All other sounds may cease way out in the East; birds may nest and humans sleep; but the sound of the drum faileth never.

It is a message, a love-song, a lament, a prayer, and you hear it in the desert as in the jungle, in the temple as in the courtyard behind the hovel.

It is not a wise thing to listen to its call, for it can lead you off the beaten track, or over the precipice or out into the desert to die.

It caught the girl’s feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple.  Yet there was no smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a leaf in the wind, in and out of the columns and out into the light of the moon, and through the granite door onto the terrace where once had been planted the incense trees which had come with the spoil from Punt to perfume the air to the glory of Ra Hamarkhis.

The rolling of the drum stopped short, and Damaris came to herself with a start as she stood under the moon, then clasped her hands upon her thudding heart as she watched a man with two great shaggy dogs walk across the terrace towards her.

Save for the Mohammedan head-covering he was an Englishman, and he spoke in his mother’s tongue to the girl he loved and whom he had watched since her arrival with the jostling, laughing crowd.

“The gods of the temple are good to me,” he said simply.  “I prayed that I might watch you dance upon the incense terrace of their house; they have answered my prayer.  Come.”

As they passed across the terrace to the hall of columns which is the vestibule of the chapel of the god of Death, he told her how he had watched and waited, meaning no discourtesy, until she should visit the temple amongst the limestone hills.

“Where are we going?”

Damaris spoke more to break the spell which seemed to hold her than to know the end of the walk across the sand.  Bewitched by the moon and the terrific power of old Egypt, she would have followed the man blindly, fearing no hurt, even into the inner-most sanctuary which, hewn out of the rock itself, lies at the extreme end of the temple.

“To the Shrine of Anubis the god of Death, where I would show you the Hawk of Northern Egypt upon the wall.”

They passed between the great columns and up the flight of steps to the doorway beyond which lie the chambers of the Shrine, and there Hugh Carden Ali took the girl’s hand as he called her name aloud, until the walls or the spirits of the gods thundered back the echo.

“The gods introduced the kings of Egypt to the sanctuary.  Anubis god of Death, as you will see by the painting upon the wall, led the great queen to the door,” he said in reply to a whispered question from Damaris.  “I would not that the shadow of death touched the hem of your raiment.  I called your name aloud so that the gods might hear. . . .  Do I believe in such strange things?  How can one say, I believe, or do not believe, in this land which is in the grip of a dead past which is not dead?”