The Golden One Read Free

assistants in all our endeavours. They assisted us in resuscitating poor Basima and Gargery, our butler, who
had suffered horribly from seasickness the entire time, and Sennia’s cat, who had not been seasick but whose normally bad temper was even more strained by long confinement in a room that was
in constant motion. It would have been impossible to leave the nasty beast behind because Sennia, and, to a lesser degree, Nefret, were the only persons who could control him. Horus was the only
cat with us that year. Seshat, Ramses’s erstwhile companion and guardian, had given up a professional career for domesticity. Perhaps she felt she could now trust Nefret to look after
him.
    Basima brightened as soon as she set foot on dry land, and Gargery, though still unsteady, went off with Daoud to see about the luggage. We had a great deal more than usual this time, for we had
reached a momentous decision. Ordinarily we left for Egypt in the autumn and ended our excavation season before the summer heat set in; but this time we had come for an indefinite stay. Emerson,
who does not fear man nor beast nor demon of the night on his own account, had declared his nerves were unequal to having the rest of us travel back and forth as long as the submarine menace
remained.
    ‘It will get worse before it gets better, mark my words,’ he had declared. ‘I don’t mind people shooting at us or shutting us up in pyramids or trying to brain us with
heavy objects – that is to say, I don’t much like it, but I have become accustomed to it. Having a bloody ship sunk under us by a bloody U-boat is something else again. Call me a coward
if you will . . .’
    None of us did; as Ramses remarked, there was not a man alive who would have dared. I knew how Emerson felt, for I have the same fear of air raids. We had, all of us, been in deadly peril on
more than one occasion, and felt quite comfortable about our ability to deal with ordinary human adversaries. To be sure, there were human beings at the control of aeroplanes and submarines, but
since one never saw them, one was inclined to think of the machine itself as the enemy – a remote mechanical menace.
    Nor for worlds would I have questioned Emerson’s motives in proposing the scheme, but he had always yearned to work year-round in Egypt instead of having to close down the dig in March or
April, sometimes when the excavation was at its most interesting. For the past several seasons our archaeological activities had been even more constrained by family matters and by Ramses’s
undercover work for the War Office. This season Emerson had been awarded the firman for a site in Luxor. It was of all places in Egypt the one we loved best – the scene of several of our
greatest discoveries, our home for many happy years, and the home as well of our dear friends the Vandergelts, who were even then settling in for a long season of excavation.
    There was only one objection I could think of to such a splendid prospect. I do not refer to the blistering heat of Luxor in summer – an objection that would never have occurred to
Emerson, who has the constitution of a camel – but to the fact that we would leave behind for Heaven knew how long our beloved family. The Reader will be cognizant, after my earlier remarks
on the subject, that I was not thinking of the members of my side of the family.
    ‘Nonsense,’ said Emerson, when I mentioned this. ‘You are hopelessly given to melodrama, Peabody. We are not bidding anyone a final farewell, only prolonging the separation a
trifle. Circumstances may change; we will not be completely cut off.’
    He had readily agreed that we must spend Christmas with our loved ones and we did our best to make a merry time of it, for the sake of the children – Sennia, and Lia and David’s
little Dolly, who was just old enough to toddle about. All our surviving nieces and nephews were there: Raddie and his new wife, the widow of a friend who had died in