The Mummy (12 page)

And it had spread as well to the animals on the paddock of the barge lashed alongside the steamer. The camels and horses were restless, to say the least; the former braying and stirring, the latter whinnying, rearing, kicking, bumping against the locked gate between the
Ibis
deck and the barge. The second-class and third-class passengers were already abandoning ship, leaping into the water, swimming for shore.

“We have to find Jonathan!” Evelyn said, as O’Connell embraced her, keeping her away from the shoving, pushing crowd.

“Head for the bow,” O’Connell said, nodding in that direction. “He was in the bar, last I saw him!”

A gunshot cracked the air, notching the wall just over Eveyln’s head, showering them with wood chips; she gasped, and O’Connell pulled her down, then pivoted and returned fire, toward the stern of the ship, where another of those tattooed devils was firing a revolver at them, more wood fragments exploding over and around them.

Then one of the Med-jai’s bullets caught a kerosene lantern, hanging on the wall just above and to their left, and the wall was soon dancing with orange and blue flame.

And the Med-jai was advancing down the deck toward them, training his revolver on them.

“We’re sitting ducks!” O’Connell said, glancing frantically around as he reloaded a revolver. Behind them, toward the bow, the walkway was jammed with panicking passengers, shouting, and coughing with the spreading smoke.

There was nowhere to go, not even into the water, with those flared-nostril, kicking, penned-up animals between them and the shore.

Suddenly O’Connell grinned tightly, and fired his revolver—not toward their assailant, but at the barge beside them!

Evelyn thought him mad till he fired again and she realized what he was doing: shooting the lock off the paddock gate!

The horses, driven even wilder by the gunfire, kicked the gate open and began charging forward, onto the deck, O’Connell grabbing onto that gate and guiding the stampede toward the warrior, who screamed in terror and then in pain as the hooves pounded over him, crushing him, pulping him.

The flames were stampeding, too, racing up and down and across the walls, the upper deck consumed by flames, the awning blazing like a banner in the night.

More passengers were starting to leap into the Nile, swimming for the nearest shore; the way to the bow was no longer clogged by the panicking mob. O’Connell slung his gunnysack over his shoulder and guided Evelyn in that direction.

They were not aware that Jonathan was stranded, port-side, caught by three Americans who blocked the way, standing there like three idiots at a target range, blasting everything in sight, their Egyptologist professor cowering behind them like a frightened schoolboy. Their target—another of those villains, down at the bow—was returning fire, no more successfully than the Americans.

“Bloody wild West show,” Jonathan muttered, pondering whether to go over the side and swim for shore. He didn’t witness the Americans finally succeeding, blowing their quarry over the railing, as Jonathan—still hoping to find his sister—had turned to see if he might go back in the other direction . . .

. . . and a flaming man was advancing upon him!

A flaming man with wild eyes and a hook for a hand raised to do him no bloody good at all . . .

“Duck!” someone cried.

Jonathan ducked and a volley of bullets flew over his head, as the gunfire of the Americans hit the hooked flaming warrior like a firing squad’s barrage, sending him toppling over the railing, into the Nile, where the fire finally went out.

“Wild West indeed!” Jonathan exulted. “Jolly good show!”

But the Americans were looking at him with wide eyes, terrified suddenly, as if Jonathan were one of those dreadful scoundrels, and then the blighters were running off toward the bow like scared puppies, only their footsteps sounded like a bloody stampede of horses.

And then Jonathan realized those were indeed hoofbeats, accompanied by frenzied whinnying, and turned to see the wild beasts pounding toward him, toward the bow, and he ran.

The Americans had turned the corner and leaped from the starboard bow, but Jonathan dove in, from portside, wondering what had become of his poor sister and that American chap.

• • •

On the starboard side, where O’Connell had come upon more passengers diving into the drink, he and Evelyn bumped into their unwanted business partner, the warden of Cairo prison, waiting his turn. O’Connell turned his back to the man.

“Swim to the far bank,” he told Evelyn.

Everyone else was swimming to the near bank.

“Why?” she asked.

“You
can
swim, can’t you?”

“Certainly, if the occasion calls for it.”

Around them were billowing smoke, leaping flames, screams, shouts, pounding hoofbeats, braying, whinnying.

“I’m going to go out on limb here,” he said, “and say the occasion calls for it.”

He picked her up in his arms, as if he were the groom and she the bride and the railing of the ship their threshold.

“Put me down!” she demanded.

He did—pitching her over the side, into the Nile. Then he dove in after her.

The water was freezing; it shocked Evelyn, chilling her body to the bone even as her mind wondered how a desert river could be so blasted cold. She dogpaddled for a moment, gasping for breath, looking about her, seeing all those people, and animals, too, swimming for the near shore.

But O’Connell was stroking toward the far shore.

She followed him, and soon was clambering up onto the riverbank, pleased to see her brother standing there with O’Connell, both of them dripping wet, shivering with cold—but alive.

Her nightgown clung to her, and it did not occur to her that her every physical attribute was on display, at least not until she saw O’Connell standing there, with his mouth open, river water running down his face like drool, as he drank in the sight of her.

Wringing out her nightgown, she said, “Get your mind out of the gutter! We’ve lost everything, you fool! All of our equipment, our tools . . .”

“Not everything,” O’Connell said, and nodded toward his gunnysack at his feet.

Then Warden Hassan came crawling out of the water, like a big fish beaching itself.

“I took your advice about swimming to this bank,” the warden said, grinning greenly.

“I’m so glad you didn’t drown,” O’Connell said.

The flaming
Ibis
was drifting up the Nile with the current, going back the way they’d come, already starting to sink. Across the way, the passengers had made it to shore, and a skinny man in a red fez and black shirt and pants was working with the Americans to round up the horses and camels; the animals were tired and wet and easily tamed.

“We lost the map,” Evelyn told Jonathan, glumly.

“Ah, but we still have this,” her brother said, and withdrew from his shirt the gold puzzle box. “Did I panic? I should say not.”

“Nice going,” O’Connell said to him, and Jonathan beamed at the praise.

“Hey, Rick!” a voice called, echoing across the river.

It was the skinny man in the red fez.

“Who is that dreadful person?” Evelyn asked O’Connell.

“Oh, he’s my pal,” O’Connell said dryly, as dryly as a soaking wet man could manage, anyway. “We go way back—clear to Hamanaptra.”

“Oh, dear. He must be working with the Americans!”

“Yeah. Another legionnaire deserter. Maybe we can talk the warden into hanging him for us.”

Beni was dancing about, calling out, “Hey, Rick! Looks to me like
we
got all the camels and horses!”

This was followed by a peal of obnoxious laughter, as high-pitched as it was unpleasant.

“Maybe so, Beni!” O’Connell called back. “But looks to me like
you
are on the wrong side of the river!”

The skinny man in the fez stopped dancing in midstep. He looked up at the stars and shook his head, and his fists, then started angrily kicking the sand, cursing in several languages, a display both impressive and ridiculous.

“What now?” Evelyn asked O’Connell.

“We try to keep warm till morning. You do know how to cuddle, don’t you?”

She smirked at him, arms folded over her breasts. “When the occasion calls for it.”

 
8
 

Camel Jockeys

T
he endless, sunbaked Sahara stretched out before them, a frying pan for the little camel caravan to sizzle in. O’Connell led the way, with Evelyn just behind him, keeping up nicely, trailed by her brother and the Cairo prison’s absentee warden, Gad Hassan.

O’Connell found the great desert, with its sweeping vistas shimmering in the sunlight, an awe-inspiring, intimidating landscape, not be taken lightly. Right now they were moving over hard, sandy terrain littered with stones—plains not unlike the American Southwest, dotted with the Egyptian version of sagebrush,
vissigia.
But a day ahead awaited seas of fine, shifting sands, with the peaks and valleys of dunes, where at any moment the scorching winds called “siroccos” could sweep in, suffocating man and beast.

They had purchased these four, flea-bitten camels at the trading post of an oasis several miles inland, after their rescue by Bedouins who had seen the fire against the sky. Its date palms thriving along a shallow stream, the oasis was a site of bustling Bedouin commerce, and O’Connell had spent much of the night dickering over the price of the camels, some rudimentary camp equipment, and food supplies (dates, cakes and mint tea).

Jonathan, whose cash supply had survived the swim, complained about the price of the four “mangy beasts,” until O’Connell pointed out that the alternative was to give the Bedouin trader Jonathan’s sister.

“Tempting proposition, what?” Jonathan had said.

And O’Connell had said, “Tempting indeed,” but in reference to the sight of Evelyn Carnahan emerging from a tent wearing her new dress: a beautifully sewn blue Bedouin gown that both flowed over, and clung to, her womanly curves.

At first they had trekked through the green valley of the Nile, breathing in the sweet perfume of grass and clover wafted to them by a bracing desert wind. But only a few hours later, their camels were shuffling over the flat, stone-littered desert floor, ground dry with a centuries-old thirst unquenched by rain.

Jonathan rode well enough; though a trained equestrian, he obviously resented the ungainly gait of the camels.

“Filthy buggers,” he said to O’Connell. “They smell, they bite, they spit. Never seen the like.”

Apparently Jonathan hadn’t noticed the warden, just behind him, gobbling up dates, spitting out their seeds, unheedful of the flies buzzing about his head.

“Well,” Evelyn said, “I think they’re adorable.”

O’Connell figured she was referring to the camels, not the warden and his flies.

Evelyn seemed to be enjoying herself, her skills as a horsewoman serving her well. She jogged up on her beast, bobbing along next to O’Connell, and said, “Don’t mind Jonathan. He’s just a trifle peevish. You see, his bourbon supply is at the bottom of the Nile somewhere.”

O’Connell squinted at the blinding bright sun. “We’re all likely to get ‘peevish,’ before this journey’s over.”

“Well, personally I think this is lovely countryside,” she said, chipper. “Doesn’t it just make you wonder what all the fuss is about our so-called civilization? I mean, here we are in the midst of this barren immensity. Doesn’t it just put humility into your soul, and purge the vanity from your heart? Doesn’t it make you ponder that the great vastness of the desert is like the universe, and we are but tiny grains of sand?”

“I was just going to say that.”

She smiled, her chin crinkling cutely. “You’re making fun of me, Mr. O’Connell.”

“Why don’t you call me ‘Rick’?”

“Why should I?”

“It’s my name.”

She looked down her nose at him, reining back on her camel, to fall back in place behind O’Connell. “But then Mr. O’Connell, I should have to allow you to call me Evelyn.”

He grinned back at her. “Or worse yet—Evy.”

And she had granted him a tiny smile.

Perhaps an hour later, however, she and her camel sidled up alongside O’Connell again, and now her cheery attitude had darkened, her brow tightly troubled.