Although the heads were somewhat the worse for wear, they were not yet unrecognizable. They included persons of both sexes and varying ages. One large jowly head seemed of more importance than the rest, for it stood on a taller spike.
"I think," said Bessas heavily, "that I know that one. Ask somebody."
Several Kushites approached the travelers to stare. Myron spoke to one and pointed.
"Is that General Puerma?"
"Aye, and his family. I know not why, but the king of a sudden denounced him as a traitor and had the heads off them all before they could mumble a prayer."
Bessas muttered: "My fravashi tells me that we had better go quietly back to the raft and push off."
"Right." As they picked their way back down the path, Myron said: "So the high priest won out after all!"
"So he did. Well, at least we need not divide our treasure with Puerma."
"Poor Puerma! Perhaps he was wrong to oppose progress, but I'm sure he was a more congenial companion than that sour-faced Osorkon."
They cast off. For two days they drifted dreamily down the Nile, stopping at villages to buy food and clothing, because the nights were becoming, cold. The new garments were of thin dyed leather and thick undyed sackcloth. The two girls at once began draping and altering and walking back and forth for each other's inspection, as if they were modeling the latest fashions from Babylon.
Towards evening on the second day, as they drifted along with Labid at the steering oar, Bessas raised his head.
"Something?" said Myron, closely attuned to his friend's moods.
"I hear a sound—a kind of distant roar,"
"Could we be nearing the highest of the cataracts?"
"Mithra, yes! I had forgotten them." Bessas raised his powerful voice. "Every man on the paddles, quickly! Head for the right bank!"
Sluggishly the raft responded to the frantic splashing of its crew. The roar grew louder and the river swifter. The raft plodded shoreward, but the river hurried it along at a rising pace.
Paddling for all he was worth, Myron wondered if, as a final irony, they were to be wrecked in sight of civilization: men, women, beast, and treasure poured over the falls in a tangle of destruction.
"Faster!" gasped Bessas.
"Too late!" wailed an Arab.
"Hold your tongue and work, curse you!"
The shore crept closer. Myron thought: Rhyppapai! We shall make it! Then a glance downstream showed him that the edge of the cataract, where the surface of the river dropped from sight, was nearing fast.
"One more effort, boys!" cried Bessas. "Swing the nose a little upstream, Labid!"
The Pygmies jabbered with terror, while the okapi stood on trembling legs. The roar now drowned out speech. Downstream Myron saw the mist of falls and the fangs of rocks.
One more effort ... Myron reeled with fatigue and almost fell overboard. Evidently they were not going to make it, after all. The bank was still a good three reeds away, and the head of the cataract was hardly farther.
But one could only die trying ... He dug in his paddle again.
The raft started to tilt. The women screamed like hawks.
With an ominous grinding and crackling, the raft struck a rock at the top of the rapid. Men staggered; Phyllis fell down.
"Get everything ashore!" shouted Bessas.
The Bactrian had dropped his paddle and leaped overboard into thigh-deep water. Stooping and bracing his massive legs, Bessas seized the corner of the raft and held it. The raft was precariously balanced on the point of rock. The least swing to one side or the other, and the river would whirl it round and send it spinning down the cataract, and a hundred men could not then hold it. But, gripping the logs with panting lungs and straining muscles, the giant, with the help of the rock, was holding even the invincible river at bay.
"Didn't you hear me? Get everything off! I cannot hold much longer! The water is but knee deep to shore!"
Myron gathered Dzaka into his arms and stepped off the raft. Although the water was, in truth, but knee deep, the swiftness of the current made the footing precarious.
A glance showed that Labid and Umayya were wrestling with the treasure chest.
Myron dropped the Pygmy ashore and hurried back to untie the okapi. The beast balked at leaving the raft until Salimat, ruthlessly practical as always, pricked it in the rump with her dagger. Then it bounded forward and dragged Myron off his feet. He struck the water on his back, went under, but kept a desperate grip on the halter until he could struggle up again.
By the time Myron got ashore with the beast, coughed water out of his lungs, and tethered the creature to a thorn bush, the raft had been cleared. Weapons, the Pygmies' gifts to the Great King, and all the other gear of any worth had been taken ashore.
"Get the poles!" shouted Bessas.
This seemed to Myron like carrying thrift to the point of lunacy, but he knew better than to argue. He and Abras waded out, pulled the poles that upheld the okapi's canopy out of their sockets, and carried them ashore.
Then, at last, Bessas straightened up. With a whoop of "Yâ ahî!" he pushed on his corner of the raft, so that the structure began to swing away from him, pivoting on its point of contact with the rock. It spun slowly around, tore loose from the rock, plunged down tine fanged slope of water, and broke up with loud crashes. Some logs were thrown into the air; others piled up on rocks. Some shot down out of sight on the long journey to Memphis and the sea.
Bessas staggered to shore and sat down, breathing hard. "By Mithra's mittens!" he said at last. "That was a harder battle than when I was surrounded by the Sakai and cut my way out singlehanded." He threw a hairy arm around each wife. "Give me a kiss, you two, and we shall be on our way."
"What are the poles for?" asked Myron.
"To carry Dzaka and the treasure. Help me to rig a litter and a yoke."
A youth of the Banu Khalaf came bouncing into the Fifty-League Oasis on his camel, crying out: "Our people return from the South!"
The sleepy oasis awoke to life. Arabs rushed about, dove for their tents to don their finery, broke into wild gesticulatory arguments, and fell to their knees to thank their gods for the return of their folk.
Soon a procession of people on Kushite asses ambled into the oasis, with the okapi shambling at the tail. The Banu Khalaf looked and asked one another:
"Where, oh where is our shaykh?"
Salimat swung off her mount, embraced her fat uncle Naamil, and climbed a log. With a cry of: "Ya jama'aya!" she launched into a heated oration. She told of the expedition's adventures. Myron, who could follow the language quite well, noted that she credited Bessas not only with the heroic deeds that he had done but with many that he had not, such as strangling a lion to death, felling an elephant with his fist, and putting to flight single-handed an army of cannibals.
When she came to Zayd's death, she had the entire clan in tears. When she told how Zayd had given her to Bessas, adopted Bessas, and nominated him for the next shaykh, the tribesmen looked wonderingly at one another. Then she called upon Bessas.
Bessas hooked his thumbs in his belt, mounted the log, and said in passable Arabic: "Shaykh Zayd—may he rest in peace—told me he wanted me for his successor. It was not my conceit, but peradventure not a bad one. If you want me, I will try to be a good and just chieftain. If not, there shall be no hard feelings. It is up to you. I will not tell you about myself, because Salimat has already done so. Peace be with you!"
The tribe acclaimed Bessas, albeit hesitantly. They seemed not so much pleased or displeased as bewildered by the turn of events. But nobody objected. As they poured forward to kiss Bessas' hands, a figure in Persian dress strolled into view and said: