CHAPTER V
THE TOMB OF UR-GUR
Charles Thesiger Smith was not one of the romantic, imaginative orderof men. Even if he had been, the speed at which he travelled over theBosphorus gave scant opportunity for observation of the scenes passingbelow. He had no eye for the tramps, laden with grain from Odessa,coming down from the Black Sea; for the vessels of ancient shape andbuild, such as the Argonauts might have sailed in when questing forthe Golden Fleece; for the graceful caiques rowed by boatmen inzouaves of crimson and gold, in the sterns of which the flower ofCircassian beauty in gossamer veils reclined on divans and carpetsfrom the most famous looms of Persia and Bokhara. These visionstouched him not: he was crossing into Asia Minor, a country of whichhe knew nothing, and his attention was divided between the countryahead and the map with which Barracombe had nefariously provided him.
The next stage of his journey, the first place where a fresh supply ofpetrol awaited him, was Karachi, in the north-west corner of India. Itwas distant about 2,500 miles. A gallon of petrol would carry him forforty-five miles, and his tank had a capacity of eighty gallons, sothat with good luck he would not need to replenish it until he reachedKarachi. Though he hoped that his own endurance and the engine's wouldstand the strain of the whole distance without stopping, he had chosenhis course so that, if he felt the necessity of alighting for briefintervals, he might at least find pleasant country and amicablepeople.
His aim was to cross the Turkish provinces in Asia and strike thePersian Gulf, a slightly longer route than if he had gone throughcentral Persia, but having the great advantage of affording a possiblehalf-way house at Bagdad, Basra, or Bushire, in each of which towns hewould almost certainly find Europeans. It had the further advantagethat, when he had once sighted the Gulf, he would have no anxietyabout the accuracy of his course, since by keeping generally to thecoastline of Persia and Baluchistan he could not fail to arrive atKarachi. It was a great thing to be independent of nauticalobservations, for as he approached the shores of India it might bedifficult to take his bearings by his instruments, this being theseason of the monsoon.
When he left Constantinople his anemometer indicated a velocity ofeighteen miles in the south-west wind, which, as he was steeringsouth-east, was partly in his favour. One of the disabilities whichhe, in common with all airmen, suffered, was the impossibility ofascertaining the velocity of the wind when he was fairly afloat. Hehad to make allowance for it by sheer guesswork, unless he wasprepared to slow down or even to alight. He had reckoned that, evenwith the slight assistance of the wind, he could hardly hope to reachthe head of the Persian Gulf before six o'clock, which would be pastnine by the sun; but he thought he might reasonably expect to reachthe Euphrates before sunset; and since the map assured him that thatriver ran a fairly direct course to the Gulf, he might follow itwithout much difficulty if the night proved clear, and so assurehimself that he was not going astray.
The country over which he was now flying was hilly, and he kept at afairly high altitude. The map showed him that the great Taurus rangelay between him and the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean. Withinan hour and a half after leaving Constantinople he came in sight ofits huge bleak masses stretching away to right and left, but still ahundred miles or more distant, although, on the right, spurs of theCilician part of the range jutted out much nearer to him. On theright, too, he descried from his great height a broad and glitteringexpanse of water, which the map named Lake Beishehr. Making for thegap in the mountains near the Cilician coast he found himself passingover a comparatively low country, and soon afterwards descried theblue waters of the Mediterranean and the island of Cyprus rising outof it a hundred miles away.
Setting now a more easterly course, he passed over an ironbound coast,its perpendicular cliffs fringed with dwarf pines; and then over alarge town which could be none other than Antioch. Half-an-hour morebrought him within sight of another city, doubtless Aleppo. He stillsteered almost due east, though a point or two southward would be moredirect, because he wished to avoid the Syrian desert; a breakdown insuch a barren tract of country would mean a fatal delay. Soonafterwards he reached a broad full river, flowing rapidly betweenverdant banks.
"The Euphrates," he shouted to Rodier.
"Ah! I wish we had time for a swim," replied the man.
For some time Smith followed the general course of the river, avoidingthe windings. Severely practical as he was, he could not pass throughthis seat of ancient civilizations without letting his mind run backover centuries of time, recalling the names of Sennacherib, Cyrus andAlexander; and how Cyrus had not shrunk from drying up the bed ofthis very river in his operations against Babylon. On the ground overwhich he now flew mighty armies had fought, kingdoms had been lost andwon, four or five thousand years ago. The passage of so modern a thingas an aeroplane seemed almost a desecration of the spirit ofantiquity, an insult to the _genius loci_.
Hitherto the weather and the conditions for flying had been perfect.The wind had dropped, the sun shone brilliantly, but its heat wastempered to the airmen by the very rapidity of their flight. Atlength, however, about two hours before sunset, Smith noticed astrange wobbling of the compass needle. It swung this way and thatwith rapid gyrations, its movements becoming more violent everymoment. Suddenly the aeroplane reeled; the sky seemed to become blackin one instant; there was a vivid flash of lightning, followed by atremendous thunder-clap and a flood of rain.
Smith was desperately perturbed. He had run straight into an electricstorm. It was hopeless to attempt to make headway against it; thestrain upon the planes would certainly prove more than they couldstand. He had already slackened speed and planed downwards, so as tobe able to alight if he must, with the result that the machine becamemore subject to vertical eddies of the wind, that continually alteredits elevation, now hurling it aloft, now plunging it as it were intoan abyss. Once or twice he tried to rise above the storm, butabandoned the attempt when he saw how great an additional strain itplaced upon the planes. It seemed safer to keep the engine goingsteadily and make no attempt to steer. He was no longer over theriver, and the ground below was comparatively flat, presenting many aclear spot suitable for alighting; but with the wind blowing ahurricane a descent might well prove disastrous. The worst accidentshe had suffered in the early days of his air-sailing had alwayshappened near the ground, when there was no way on the machine tocounteract the force of the wind.
All that he could do was to cling on and do his best by quickmanipulation of the levers to keep the machine steady. After fifteenvery uncomfortable and, indeed, alarming minutes, the violence of thewind abated, and the rain became intermittent, instead of pouring downin a constant flood. The compass was oscillating less jumpily, and itwas now possible to see some distance ahead. Owing to theextraordinary behaviour of the compass, the baffling gusts of wind,and the necessity of keeping his whole attention fixed on themachinery, he had lost all idea of direction and even of time, and hebegan to be anxious lest darkness should overtake him before he hadregained his course. But guessing that the area of the storm was ofsmall extent, he hoped to run out of it, and increased his speed,expecting in a few minutes to discover the Euphrates again, when allwould be well.
Unhappily, though the wind had dropped, the sky became blacker thanever, and another deluge of rain fell, so densely that at a distanceof a few yards it seemed to be an opaque wall. Coming to theconclusion that he had better take shelter until he could at least seehis way, he planed downwards, calling to Rodier to keep a sharplook-out for a landing place. Suddenly, in the midst of the downpour,a huge dark shape loomed up ahead, appearing to rise almostperpendicularly above the plain. For a few seconds it seemed to Smiththat he was dashing into a solid wall of rock. Luckily he had checkedthe speed of the engine. He now stopped it altogether, but theaeroplane glided on by its impetus, and he felt, with a sinking of theheart, that nothing could save it.
All at once the mass in front seemed to open. Instinctively Smithtouched his steering lever; the aer
oplane glided into the fissure; intwo or three seconds there was a bump and a jolt; it had come to astop, and was resting on an apparently solid bottom.
Monsieur Alphonse Marie de Montause, a distinguished member of theAcademy of Inscriptions, a pillar of the Societe d'Histoirediplomatique, and a foreign member of the Royal Society, had been fornearly a year engaged at Nimrud in the work nearest to his heart, thework of excavation. It was a labour of love for which he was veryjealous. He believed it was his mission to reveal to an astonishedworld the long-buried secrets of ancient civilizations; he could notbear a rival near the throne of archaeological eminence; and in thisexclusive attitude of mind he had undertaken this expedition withoutthe companionship of a fellow-countryman, or even of any white man,devoting himself to his patient and laborious toil, assisted only byan Egyptian cook, a number of Arab labourers, and such natives ofBabylonia as he had attracted to his service by the promise,faithfully kept, of good and regular pay.
His excavations had been, on the whole, disappointing. He hadunearthed specimens of pottery and metal-work, tradesmen's tablets ofaccounts, seals, bas-reliefs, differing little from those which couldbe found in many a European museum; but he had not for many monthslighted upon any unique object, such as would open a new page in thehistory of archaeological research, and make Europe ring with his name.
His money was nearly all expended; his permit from the OttomanGovernment was on the point of expiring; he was sadly contemplatingthe necessity of leaving this barren field and returning to France;he had, indeed, already despatched a portion of his caravan to beginits long journey to the coast, remaining with a few men to finish theexcavation of the _tell_--the mound covering the remains of aBabylonish city--on which he was engaged, in the hope of discoveringsomething of value, even at the eleventh hour. He had almost completedit, and he could easily hurry after the slow-moving caravan, andovertake it in a day or two.
One Friday, to his great joy, he came across, in the wall of the_tell_, a large inscribed mass of brickwork, weighing, perhaps,half-a-ton, which, from the cursory inspection he was able to make ofit in the semi-darkness, he believed might prove sufficiently valuableto compensate all the disappointments of the weary months. In hisenthusiasm he had no more thought of his caravan, and though aterrific thunderstorm burst over the place just as his men weregetting into position the rude derrick by means of which they wouldlower the masonry into the trench cut in the side of the _tell,_ hisardour would suffer no intermission in the work. It is true that inthe trench they were in some measure protected from the storm. Thelashings had been fixed on the brickwork under his carefulsuperintendence; the men were on the point of hauling on the ropes,when a thing of monstrous size and uncouth shape glided silently intothe opening of the trench, and came to rest there.
Instantly the men gave a howl of terror, released the ropes, and tookto their heels. Monsieur Alphonse Marie de Montause was left alone.
Remembering that he was an explorer, an enthusiast, and a Frenchman,the reader will hardly need to be told that Monsieur de Montause wasbeside himself with fury. The dropping of the ropes had caused themasonry to fall against one of the feet of the derrick, and it camedown with a crash. But this was not the worst. In the semi-darkness,the nature of the intruder could not have been clear to Monsieur deMontause; but he heard a voice calling in some unknown tongue; somehuman being had dared to interlope upon his peculiar domain; and thewrathful explorer did only what might have been expected of him: hebegan to pour forth a torrent of very violent reproof and objurgation,to which the sober English tongue can do scant justice.
"Ah! scelerats!" he cried. "What do you mean? De quoimelez-vous? You are rogues: you are trespassers. Know you not thatI--oui, moi qui vous parle--have alone the right of entry into this_tell_? Has not the administration of the French Republic arranged it?Allez-vous-en, allez-vous-en, coquins, scelerats!"
"Mais, monsieur--" began Rodier, stepping out of the car.
The sound of his own language only added fuel to Monsieur deMontause's wrath. Had some rival appeared on the scene at the verymoment when he saw the crown of his long toil? Had some overeagercompetitor obtained a permit, come before his time, and arrived toenter upon the fruits of his predecessor's labours and rob him of halfhis glory? "Mais, monsieur," said Rodier, but the explorer fairlyshrieked him to silence, approached him, smote one fist with theother, and hurled abuse at him with such incoherent volubility thatSmith, whose French was pretty good, could not make out a word of it,and held on to the levers in helpless laughter.
"Mais, monsieur, je vous assure--" began Rodier again, when he thoughthe saw a chance; but the explorer shouted "Retirez-vous! J'insiste quevous vous en lliez, tout de suite, tout de suite!" And then he beganover again, abuse, recrimination, expostulation, entreaty, pouring infull tide from his trembling lips. More than once Rodier tried to stemthe flood, but finding that it only ran the faster, he resignedhimself to listen in silence, and stood looking mournfully at hisireful fellow-countryman until he at length was forced to stop fromsheer lack of breath.
"Mais, monsieur," Rodier's voice was very conciliatory--"I assure youthat our visit is purely accidental. My friend and myself desire onlytoo much to quit the scene. But you perceive, monsieur, that ouraeroplane--"
"Ah, bah! aeroplane! What have I to do with aeroplanes? You interruptmy work, I say: the aeroplane is a thing of the present; I have to doonly with the past; there were no aeroplanes in Babylonia. Once more Idemand that you withdraw, you and your aeroplane, and leave me topursue my work in tranquillity."
"Mais, monsieur, il s'agit precisement de ca! Withdraw: yes,certainly, at the quickest possible: but how? You perceive that ouraeroplane is so placed that one cannot extricate it withoutassistance. If monsieur will be so good as to lend us hisdistinguished help, so that we may remove it from this hole--"
"Hole! Mille diables! It is a trench; a trench excavated with manypains in this _tell_. As for assistance, I give you none, noneabsolutely. You brought your aeroplane here without assistance: thenremove it equally without assistance; immediately: already you wastetoo much time."
"Mais, monsieur, our mission is of life or death."
"N'importe, n'importe. I tell you I am quite unmoved. No interest issuperior to that of science--the science of archaeology. I tell you Ihave just made a discovery of the highest importance. I have but ashort time left; you, you and your ridiculous machine, have scaredaway my imbeciles of workmen; they will not return until you have goneaway; the leg of my derrick is smashed; I demand, I beseech, Iimplore--"
"Pardon, monsieur," said Smith, coming forward, and courteouslysaluting the stout, spectacled little Frenchman, whom he could justsee in the growing darkness. "We regret extremely having put you tothis trouble and inconvenience, and I assure you that but for thestorm we should never have dreamed of entering here, and interruptingthe great work on which you are engaged."
Smith's quiet voice and slow, measured utterance made an instantimpression. A man can hardly rave against a person who remains calm.Moreover, the Frenchman was mollified by the speaker's evidentappreciation of the value of his work.
"Eh bien, monsieur?" he said courteously.
"I am a seaman, monsieur," proceeded Smith; "my friend here is anengineer, and between us I have no doubt that we can repair the leg ofyour derrick and assist you to place the masonry where you will. Allthat I would ask is that you in return will help us to remove ouraeroplane from your trench into the open plain."
"Certainly, certainly; with much pleasure," said the Frenchmaneagerly; "I will light my lantern, so that we may see what we areabout."
Smith and Rodier stripped off their drenched coats, and by the lightof Monsieur de Montause's lantern soon spliced up the broken leg ofthe derrick, set the contrivance in a stable position, and lowered themass of brickwork to the spot the explorer pointed out. It was nosooner safely settled than Monsieur de Montause, oblivious ofeverything else, bent over it, and, holding one of the lanterns closeto the inscription, be
gan to pore over the fascinating hieroglyphics.Smith could not help smiling at the little man's enthusiasm: but itwas necessary to remind him of his share of the compact.
"Ah, oui, oui," he said impatiently; "in a few moments. This is amagnificent discovery, monsieur; your aeroplane is completelyuninteresting to me. This is nothing less than a portion of the tombof Ur-Gur; see, the inscription: 'The tomb of Ur-Gur, the powerfulchampion, King of Ur, King of Shumer and Akkad, builder of the wall ofNippur to Bel, the king of the lands.' This was written nearly fivethousand years ago; what is the aeroplane, a thing of yesterday, incomparison with this glorious relic of antiquity?"
"Precisely, monsieur; beside it the aeroplane sinks intoinsignificance; yet, as a man of honour--"
"Ah, oui!" cried the Frenchman, starting up. "Let us be quick, then;you take one end, I the other. You push, I pull; voila!"
"It is perhaps not so simple, monsieur," said Smith; "we must firstsee that there is no obstruction, and then if you could persuade someof your men to come back, we should be able to remove the aeroplanemore quickly. I fear we could hardly do it alone."
Monsieur de Montause was so anxious to get rid of his visitors that heassented eagerly to this course. Four or five of the men, drawn backby the light of the lantern, were hovering at the end of the trench;the explorer hailed them, and assuring them that they would suffer noharm, persuaded, them to lend a hand. Rodier, meanwhile, had walkedthrough the trench to see that the course was clear, and shoved asidewith little ceremony some of the objects Monsieur de Montause hadunearthed. With the aid of the Frenchman himself and his men theaeroplane was carefully dragged out into the open.
"It is done. Adieu, messieurs," said Monsieur de Montause. Then,turning to his men: "As for you, imbeciles, I have no more need of youat present. Go and eat your supper. I shall eat nothing until I havedeciphered the whole of the inscription."
"One moment, monsieur," said Smith; "we were driven out of our courseby the storm, and I am not certain of our whereabouts. Can you tell methe latitude and longitude of this place?"
"Ah, no. I am not a geographer. The surface of the globe: bah! It isthe rind of the orange, it is the shell of the nut; I seek the juice,the kernel. But I can tell you this: We are not far from the left bankof the Tigris, near its confluence with the Zab, and about a hundredkilometres from the ruins of Nineveh. Adieu, monsieur."
The two airmen resumed their coats, switched on their searchlight, andmade a rapid examination of the engine, which appeared to havesuffered no injury: then took their places. When the sparking began,and noisome smoke poured from the exhaust, the workmen again yelled,but as the machine, after a short run, sailed noisily into the air,they fell prostrate in utter consternation.