A SERPENTINE REVELATION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XXVII, 31 December 1898, Page 846

A SERPENTINE REVELATION.

BY CHARLES KELSEY GAINES. There were two of them; that made all the trouble. There were plenty of others on the boat, of course. 1 could them plainly enough—twenty at least, grouped about under the awnings or leaning over the rail, oh-oh-ing ah all the old sights on the shore. But he, evidently, could see only those two. They were both beautiful, but. no more alike than a big, sweet, old-fash-ioned rose, and a dainty, velvety, black pansy of the most highly cultured type. The pansy girl was petite, dark, and brilliant. She was from Ameri-a, they said, and very wealthy. She dressed superbly—with a perfect sense of fitness, too, only there was something aggressive and merleiless in the way she made the most of every natural advantage.

The other girl was tall and blonde, and rather quiet. I wondered that she was so quiet. Iler hair was red—intensely red; but its massy coils were oif the rich hue of burnished copper, and glinted in the Egyptian sunshine until you could hardly bear to look at it. You did look at it, however. Just where she came from, or whether she were rich or poor, nobody seemed to know; but she couldn't have been so very poor, or she wouldn't have been a passenger on a luxurious excursion steamer lazily creeping up the Nile, He knew very well that the dark one wanted him—his scalp at least. Everybody saw that; and it seemed not unlikely that she might even be willing to pledge her hand in exchange for it. Whether the fair one wanted anything that he could give he couldn’t tell. Nobody on the boat eould tell; and so everybody guessed. Probably she. too, was guessing, and very likely guessed wrong. It is pretty certain, however, that she guessed differently at different times.

And who was he? Really I don’t know, a. graduate possibly,, from some college football team, for he was a fine athletic fellow, as fresh and wholesome as a young tree after a rain. Everybody liked him too well to blame anybody for loving him—or to forgive any orie for palying tricks with him. He was tall and ruddy, with boyish blue eyes and a great shock of goldbrown hair. But there is no law of nature to prevent a big fair man from falling in love with a keen little brunette, with hair and eyes like the night sky. and the stars that shine out of it —no, not even though she be a shade the older of the two. The laws of nature are much like the laws of man; they do not prevent; they sometimes punish. We had tied up at Luxor, an unsavory dump of mud huts and booths, occupying a fraction of the site of ancient Thebes. Two or three hotels lie along the river front, and behind them rises the banded minaret of the mosque. All through the plain are scattered the half-lmried remains of the monstrous structures of the Pharaohs. which even invade the village; for on its margin the colossal images which still guard the portals of a ruined temple lift their battered faces from a deep excavation and stare blankly down the narrow lanes. But we had already inspected these and had visited Karnak—that astonishing wilderness of huge pylons, towering columns, spirelike obelisks, and tumbled stone, the like of which is not- to be seen elsewhere in all the earth. Christmas was to be devoted to the tombs of the kings on the west shore of the Nile; and in the evening there was to be an Arabian fantasiyeh on the steamer in honour of the festival. A tree, also, was promised with distribution of gifts. We started early in the morning.

crossing the river in barges, the guttural chant of the Moslem boatmen sounding in our ears with most unchristian cadence, as they rowed and poled across the wide shallows. As the barges finally grounded several roils from the bank the Arabs made

ready to wade ashore bearing the passengers on their shoulders. ‘O Heavens!' exclaimed the lady of the raven tresses, shrinking back in theatrical dismay as a burly native approached her. ‘ls that the idea? I can’t. Really. 1 can’t. Oh! make him keep away from me. I’ll go back. It's too much to ask of a lady to trust herself in the hands of one of those filthy fellahin. It is, indeed. It’s an outrage. Isn’t there some other way?’ •All right. Miss Fermor,’ cried the young athlete. ‘l’ll take you over, if you'll allow me.’ He leaped into the water. ‘Oh. thank you,’ she said. ‘lt’s rather unconventional, but there seems to be no alternative.’ She put herself in his strong grasp with no great appearance of unwillingness, and he bore her across—the natives staring in mute astonishment, for no Arab is able to understand how any orfe can bring himself to perform a menial task unless compelled by poverty, and still less how a man can voluntarily make himself a slave of a woman. ‘But all Afrank are mad,’ was their inward comment. Meanwhile another lady stood on the stranded barge with flashing eyes. ‘Wait a minute. Miss Heath, and I’ll take you over, too.’ called back the young man as he deposited his burden unruffled on the bank. ‘lt isn't necessary, Mr Howe,’ she responded; and even as he approached she Hung herself into the arms of the big boatman who stood silently waiting her pleasure. The Oriental received his fair charge with more than customary reverence. ‘She, at least, is not mad,’ he thought, as he placed her tenderly on the beach. ‘She is in

her own country a great lady, wise -»and good. But the others are hashashin.’ A throng of donkey boys with their beasts were awaiting us. nnd a long canter through the broad fields of clover and grain ensued. I noticed that voting Howe drew away from Miss Fermor. and urged his animal to the side of Miss Heath, who was well to the front, riding at a prettv sharp gait. ' : ‘Why not try another little race?’ I beard him suggest. ‘lt’s smooth here, nnd I see you've got a rather strong mount. Mine isn't quite so good, but I'll ehance it. You know I won the last-.’ They were now close together, and I could distinguish no more. There was no race, however, and presently I observed that the young fellow dropped back, looking crestfallen, and devoted himself to Miss Fermor with renewed assiduity. At last we reached the tawny cliffs that girdle the Theban valley like the wall of a great amphitheatre, and struggled up the precipitous path that leads to the tombs that honeycomb its front. Long we wandered, candle in hand, through the dark, painted labyrinths where Egypt's ancient monarchs thought to await the final resurrection. They are waiting now, with uncovered faces, shrunken and blackened almost out of human semblance, in glass cases in the Gizeh museum —a grotesque spectacle for the motley throng of tourists from every clime that is forever filing through its corridors. A most humiliating outcome truly! But it does not concern us here. ‘Ouah!’ grunted Mahmud, the dragonman, as we passed the entrance of a tomb obstructed with rubbish, and I turned to peer into its depths. ‘Nobody permit there. Tab’an—snakes—cober—tultemiyeh.’ I drew back with sated curiosity. Heath kicked a loose stone with nervous petulance. Miss Heath paled 0 little. ‘Why, there may be snakes in the tombs where we are prowling,’ cried Miss Fermor with a dramatic shudder. ‘Oh. no,’ said Mahmud reassuringly. ‘No snakes where we go. Fellahin keep watch.’ Nevertheless, the unexpected often happens. We soon reached a tomb unusually clean and open. but. almost denuded of paintings and of little interest in itself. It is, however, a convenient place to spread a lunch, nnd we made

use of it for that purpose. Cloths were laid down, we seated ourselves upon the ground in a more or less broken circle, and were enjoying a very satisfactory collation. Young Howe, as it chanced, had placed himself in the inner side, so that his back was toward the passage leading in to the darker recesses, and the two ladies who seemed to divide his heart were enseonsed near him. Suddenly one of the native attendants leaped back with a cry and a crash of falling dishes. ‘Tab’an!’ he shouted. ‘Ouah! Nasher!’ We sprang to our feet. And there indeed, so near to Howe that he might have touched it with his hand, rose the head of a huge cobra, its hideous crest dilated with rage, its tongue vibrant. For one pulsing instant the young man seemed paralyzed—and an instant wasted within striking distance of an angry cobra may cost the whole remaining span of life. Yet brief was that instant, it was long enough for a universal outcry; long enough for the black-eyed flirt to fall in a dead faint—no theatricals this time; and it was long enough for something else. Quick as was the stroke of the veuemous reptile, it was met by a quicker stroke from a white jewelled hand that flashed across the dark background with a gleam of gold, yet dealt a blow so sharp and fierce that the monster fell with broken vertebrae, writhing and lashing on the cavern floor, and then she of the flashing eyes and sunlit hair also sank unconscious. There is a marked difference, however, between the woman who faints before and the woman who faints afterward. Clearly the young fellow thought so. He gathered the lovely, lifeless form into his arms and wailed aloud. He seemed to have made a discovery—somewhat late. Meanwhile the snake had received its final quietus, and Mahmud was stooping over it. He now rose and turned toward us. ‘I think lady not much hurt,’ he said. 'Tame cober. Get away from some rifa’i. Snake charmer always pull out teeth. No poison.’ And so, indeed, it was. Happy! 1 think I never was so happy in my life as when I saw that beautiful girl open her eyes. And when she looked up into the eyes of young Howe, and felt the hot drops that still gushed from them falling upon her face, I don’t think she cared much whether she lived or died. She was perfectly satisfied. No Arab was privileged to carry Miss Heath across the shallows on ocr return. Just how Miss Fermor got across I didn’t observe. That evening the fantasiyeh was carried through with great eclat on the steamer. The deck was canopied and brilliantly illuminated. The ghawazi, the best of their kind, fully costumed for European eyes, went through their difficult evolutions with surpassing skill. The jugglers performed apparent miracles. There were two of those present, however, who didn t seem to give them much attention. The Christmas tree, also, was a grand success, though it was neither fir nor spruce, and I doubt whether a tree of the same variety was ever used for such a purpose before. The gifts were mostly provided by the steamship company—boxes of bonbons and various little trinkets, distributed l>v lot —but there were a few that were personal. The greater number of these seemed to go to Miss Heath, and I noticed that a new ring—a twining serpent with an opal in his head—was added to the white, jewelled hand.