It could be seen, too, that they were working. Mounds of rock and earth
showed that considerable excavations had been made. While those
gathered round the well were yet gazing at this bewildering and
lifelike picture, the moving ghosts in the sky underwent a change which
enhanced their realism. One squad of soldiers and natives marched off
towards the tents while another took their places. Were it not for the
grotesque size of men and animals and the eerie silence of their
movements it was hard to believe that the eyes were not witnessing
actualities. The thing was fantastic, awe-inspiring, stupendous in
design, but faultlessly true in color and treatment. No artist could
ever hope for such a canvas. Its texture was vapor, its background the
empyrean, and nature's own palette supplied the colors.
And this cloud scene was pitiless in its moral. Two of the onlookers,
Mrs. Haxton and von Kerber, knew exactly what it meant, while others
read its message correctly enough. The expedition was forestalled. The
long voyage and longer march, the vast expenditure, the hardships
inseparable from the journey through the desert, the hopes, the fears,
all the planning and contriving, went for nothing, since Alfieri the
dreamer, Alfieri the fool, had apparently succeeded in locating the
treasure of Sheba.
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