The Hidden Treasure
Husein offered to come if I felt any alarm, but was obviously
relieved when I remarked that, as the landscape would be
clear of brigands for a week after the morning's doings, I
would go alone. I strolled away slowly till I was out of sight:
then I started to hurry as fast as I could, north-west to the wadi
of the treasure.
For twenty minutes the ridge continued its broad and park-
like symmetry, in a solitude so great that six ibex, standing on
their hind legs to reach the lower branches of an oak tree,
were frightened away by my approach. It was two-thirty
when I left my party: two hours was the utmost I could
allow myself before our return, and the men might begin to
search for me sooner: and yet no wadi was in sight.
I was beginning to doubt the map after all, when a cleft
appeared descending on the northern side of the hill to the
river, and therefore invisible from the south as we came up.
Here, by rights, should be the treasure. A black rock should
overhang on the left side as one climbed down; four wan
trees and an oak should make a group before it; and between
the rock and the trees I ought to find die entrance to the cave.
Partly with the haste of my walk, and partly with excite-
ment, my heart was now beating, my knees and hands shaking.
I began to descend in a great hurry, pausing at every group
of rocks to see if the cave could be there. The ravine, from
a shallow grassy basin, quickly turned into a sort of funnel
with, overhanging rocks, a series of small granite amphi-
theatres descending in tiers, and every one of them capable
of containing half a dozen caves or more. And trees, wan
and oak, grew everywhere. In five minutes I had descended
what would take me four times as long to climb up again.
And the ravine grew more and more difficult. Black rocks
were all about it, mocking me with little openings of possible
caves.