Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction, English; Quatermain, Allan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Ragnall wished to pay me the value of the remaining loads, which ran
into thousands of pounds, but I would not take the money, saying it was
outside our bargain. Sometimes since then I have thought that I was
foolish, especially when on glancing at that codicil to his will in
after days, the same which he had given me before the battle, I found
that he had set me down for a legacy of £10,000. But in such matters
every man must follow his own instinct.
The White Kendah, an unemotional people especially now when they were
mourning for their lost god and their dead, watched us go without any
demonstration of affection, or even of farewell. Only those priestesses
who had attended upon the person of Lady Ragnall while she played a
divine part among them wept when they parted from her, and uttered
prayers that they might meet her again “in the presence of the Child.”
The pass through the great mountains proved hard to climb, as the
foothold for the camels was bad. But we managed it at last, most of the
way on foot, pausing a little while on their crest to look our last for
ever at the land which we had left, where the Mount of the Child was
still dimly visible. Then we descended their farther slope and entered
the northern desert.
Day after day and week after week we travelled across that endless
desert by a way known to Harût on which water could be found, the only
living things in all its vastness, meeting with no accidents save that
of the sandstorm in which the ivory was lost. I was much alone during
that time, since Harût spoke little and Ragnall and his wife were
wrapped up in each other.
At length, months later, we struck a little port on the Red Sea, of
which I forget the Arab name, a place as hot as the infernal regions.
Shortly afterwards, by great good luck, two trading vessels put in for
water, one bound for Aden, in which I embarked en route for Natal, and
the other for the port of Suez, whence Ragnall and his wife could
travel overland to Alexandria.
Our parting was so hurried at the last, as is often the way after long
fellowship, that beyond mutual thanks and good wishes we said little to
one another. I can see them now standing with their arms about each
other watching me disappear. Concerning their future there is so much
to tell that of it I shall say nothing; at any rate here and now,
except that Lady Ragnall was right. We did not part for the last time.
As I shook old Harût’s hand in farewell he told me that he was going on
to Egypt, and I asked him why.
“Perchance to look for another god, Lord Macumazana,” he answered
gravely, “whom now there is no Jana to destroy. We may speak of that
matter if we should meet again.”
Such are some of the things that I remember about this journey, but to
tell truth I paid little attention to them and many others.
For oh! my heart was sore because of Hans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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