road to the Fifty-League Oasis. Bessas, his money belt lightened and his temper soured by the bribe extorted from him by Astes, treated Salimat with circumspection. When he spoke to her, it was with all the formal courtesy of an Aryan gentleman; but he saw to it that he seldom had occasion to speak to her.

Myron, wishing to learn Arabic, conversed with the girl at length. As he was already fluent in Aramaic, the related Arabic tongue posed no great difficulty. He found Salimat a ruthlessly practical young woman, brilliantly skilled in the arts of managing a camel caravan. He wondered how many such strong natures the company could acquire before it flew apart from internal dissension.

At last the Fifty-League Oasis rose out of the desert. As Bessas' company neared it, Arabs of the Banu Khalaf ran out of their camel's hair tents and rode in from the desert on their camels to welcome their shaykh. A score of naked Nubian women and children, watched by whip-wielding Arabs, were hewing wood and drawing water. One of these women looked dully up at the company and sighted the Nubian chief, who had come along, riding an ass, to see that all his folk were freed. The woman burst into shrieks. Soon, despite the cracks of Arab whips on their bare black hides, all were screaming.

Shaykh Zayd made his camel kneel. As he got off, his clansmen crowded round to kiss his hand. The din became such that Myron could make out nothing until the shaykh creakily mounted a palm log and cried:

"Ya jama'aya! My good people, I pray you! A little quiet! Now I will tell you what has befallen ..."

The Arabs listened quietly until they learnt that, as part of the deal with Bessas, the satrap, and the Nubian chief, they would have to free their newly acquired slaves. Then an angry murmur ran through the crowd. They turned to one another, gesturing and expostulating. The shaykh called again for quiet, but none heeded him.

Soon fists were shaken and knives were flourished. Burning with indignation, the Banu Khalaf began to scream threats to slay all the Nubae and the foreign dogs as well. The shaykh's tearful protests were drowned out. Myron and Bessas looked at one another, loosened the swords in their scabbards, and gathered their company into a compact knot.

Then Salimat leaped to the log beside her father and cried, in a screech that cut through the hubbub: "Be silent, dogs!"

The noise died.

"What sort of behavior is this?" continued the girl. "Are you a mannerless mob of townsfolk, or true badawin? Why do you welcome us and then act so as to destroy us, and yourselves as well? Listen whilst I tell you how we stand ..."

An hour's shrill harangue turned the Arabs from their purpose. The wretched captives were suffered to depart with their chief. The clansmen came shamefacedly up to Bessas to assure him of the hospitality of the desert and to kiss his hands in gratitude for the liberation of their shaykh. Myron said to Bessas in Greek:

"Isn't it wonderful, old boy, how among these folk the men command and the women obey?"

From the Fifty-League Oasis, Bessas' expedition forged southward. The original company of five men and ten animals was now augmented by the shaykh, his daughter, and six more Arabs of the Banu Khalaf. The Arabs rode and led a force of twenty-two camels bearing fodder and water for the less hardy horses and mules.

They swung back to the Nile only to pick up water at the southernmost point of the southerly bend, near Karutjet. Then they struck southeastward across the desert again. Coming to the Nile twenty leagues above Meroê, they followed the track along the northern side of the river downstream for three days.

Sometimes they jogged along a narrow strip between the river and towering brown cliffs. At other times they looked across wide flat plains, sparsely speckled with shrubbery. A fine dust blew in from the desert and got into everything. As they followed the river northwest, the country became more of a desert, the barren soil being covered by shiny round red and black stones.

"Beshrew me if this be not iron-bearing country!" said Shimri.

The first afternoon along the river, Shimri's horse acted sick, hanging its head and moaning through its nose. One of the Arabs told Myron:

"I tried to warn that man not to let his horse eat of the ushar, but he heeded me not. So I thought he must have some charm against the poison of this shrub."

Myron asked Shimri about this. The Judaean gave a nervous laugh and said:

"Oh, he came up shouting some gibberish, whilst I was looking at the iron ore, but I never heed what these barbarians say. All they want is a chance to rob one."

By nightfall the horse was dead and Bessas in a fury. Shimri hid in a gully until the Bactrian's wrath was softened. By the most tender care, Bessas had so far avoided losing a single horse or mule. He was, however, far less solicitous with his human companions. It was as if, being himself impervious to heat, cold, thirst, hunger, and fatigue, he took it for granted that all other men were equally hardy.

The Arabs skinned and ate the horse. Bessas warned his followers thereafter to keep their beasts away from the thick, fleshy, bright-green leaves of the poisonous shrub.

On the seventh of Duuzu they arrived at the mud-hut village of Epis, opposite Meroê, capital of independent Kush. Here a ferry ran. Bessas and Zayd crossed on the ramshackle flatboat while Myron and Salimat, as the two leaders' lieutenants, remained to the last to make sure that all the other men and beasts got across in good order.

"Master Myron!" said Salimat, looking gravely with dark eyes over the top of the veil. In the desert and at the oasis, she had laid aside the veil, but now that they were traveling through settled parts of Kush she resumed it. "Pray tell your man Skhâ that, if he make another advance towards me, I shall slay him." Quick as a serpent's stroke, she whisked a curved dagger from under her robe. "I certainly will," said Myron.

He did not doubt that Salimat would indeed kill Skhâ or anyone else who molested her. Perhaps old Zayd thought he had to come along to protect his daughter, but any protecting was likely to be the other way round. The shaykh presided benignly over his little caravan and exchanged elaborate courtesies with Bessas and his people. But it was Salimat who routed the Arabs out before dawn, bullied them into motion, inspected the lading of the camels, settled disputes, and decided when and where the company should stop for the night.