The ground appeared to be weathered clay, perfectly level, covered with a finger-deep layer of wind-dropped dust. It would rise in a cloud under my mare’s hoofs, and blowing back, would fill her tracks as fast as she made them. The vision of my being lost on this awful empty tableland under the dying moon chilled my soul, there was no pity in my heart for the wanderers in torment, and I hated myself—this little shell of me that the dogs of the wind bit—for leaving the encampment. Yet savagely spurring the good beast, I rode wildly toward the sound.
If this were a feat of will, it was the last one of the episode. None was needed to ride on long after my bestormed brain told me I should have reached my goal; the reins seemed no longer in my hands. When the clamor suddenly ceased and the silence held and held as in an evil dream, I tried to think that despair had run down the line of men and beasts as I had seen it more than once on our own journeys, throttling the heart and throat of every one. Then it broke with the howling of a curse in the Turki-Persian tongue. It rose just beyond the dim rim of my sight.
I hallooed with all my might. In the next few seconds vague blotches of darkness on the pallid plain began to take shape as loaded camels frozen into immobility by my shout. Men stood beside them. Horsemen wheeled toward me. A captain came riding fast.
“Who are you?” he cried, his voice shaking with hope.
“I’m Marco Polo, a Venetian, from a caravan resting not a mile from here.”
“Are you on the road?”
“Yes.”
“Is there water?”
“There’ll be a mouthful apiece for the people. If need be, I’ll kill one of my camels for its water sack.”
“You’ll not lose by it, I’ll promise that. But give me one assurance, before God—remembering I’m half-crazed by terror and privation, and dare not believe my own eyes and ears. If you are a Venetian, you are a Christian. I am Baram, a Mussulman of Bukhara. We have rich lading—what use to try to hide it?—and we will pay well for any help you give us, and sell you what you desire without a dinar’s profit, and give good gifts besides. But swear before your God you’ll not use our weakness to rob and murder us!”
All this came forth in one shaking high-pitched burst.
“We travel under the safe-conduct of the Great Khan.”
“Allah! Allah! Allah!”
With hardly a word more, Baram turned and shouted to his followers. He fell in beside me as I turned back toward the encampment, with the whole caravan noisy in our wake. The trail of footprints was soon erased by dust, and for half the distance I had only the moon, sicker than her wont in the dust pall, to set my course on, and the beasts could not smell the water because it was down the wind. Then we caught a glimmer from an invisible moving torch. Soon the flame itself gleamed just below the rim. We rode on in silence until I made out the figure of a horseman crossing a tall sand dune. His course was a short cut from the resting ground to the place I had found the caravan.
“It’s Nicolo Polo, master of our caravan,” I told my companion.
“I thought you were the master.”
“No, I’m Marco Polo, a merchant of the company.”
“He’s looking for us too. But you are sure that he’ll treat us——”
“You need have no fear.”
Baram spurred his horse and rode ahead. The moonlight showed him clapping his hand to his forehead and his heart, a Mohammedan greeting to Nicolo that in his distress he had forgotten to give me.
“God be with you, friend,” Nicolo answered in his rich voice.
Bright pride in my victory, strangely mixed with the dark pride of concealing every shadow cast upon it, would not let me tarry to hear the talk between the two captains. As Nicolo fixed his eyes on me, I barely drew my rein.
“I promised this man that there would be a little water for him and all his people,” I said. “If it’s necessary to kill one of my camels——”
“It won’t be necessary. I have a skin bag full in my stores, and we’re only one march from one of the best wells on the road.”
I half expected him to offer some explanation for not thinking of this before, but I might have known he would not.
“By the way, Marco, your ear was better than mine in tracing the sound.”
“You might explain it by the ear for music of Antonello the Jongleur.”
“I do so, to my great regret.”
Nicolo turned to speak to Baram. I rode on to my pavilion. There, standing in the shadow, I watched the laden camels file stolidly down to our camp ground. Their drivers unloaded and picketed them; pavilions were raised; our sleepers were up and scurrying; shouts rang out. Nicolo said that there was not enough tamarisk in the camp to make a torch, but several flared in the pallid moonlight with a rigadoon of shadows. Presently it showed Ali, Nicolo’s servant, passing a dipper among the gaunt, bearded, dust-blackened newcomers, every one of whom blessed Allah ere he wet his lips. I would lie down, I thought, and go to sleep, and dream.
My will to do so failed until it was suddenly too late. A Persian lamp with the soft shine of burning palm oil came into view from behind the pavilion. It disclosed Nicolo’s steady hand and young, princely face.
“I hoped I’d find you awake,” he said. “Baram the caravan master has sent you a gift of great price. It’s a token of his gratitude for your deed tonight.”
Nicolo held out his palm bathed in amber light from the lamp’s shining on a saffron-colored jewel nearly as big as a walnut, with a score or more facets. I recognized it as a yellow sapphire, not as valuable carat for carat as slate-blue or sea-blue sapphires or those with shining stars, and of course not to be measured with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, but because of its great size worth, I believed, about a thousand gold dinars.
“It’s a noble gift,” I said, “and I accept it with many thanks.”
“Perhaps you don’t know that yellow jewels are in great esteem in Cathay—it’s a sacred color.”
“I didn’t know it, signor.”
“Baram gave me a jewel of the same color, which I’ll show you presently. They were the two most valuable single objects that he possesses, he said, although he thought mine had deteriorated during the march. For the moment it’s not much to look at—one could hardly imagine its being worth so much ready money. But in the first place, I don’t look for long teeth in a gift horse, and in the second, I think he disprizes it unduly. In the end it may be worth more than the sapphire, which doesn’t seem quite fair.”
“You’re the master of the caravan,” I said with stiff lips.
“I agree it might have been in the way of cumsha instead of gratitude—he wants us to buy all his China-bound goods, so he can make a quick return to Bukhara. He thinks his narrow escape was warning from very Allah. Actually, of course, he’s lost his nerve. But he needn’t have had the least concern as to selling his stuffs. He’s an epicure and I don’t doubt he expected to sell directly or indirectly to the Khan. His whole lading will be offered us.”
I nodded and waited.
“I think you’re entitled to first choice. That will more than recompense you if my gift proves more valuable than yours. Maffeo can have second choice, and I’ll be content with what remains. How much money have you available in gold and silver, jewels apart from this one, jade, and precious stuffs of small weight?”
“About three thousand dinars.”
“I’d suggest you venture a third or a half. He’s not eager to sell his jewels—he has only a few of the sort he gave me, and not as fine.” Nicolo gave me a pleasant smile. “But he offers us gold and silver brocade, embroideries, Samarkand of the finest, ermine and sables, bejeweled scimitars and daggers of Kerman steel, and Arabian medicines. Also a lot of ten Badakhshan horses, skin and bone but still sound.”