In the Dwellings of the Wilderness/Chapter VIII
CHAPTER VIII
At the Eleventh Hour
erritt, in his tent, was busily bringing his journal down to date. The lamplight fell unsparingly on his grey face, weather-worn and with tired eyes, and flung a distorted shadow of him on the tent wall behind him. He wrote slowly, making no corrections, methodical, thorough, as in all his doings. The journal was a marvel of brevity and conciseness. His pen was finishing the sentence—"which I wish to present to the National Museum, in Washington, D. C., with the hope that my good friend, Dr. Peabody, may, on examination, be enabled to analyse what it contains." For it was of the lamp he wrote, the lamp, which, cold and dead, later found its place in a glass case among old relics of bygone days, labelled with a card bearing an outline of its half-known strange history, of which the beginning was forever lost. He was deep in interested reviewal of its discovery, when a stumble at the door and a smothered curse announced the advent of Deane.
"Can I come in?" Deane asked, and entered hastily. He listened an instant to make sure of Merritt's position, and crossed the tent to him, feeling his way with the helpless awkwardness of the newly blind.
"Is there a piece torn out of the left sleeve of my shirt, near the shoulder?" he asked abruptly, and bent down that Merritt might observe. Merritt noticed that his breath was quick and his manner full of a repressed excitement.
"No," Merritt said. "Nothing wrong here."
"Thank the Lord for that," Deane muttered devoutly. " But then it's mighty queer. I don't understand what could have happened … Something caught at me just now, down in the diggings … I can't believe it's all imagination"
Simultaneously Merritt exclaimed:
"Hold on! You said the left sleeve. There's a six-inch rip in the right sleeve, here, where I'm pulling. Did you catch it on a nail?"
Deane drew his breath in sharply.
"There—is one, then?" he said in an odd voice. "No, I did not catch it on any nail."
Merritt turned to look at him.
"What's up?" he demanded.
But Deane, without noticing his question, began to speak rapidly, in the same tense voice.
"Then I believe anything—everything. I believe that the men are right. I believe the place is cursed. I believe that Bob and the Arabs were decoyed and trapped by unhuman powers. I've scoffed and sneered, but now I will believe anything this land can show me. I'm beaten—done up. I don't understand—but I believe … I believe it!"
His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. Merritt stood up and shook him gently.
"Look here, old man, this won't do. Get yourself together. It won't last much longer; in ten days at most we'll be off."
"Ten days," Deane repeated. "Ten days … I guess I can stand that, can't I?"
"If you think you'd like to start ahead of me," Merritt said, "take what stores and men you want, and start on first. I think that would~be the best plan, anyhow. Your eyes need treatment; it may be a serious thing if they don't get it soon. I won't be long behind you"
But Deane interrupted with sudden fierceness, a burst of uncalled-for anger, so that Merritt stared at him in sheer amazement.
"See here! Don't say that to me again; understand? Why, do you know what you're inviting me to do? Play the coward—run away and hide my head in the sand; make a worse spectacle of myself than I am already. That's what you're asking me to do! But I won't—by Heaven, I won't! Don't think that because I'm useless and not worth my salt I'll let a man—any man—insult me"
But, on the word, his voice changed and hesitated; his torrent of speech checked. He said with a certain timidity which sat very strangely on him—a deprecating humility not good to hear:
"I—I don't mean that, Merritt, upon my soul, I don't! I don't know what I'm talking about, these days."
"You go to bed," Merritt said with decision. "That's the best place for you at present. Sleeping pretty good, lately?"
"Not ten minutes since—since I got back," Deane answered shortly. "Sometimes I get half off, but that—that's worse than nothing. Every time I drop off I'm back—out there—again, stumbling over rocks, mad with hunger and thirst." He brushed the back of a hand across his forehead. "Or else I'm feeling dry arms around my neck, and something pulling at me the way—oh, the way I dreamt out there!" He shuddered. "Then I stay awake the rest of the night."
"Deane, go home!" Merritt urged earnestly. " You're not fit to stay out here. No man would be, after—all that."
But on the instant Deane's anger flared up again, irresponsible, violent, wholly out of proportion to its cause.
"Haven't I got enough to keep me happy without you to help it on?" he said with savage irony. "Do you think I'll turn tail and give up now, at the eleventh hour?"
"No; after all I suppose it would not do," Merritt said gravely, a keen eye on Deane's drawn face.
Deane calmed down at once.
"I thought you'd feel that way about it," he said in satisfied tones. "You see, of course, how I'm placed." He laughed grimly, jangling laughter that jarred. "Lord, what a farce it is! Here I'm going the way Holloway went; coming to you whining to be put to sleep, as he came to me, poor devil! Next thing, I'll be crawling around your tent to hear you moving inside; then I'll be wandering down among the tombs; then"
"Now what are you talking about?" Merritt demanded helplessly. "Don't think about Holloway any more, there's a good chap. Suppose I fix you up something to take, and you turn in"
"The devil you will!" Deane retorted with promptness. "You don't get around me that way, by George! I've fixed up stuff for shaky devils myself before this, and sent 'em to sleep thinking they had a good strong dose inside them. None of your lime-juice-and-water tricks for me!"
Merritt gasped slightly.
"Oh—very well. Then I'll look in later to see how you are getting on."
He turned to his journal again. Deane, on his way to the door, said calmly over his shoulder:
"Then you'd better sing out loud before you come in. Hand—that black limb of Satan—came in on me suddenly last night, and I choked him silly before he could tell me who he was. I haven't got a rag of nerve left, that's the truth of it."
He departed, swearing a little as he ran against a camp-stool in his path.
"Yes sir! he's reached his limit. I've got to get him out of this somehow," said Merritt, and took up his pen once more.
But later, when Merritt, loudly heralding his approach, entered Deane's tent, Deane was not within. Merritt stood in the doorway and looked about him, scowling uneasily.
"Wish I'd kept him with me," he said aloud. "The fellow isn't fit to be left alone just now. He might—good Lord! why, he might …"
He sat down on the leather-covered trunk and waited. Outside, the night was very still. No sound came from the camps; all the world slept. Merritt dozed uncomfortably, his head fallen forward, hands hanging limp between his knees. It seemed to him, afterwards, that he had slept thus a very long time. As one, in ten minutes, may dream through a cycle of time, so Merritt felt as though half the night had gone when at length he pulled himself together, guiltily conscious that he ought to go and look for Deane. He yawned, stretched, and got himself to his feet, stupid with sleep, noticing, irrelevantly, that the lamp was still burning, and that the moonlight, coming through the open entrance, turned its light wan and sickly. And then he started, wide awake on the instant, listening with bent head and hands clenching to a sound that came out of the night; a moan, rising and swelling into a scream that split through the stillness, and stopped suddenly as though choked into strangled quiet, with the silence settling deeper than before. The cry came from the excavations. Merritt dashed out of the tent and ran thither, his teeth set hard, every muscle tense to face he knew not what crisis. But that some crisis was at hand, instinct told him surely.
He gained the edge of the level which overlooked the courtyard, forty feet below, and looked down. There, among the exhumed tombs, was dense black shadow, save at one place only, in the centre of the open court, where the moonlight fell like a lake of silver at the bottom of a well. Merritt, pausing uncertain which way to turn or what to look for, heard strange sounds arising from the heart of the shadow below him; heavy breathing, guttural snarls, low and worrying, like an angry dog's; thumping as of heavy bodies at grips and threshing to and fro. Then a thing appeared, from the blackness into the patch of light, and Merritt rubbed his eyes to make sure that the wan moonlight, which turned all things uncorporeal as phantoms, had not deceived him—a thing that rolled upon the ground, and rose and fell again in contorted struggling—an indeterminate mass, black against the silver, silent save for deep panting breaths and worrying snarls. Merritt plunged down the slanting gallery leading to the courtyard, leaping downward with great strides. Even as he raced, his brain formulated theories. It might be a wild animal—lion—hyena—jackal; it might be a native run amuck; it might be a thief. Whatever it was, it had Deane, handicapped by his blindness and recent hardships, down and fighting for his life
Merritt gained the lower level, stumbled over an unseen obstruction in his path, recovered, and dashed into the courtyard to where the struggling mass had been. Had been, but was no longer; for even in the bare half-minute that Merritt had taken in his descent, what was to happen had happened. There was only a crumpled heap upon the ground in the moonlight, that screamed when Merritt touched it, and clutched him, feeling with blind, desperate fingers for his throat. Merritt cried sharply:
"Stop it, Deane, stop it, I tell you! It's I, Merritt! Oh, man, are you off your head entirely?"
With difficulty he mastered him, and held him down, repeating over and over:
it's I—it's only Merritt. Don't fight like this, man—can't you understand—it's Merritt!"
Until Deane's struggles ceased, and he lay panting, with Merritt's weight atop of him.
"You Merritt?" he said faintly. Merritt, still holding him, repeated soothing assurances automatically. But Deane sat up suddenly, flinging off Merritt as though he had been a child, and cried:
"Then where is it? Merritt, Merritt, find it—find it for the love of Heaven, and burn it! It can't have got very far—I had it sure. Oh, go, old man, look for it—it's here among the tombs somewhere! I had it not half a minute ago!"
Merritt put a hand on his arm, and felt that he was shaking all over.
"Steady, old boy!" he said. "Get yourself together. There's nothing here—I'll swear there isn't. What was it you were doing?"
"Doing!" Deane said between his teeth. His hands clenched and unclenched convulsively. "I tell you I had it! Can't you do as I tell you? Do you want the thing to get away from us again? Oh, man, do as I tell you!"
"Hold on a minute! What was it you had?" Merritt asked. Deane's voice rose to a shriek of angry impotence.
"The mummy, you fool, the mummy! Can't you understand? Will you look for it, damn you!"
"The mummy!" Merritt echoed blankly. The solution of Deane's conduct flashed upon him; Deane was undoubtedly mad; the overwrought brain at last had given way. But Deane was speaking, in a high, shrill voice that staggered and stuttered crazily.
"I found it here, down among the tombs. I knew I should; I was waiting for it. It came, and I felt its arms around my neck, and I knew that the dream I had in the desert was no dream. And when I tried to get away, it clung, clung like a leech, with feet and hands and teeth—Merritt! Oh, my God, Merritt, where are you!" It was the voice of a child, wakened suddenly, in mortal terror to find itself in the dark.
Merritt, with instant comprehension, said quickly:
"Here, old chap! It's all right I'm here. I won't go off."
Deane's hand groped for his, and clutched it with a grip which made Merritt wince. His voice took up its tale.
"I fought it off, and it twined its legs and arms around mine and I couldn't shake it off. I tried to beat its head on the stones, and it fastened its teeth in my shoulder and held on. Then I tried to bring it up above. 'I let it cling, and held on to it, and ran; but I had lost my bearings and went round and round without getting anywhere. I reached the gallery at last, but it found out what I was doing, and fought—God! how it fought to get away! I tripped it, and we both fell, it trying to break loose, and I trying to hold it down. And then I heard a shout, and steps coming, and it tore away from me, and I lost it."
"Well, come away!" Merritt said soothingly. To himself he said with sternness, "One of us jackasses has got to keep cool!"
Deane must be humoured; must be coaxed into submission. Deane laughed. "You think I'm mad, do you?" he cried. "Well, I'm not. Not yet. I'm—I'm as sane as you are, but I won't be very long. If you had felt it hanging to you, with its skinny arms wound round you, and you not able to see what it was—perhaps you'd be half-mad too."
"It couldn't have been the—the mummy, you know," Merritt said, as one trying to soothe a child to reason. "That's quite absurd. A mummy couldn't possibly be waltzing around like this. It's not in the nature of things"
"Of course it's not in the nature of things!" Deane cut in savagely. "Don't I know that?" His voice wavered; became shriller. "I can't stand it any longer, Merritt. Call me any name you like—I deserve it. But I'm—I'm" He laughed again, crazily, so that Merritt started apprehensively; and suddenly buried his face in his hands and sat with long shudders chasing through him. "I'm done up," he said hoarsely.
"Get up and come with me," Merritt ordered. He caught himself casting a wary eye around; Deane's collapse had unsteadied even his well-strung nerves. "We'll not stay here another day. This place is—is unholy, that's all there is to it. Come away, old man."
He got Deane to his feet, and Dearie clung to him helplessly, begging not to be left alone. Carefully Merritt led him up to the slanting gallery, over the cut-up ground, and to his own tent. Here Deane sat obediently on the bed, turning his white, haunted face always towards the sound of Merritt's comings and goings about the tent. Merritt saw with a sense of shock that his shirt had been torn into ribbons on one side, and on his shoulder was blood and the mark of teeth. He washed the wound and touched it with lunar caustic; and Deane laughed grimly through locked jaws. Then Merritt put him to bed, and lay down himself where Deane might touch him and be instantly convinced of his presence, leaving the lamp still burning.
The tent fell into silence; but Merritt, always wakeful, with every nerve strung taut, felt subtly the tenseness of the figure beside him; knew how Deane, motionless, was holding himself down by sheer force of will; and longed feverishly for daylight when the nightmare of the darkness should end. Once, indeed, he dozed uneasily, only to be wakened by Deane's hands, wet with sweat, playing over his face, and Deane's voice whispering:
"It's out there. I hear it. Merritt, if it comes in here I shall go mad!"
And Merritt, startled into quick consciousness, sprang up and peered through the tent-flap into the night, before he realised the foolishness of his action, and the credulity it implied.
"See it?" Deane asked tensely behind him. "If it's there, I'm going out after it. I can't stand the notion of its going around loose any longer. Suppose it came in here …"
And Merritt paused a perceptible instant before replying. Then he said:
"Nothing out there"
And came back and lay down again. But he did not tell Deane that something had slipped out of his sight, behind a mound into the shadows not a dozen yards away; something, if his eyes did not deceive him, which was not a goat at large, nor a hyena, nor any creature that walked upon four legs. And there was no noise in the camps to indicate that men were stirring there.
Once more there fell a silence. Out of it Deane suddenly spoke again, with a jarring laugh.
"This is a hell of a place, isn't it?" And then, "Oh, boy, boy! If we hadn't scoffed and been quite so confoundedly cocksure of ourselves and our theories!"
Morning broke. Before the sky had wholly lost its veil of night, Merritt called Ibraheem. He came; but if he drew conclusions from the two grey and drawn faces before him, he made no sign. To him Merritt gave certain orders; he ejaculated in profane and joyful English and departed. Fifteen minutes later the camps were all astir. Breakfast was being cooked and eaten, as before, but there was an added hum of preparation and anticipation. The cases containing tablets and antiquities were loaded carefully on camels; the camp dunnage was collected and packed; at noon the tents were struck. All hands helped; four were eagerly ready to do the work of one. The East had conquered; whatever means she had employed to hide the remainder of her treasures from the eyes of the prying West, had done their work. The grave, half-opened, was to be left in peace. Her methods, lawful or unlawful, had sufficed.
At sunset the caravan started. Merritt, his grey face and tired eyes seemingly unchanged, sober, yet with the activity of one who, in authority, must be all things to all men, urged on the advance. Deane, silent, with brooding face and bowed shoulders, sat his horse listlessly, leaving its control to the Arab who held the leading-rein. His reddish hair was touched with grey; the lines of humour about his mouth had given place to other lines, which cast the face into a new mould; he looked aged by many years. The sun, shooting his last level rays across the desert, fell full upon their faces as they set put upon their journey, leaving their work half-done.
The vanguard drew away over the desert, a long string of horses and men and camels. In the last moment of twilight, when the sky was steeped in violet, and the darkness rushed down upon them with swooping wings, Merritt turned in his saddle and looked back at the scene of his work. The excavations, only hastily filled up, gaped like open wounds—wounds which might never heal, but remain always open to the pitiless sun and the driving sand-storms and the holy nights—half-revealing, half-concealing the secrets which lay below. The half-buried corpse of the city that had been, sank again to its broken rest, to lie a while in pitiful nakedness, and be slowly buried once more, in the fulness of time, beneath the shifting sand. Man had come, and man had gone; man had come again, and now had gone, and the earth would reclaim her own. The inscrutable East, brooding and sombre, wise with forgotten evil lore, had conquered.
A sick goat, left behind as worthless, ran a few steps after the caravan, bleating feebly. It stopped in front of one of the mounds, and looked after them, as horses and men moved slowly across the desert. Occasionally, from in front, voices were heard, growing always fainter as the dark string wound its way westward against the stars. But those in the rear were very silent. Merritt, looking back, saw something slipping among the mounds, a black blot against the dusk, and struck the spurs into his horse's flank. Then he remembered that it might have been the goat.
Then the curtain of night shut down, and the stealthy moving thing was blotted from his sight.
