Uncle Catullus lay under the awning of the thalamegus and asked Cora
to come and sit by him:
"Sing and play me some cheerful songs, Cora," he said. "Be kind to
me even though I be not your master. For I feel bored here, on this
Nile boat, at Memphis. I have been bored ever since Lucius went to
the oracle of Ammon, through the barren desert. What an idea, what
a mad idea! They have been gone five days now; they will probably
arrive to-morrow.... I am bored, Cora, I am horribly bored. Egypt
will be the death of me! First I am saturated with new impressions,
like a sponge with water, and then Lucius abandons me to unlimited
boredom. He's an egoist; he never thinks of his old uncle.... Cora,
be amiable to me and sing and play me some cheerful songs, won't you?"
This was the burden of Uncle Catullus' complaint. As he said,
Lucius had gone through the desert to the oracle of Ammon, with
Caleb, Thrasyllus and Tarrar, with guards and drivers, and Uncle
Catullus had remained behind on the barge, under the care of Rufus
the under-steward, with all the other slaves, male and female.
A track led from Memphis through the desert to the oasis where
the oracle of Ammon resided. It ran through the sands marked with
granite posts, like small obelisks, nothing more. It was a chain of
sign-posts rather than a road. The summer sun beat down implacably
upon the scorching sands, which lay blown against the rocky range of
mountains along the south of which the road was traced.
The caravan had now been travelling five days through the
sands. Lucius, on an elephant, lay in a spacious, square litter, with
blue and yellow curtains to keep out the light, and had expressed a
wish that Thrasyllus should sit by his side. Caleb, swathed in white
muslin, which left only his gleaming eyes and flashing teeth visible,
sat upon a powerful dromedary, on leather cushions, under a great
parasol fixed to his saddle-gear, and occasionally swaying gently to
and fro. Elephant and dromedary were surrounded with long fly-nets,
from which dangled many-coloured fringes. Tarrar, also swathed in
linens of many colours, squatted like a little monkey on a camel
and defied the sun of his native land, the glare of his Libyan
desert. The guards and drivers rode mules; and ponies carried the
travellers' luggage, their tents, their provisions and their still
swollen water-bags.
For five days now they had been marching on their monotonous journey
through the desert. At break of day the caravan started; at noon a
halt was made under the tents; in the evening the procession moved on
again, until darkness and fatigue urged the travellers to rest. It
was an endless journey. It seemed as if the goal would never be
reached. It was an unrelieved alternation of gold-glittering sands,
under implacable, blazing skies, and fading sands, under endless skies
of nocturnal blue. It was an unrelieved alternation of rosy sunrises
and orange sunsets. It was an unrelieved alternation of the peeping,
the radiant awakening and the duller waning of the stars. Sometimes
the south wind rose and blew for hours. Silently the caravan plodded
through the rising whirls of sand. Sometimes the faint track of posts
seemed to have disappeared; the obelisks stood aslant, sunk into the
sands. A melancholy descended over man and beast.
The midday meal, taken under a tent, Lucius shared with Thrasyllus,
Caleb, and Tarrar. It consisted always of broiled mutton, dates and an
unvarying ration of water, with a dash of palm-wine in it. Strange to
say, Lucius was almost cheerful and declared that Uncle Catullus had
done well not to accompany them to the oasis of Ammon, as such meals
would certainly have been a sore trial for him. And, strange again,
Caleb, usually so merry and cheerful, became despondent and sad. At
least, he exclaimed, now that Lucius began to jest:
"I wonder, my lord, that you can be gay in these god-forsaken Libyan
sands! They weigh upon my chest, O my lord, as though I were already
sinking under them, like the obelisks and sphinxes! O my noble lord,
O my princely lord, what a desperate idea of your lordship's to wish
to undertake this awful journey, to wish to go to the oracle of Ammon,
which is quite ruined and deserted, whither perhaps for two centuries
past no noble lord like your lordship has ever travelled! O my lord,
O my lord, if only this horrible journey ends well! The drivers and
guards are not yet complaining; there is still water in the bags
for men and beasts; we have not yet experienced any other adventure
beyond the appearance of one lion, who stood proudly on the point
of a rock but fled when he saw my burnous flapping in the distance,
while our hunters tried to shoot him with poisoned arrows. But my
lord, if more lions appear, or if robbers suddenly come in sight,
or if those terrible ghosts loom up: the sphinxes with the human
heads and the giants with faces of animals, which, people say,
fill the desert; or if we meet the giant snake, who has a forest
growing on his back and who makes his nest underground and who,
when hungry, bores his terrible body right through the earth's flat
disk and swallows towns and villages, O my lord, then I doubt, alas,
whether my flapping burnous and the bows and arrows of our hunters
and guards will save us! O my lord, O my gracious, noble lord, shall
I ever see Saba again, my dear country blessed by the gods!"
Thus ran Caleb's complaint; but Lucius said:
"Tarrar is seeing his country again, aren't you, Tarrar?"
"Yes, my lord," said the little slave, "but I come from the sea-coast,
not from the desert, and I was not happy in my country and my parents
gave me no food to eat and the country is not beautiful either, as
Saba is, and I would much rather be with you, in Rome, for that is
the loveliest country in the world, and in your house, which is the
loveliest house in the world."
After the midday rest the journey was resumed and the sun sank slowly:
the sky was like a glowing copper dome, which dulled and cooled;
and the stars came out; and over the rocky crests that rose on ridges
along the road appeared the flying figures of wild animals. Startling
roars sounded in the night, to the great alarm of Caleb, who said that
he did not mind lions or hyenas but that he was afraid of the giants
and the colossal snake and the ghosts of the desert, which lured
travellers to the magic cities which are nothing but hallucination,
enchantment and destruction. And all the drivers and guards, sturdy
Libyans and Arabs, were like him and said that they did not fear the
tangible lions and would hunt them if need be, but that they did fear
the intangible lions of the desert, all the haunting, shadowy visions
of wrath with which Typhon lures the caravans into Hell.
Then great fires were kindled, to ward off the lions and the ghosts;
and they glowed in the still glowing night; and the guards and drivers
danced fantastic dances round the fires; and Caleb, to forget his
alarm, joined in the dance.
But Thrasyllus told his master about Alexander the Great. When
Alexander founded Alexandria, the oracle of Ammon was the most
celebrated in Egypt; and Callisthenes and Plutarch relate how the
great Macedonian started from Paraetonium, on the coast, to make his
way through the desert by way of the oasis. Violent south-winds
attacked his retinue; but he did not give in, though sand-storms
nearly swallowed him up, with his elephants and camels. Suddenly,
however, kindly showers fell, at the bidding of the gods, and the
winds abated and the sand-storms dropped. Two crows flew beside the
great Alexander and guided him to the oasis.
At the first ray of dawn, after a refreshing sleep, the journey was
resumed, the monotonous journey, the endless journey. It was the
last day but one; and, when the halt was called, it appeared that
the drivers and guards had cut open the water-bags and drunk their
fill of the water. Caleb grew furious and instantly drew his dagger
and wanted to fling himself on the Libyans and Arabs; but they also
drew their daggers and everybody shouted and screamed and yelled. Then
Lucius intervened and quieted them all and gave them money; and they
fell on their knees and sobbed and begged his pardon for drinking
up the water, but they had been so thirsty and they accused Caleb
of being too sparing with the ration. And Caleb defended himself and
said that in the desert one had to be sparing and not gulp down all
the water at once, without thinking of the morrow, of the animals
and of the noble lord, who now had not a drop of water left. But
the noble lord caused a heavy basket full of lemons to be let down
from his elephant and gave each of the guards and drivers one lemon
and told them that they must now hold out, by sucking this lemon,
until they reached the oasis. And they kissed his hands and abased
themselves before him and caressed his legs and called him Osiris
and Serapis and Ammon-Ra and their life's benefactor.
Men and animals were exhausted, but they allowed themselves hardly
any rest that night and no one slept and all wanted to go on, ever on,
in the last spurring of their energies.
Was it, after the sleepless night, because of that exhaustion and
that last spurring, an atmospheric phenomenon, an hallucination,
an illusion, a fata morgana? In the first rosy glimmers of the dawn,
reflected from the east to the west, there rose in the west as it were
a dream, a nebulous dream-vision of unsubstantial forms, the vague
paradisial vision of barely-outlined, rose-tinted trees, slender,
shadowy trunks and palm-crowns suffused in rosy light; and then the
straight lines, no more than an azure shadow, of walls, of roofs,
terraces, domes.
Was it a vision, was it a dream? No, it was real; and Caleb jubilantly
pointed and shouted:
"Ammon-Ra! Ammon-Ra!"
"Ammon-Ra! Ammon-Ra!" repeated the guards and drivers, yelling wildly
and cheering like madmen, for the oasis took colour, the trees became
more clearly marked and the temple, large as a town, now stretched
its walls impressively.
The horses sniffed the air and neighed, the elephants waved their
trunks, the camels swung out their legs, the men thrust forward
their throats and inhaled the fragrance of verdure and the coolness
of running wells; and the inhabitants of the oasis, poor natives in
the service of the priests of the temple, poured out of their huts
to meet the caravan and knelt in the road, offering split coconuts,
juicy oranges and scarlet fruits, of strange shapes and juicy pulp,
and earthenware dishes full of water limpid as flowing crystal.