matter; there are too many witnesses."

Then, without more words, he saluted the sacred ring, and we all went
back to Zeu.



CHAPTER V

PHARAOH MAKES TROUBLE

Another six weeks or so had gone by, and at length the character of
the country began to change. At last we were passing out of the endless
desert over which we had travelled for so many hundreds of miles; at
least a thousand, according to our observations and reckonings, which I
checked by those that I had taken upon my eastward journey. Our march,
after the great adventure at the oasis, was singularly devoid of
startling events. Indeed, it had been awful in its monotony, and yet,
oddly enough, not without a certain charm--at any rate for Higgs and
Orme, to whom the experience was new.

Day by day to travel on across an endless sea of sand so remote, so
unvisited that for whole weeks no man, not even a wandering Bedouin of
the desert, crossed our path. Day by day to see the great red sun rise
out of the eastern sands, and, its journey finished, sink into the
western sands. Night by night to watch the moon, the same moon on which
were fixed the million eyes of cities, turning those sands to a silver
sea, or, in that pure air, to observe the constellations by which we
steered our path making their majestic march through space. And yet to
know that this vast region, now so utterly lonesome and desolate, had