The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [29]
He fell silent; gazing at his stern, strong profile, I felt a sympathetic thrill, for he seemed to be looking not across distance but across time itself. No wonder he felt a kinship with the bold men who had braved the wilderness so many centuries before. He too possessed the unique combination of courage and imagination that leads the noblest sons (and daughters) of humanity to risk all for the sake of knowledge!
With all due modesty I believe I may claim that I possess those qualities myself. The bond of affection that unites me and my dear Emerson left me no doubt of the direction in which his thoughts were tending. Into those distances, so deceptively cool and silver-white in the moonlight, had gone Willoughby Forth and his beautiful young bride, never to return.
However, in addition to courage, imagination, et cetera, I also possess a great deal of common sense. For a time I had—I admit it!—entertained a romantic notion of going in search of the missing explorer. But now I had seen with my own eyes the dreadful desolation of the western desert; I had felt the burning heat of the day and the deadly chill of darkness. It was impossible that anyone could have survived in that arid waste for fourteen long years. Willoughby Forth and his wife were dead, and I had no intention of following them, or allowing Emerson to do so.
A shiver passed through my frame. The night air was cold. Our audience had vanished, as silently as shadows. “It is late,” I said softly. “Shall we…”
“By all means.” Emerson jumped to his feet.
At that moment the quiet air was rent by a weird, undulating cry. I started. Emerson laughed and took my hand. “It is only a jackal, Peabody. Hurry. I feel a sudden, urgent need for something only you can supply.”
“Oh, Emerson,” I began—and said no more, because he was pulling me along at such a pace I lost my breath.
Our tents had been placed in a small grove of tamarisk trees. Our boxes and bags were piled around them; theft is almost unknown among these so-called primitive people, and Emerson’s reputation was enough to deter the most hardened of burglars. I was startled, therefore, to see something moving—a slight white shape slipping through the trees with an unpleasantly furtive motion.
Emerson’s night vision is not as keen as mine, and perhaps he was preoccupied with the subject he had mentioned. Not until I shouted, “Halt! Who goes there?” or something to that effect, did he behold the apparition—for so it appeared, pale and silently gliding. As one man (figuratively speaking) we leapt upon it and bore it to the ground.
An all-too-familiar voice exclaimed in plaintive protest. With a loud oath Emerson struggled to his feet and raised the fallen form to its feet. It was Ramses, looking quite ghostly in the white native robe he wore as a nightshirt.
“Are you injured, my boy?” Emerson asked in faltering accents. “Have I hurt you?”
Ramses blinked at him. “Not intentionally, Papa, I am sure. Fortunately the ground is soft. May I venture to ask why you and Mama knocked me down?”
“A reasonable question,” Emerson admitted. “Why did we, Peabody?”
Having had the breath knocked out of me by the fall, I was unable to reply at once. Observing my state, Emerson considerately assisted me to rise; but he took advantage of my enforced silence to continue, “I hope