THE MAD ARTIST AT THE SPHINX
“One of the Seven Wonders of the World stood there, Perry,” said
the lad’s uncle, as the steamer came into the port of Alexandria,
pointing to a small mosque with lofty pointing minarets, on the
little island of Pharos. “That is where the Pharos was built, the
first of all the large lighthouses of the world.”
“I’ve seen pictures of it, Uncle George,” responded the boy; “it
didn’t seem so very wonderful.”
“Yet it was the first,” the scientist reminded him, “and in those
days, the Mediterranean was as much dreaded as Cape Horn waters
are to-day, and more. Upon that little island stood Man’s initial
challenge to the elements. Before it was erected, a sailor could only
reach harbor in daylight and when the elements were kind, but after
the building of the Pharos, Man’s will blazed high above the fury
of the storm. It was the fiery sign that Man was greater than the
tempest and flaunted his defiance to the angry waves.”
“The first to dare—” said the boy, feeling his pulse quickening;
“yes, that does make it great.”
“To me, that is the spell of Egypt,” continued the scientist.
“Everywhere, in this old land, one has a feeling of a world which
dates back so long ago that to the dwellers of that time, the
simplest things were a reckless adventure. They blazed the trail for
civilization, those ancient Egyptians, and the thrill of the Valley
of the Nile lies in the fact that one can see those blaze-marks
still.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. Not only in the temples and the pyramids, but in the
people themselves. It is a haunted land, Perry, haunted by Pharaohs
as other lands are haunted by fairies, and the spell always holds
fast. I have been here before, and still I am almost as eager as you
can be to step ashore in Egypt once again.”
“It’s all so new to me,” the boy said, hungrily.
“It won’t seem new,” his uncle rejoined. “Once you have known the
call of Egypt, you will feel as though you were returning to a
long-forgotten home. You will see. But you will not feel it in
Alexandria. You must wait.”
The warning not to expect too much of Alexandria came in time to save
Perry from a grievous disappointment, for, as he confided to Antoine,
a few hours later, during all the yelling bustle of docking and
customs examination, commercial Alexandria was not an Egyptian city
at all.
“It’s like Genoa,” the boy remarked, half-indignantly, recalling that
busy port at which the steamer had stopped for a few hours on the way
down the Mediterranean, “and I haven’t heard a word of anything but
Italian since we landed!”
His tone implied that he was being cheated, and his friend laughed.
“Yes, yes, Alexandria isn’t Egyptian,” he said. “It wasn’t built
until long after Egypt’s glory had decayed. The time of Alexandria’s
greatness was when she was a Roman colony, and Rome is Italy.”
“Well, I want Egypt!” declared Perry, with the characteristic
insistence of his years.
“You’ll get plenty of ‘Egypt,’ as you call it,” his friend cautioned.
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised, Perry, if, in the desert, you
didn’t wish many a time for this climate of Alexandria, where it can
be cool and rainy and where even wildflowers grow.” He pointed to
some flowering weeds. “You’ll be hungry for a sight of something
fresh and full of life like that before you’ve finished this trip.”
“P’raps! But I don’t care how soon the desert comes,” insisted Perry.
“I don’t think much of this!” And he awaited with impatience the
starting of the train to Cairo.
Soon, however, his mood changed. As the train cleared the villas
of the suburbs of Alexandria, skirting the coast, curved round
the northern edge of Lake Maryut and struck across the Delta, his
momentary peevishness at the non-Egyptian character of Alexandria
vanished. A glimpse of a stream with a forest of masts and yards that
looked like things of a dream, so slender were they, wrung from him
an exclamation of astonishment.
“Look, Antoine,” he said, “there’s the old Nile!”
“No, no,” answered the other, “that’s the Mahmoudieh Canal. And it’s
not old, it’s quite new, not a century old yet. It is the canal that
has made Alexandria the principal port of Egypt instead of the old
Egyptian ports of Rosetta and Damietta. The traffic on the canal is
exceedingly heavy.”
“And are those spidery things the masts of ships on the canal?”
“Why not?”
“They look as if the first puff of wind would snap every one of them.”
“Yet they are masts, Perry, the spars of the gyassas or barges. They
do look as though they were made of spider webs, but I suppose they
must be strong. All the Nile barges are built that way.”
The tall gyassas partly comforted Perry for the noisy bustle of the
Alexandrian wharves, but his content was complete when, as the train
turned to the southward, he saw in the distance a camel outlined
against the sky-line. He felt that at last he really was in Egypt.
The train was bowling along rapidly over the outer stretches of the
Delta and its alternate patches of desert, marsh and cotton field,
with a few mud huts here and there, when, even above the clatter of
the train, there came a hideous squeaking rattle.
“What in the wide world is that racket!” he ejaculated.
“Probably a sakiyeh,” was the reply.
“What’s a sakiyeh?”
“An old water-wheel. You’ll see it in a second.”
Then, a moment later, his friend added, “I thought so,” and pointed
to where a fellah, or laborer, in his blue galabeah—which Perry
inelegantly declared to be a nightshirt—stood beside the creaking
water-wheel while a water-buffalo toilsomely trod round to raise the
water to irrigate the land. The fellah looked up as the train sped
by, and thus Perry caught his first glimpse of peasant labor.
“When Joseph was sold by his brethren into Egypt,” remarked Antoine,
“he probably saw sakiyehs being worked just that way. Very little has
changed since.”
“And those mud huts?”
“The Children of Israel made bricks without straw,” the other
reminded him. “Bricks are only baked mud.”
Perry stared out of the window, thinking. What the professor had
said, came back to him—“blaze-marks along the trail to civilization.”
That was the trick of Egypt.
The landscape was flat and uninteresting. As the train sped on,
there was less desert and less marsh, the cultivated cotton fields
grew thicker, there were more mud huts. Here and there a cluster
of huts centered around a small mosque, with its graceful minaret.
Occasionally small structures—which Antoine told him were saints’
tombs—broke the level, but aside from these, the lands of the Nile
delta were level and monotonous. Yet, in spite of all, they were
curiously vibrating, and after a while Perry realized that this was
due to the sun, which flooded the country with a light so intense
that it seemed brighter than sunlight.
The train roared across a sluggish stream, with a gyassa in full sail
upon it.
“The Rosetta branch of the Nile,” said Antoine.
Perry had nothing to say. It was not the picture he had formed in
his mind of the Nile, but there was something about it, something
incalculably old, as though the river were very aged and had fallen
asleep. On the other side of the Rosetta branch, all the land was
under cultivation. Cotton-cleaning mills, dotted here and there, took
away even the quiet romance of the first part of the journey, and
Perry was glad when at Bulak they crossed the Nile proper and the
train sped swiftly on its way to Cairo.
“Don’t get disappointed in Cairo right away,” said Antoine to him, as
they neared the suburbs. “Cairo is one of the most picturesque cities
in the world, but not around the railway station, nor near the hotel.
We’re going to be in Cairo several days, so you will have a chance to
see all you want of it.”
But this time Perry was not disappointed. The railway station could
not be other but modern, but in the throngs about it there was so
much movement, so much color, so much flavor of the East that the
boy breathed a great sigh of relief. It was all true. He was not
dreaming. The world of the Orient was not all made new. The City
of the Arabian Nights was still full of mystery. He climbed into a
two-horse Arabian with Antoine, all a-quiver with excitement, was
driven to the hotel, and, after the four-hour journey in the train,
was eager to be up and doing.
At lunch his uncle said,
“Perry, I am going to be busy all this afternoon, and if you want to
do some sight-seeing, now’s your chance. I’ll leave you in Antoine’s
charge, and you’d better stick close to him, for Cairo’s the easiest
city to get lost in that I know.”
He turned to Antoine.
“You know Cairo, I think?”
“Many years ago I knew it well,” the other answered.
The professor smiled.
“If you had known it well many hundred years ago,” he said, “it would
do just as well. The places worth seeing haven’t changed.”
Once out of the European section, and in the Arab quarter, Perry
found the real city of his imaginings, with its queer crooked
streets, blind walls and a maze of windows masked with wooden
trellis-work through which one could look outside from within, but
not inside from without. Perry plied Antoine with questions almost
without ceasing, and it was a very weary guide who safely deposited a
much-excited boy in the hotel shortly before dinner-time. The lad was
eager to go out again in the evening, but sleep took precedence, and
he rioted in dreams till morning.
The next day, again with Antoine, Perry went to see the great
citadel, which had been built by Saladin, the Saracen conqueror
immortalized in “The Talisman.” He visited the great Mohammedan
university, entered a score of mosques, in every case leaving his
shoes outside as is required by custom, and took particular delight
in one old place known as the “Needle’s Eye,” which had been walled
up recently.
“Why was it closed, Antoine?” he asked. His informant smiled.
“There was a tradition,” was the reply, “that although it was quite
narrow, every one who was honest could squeeze through. Ismail, one
of the governors, was very stout, and, evidently having more faith in
the laws of physics than in superstition, decided that he would not
put his reputation for honesty to the test of his bulk. Accordingly
he had it walled up.”
Under Antoine’s guidance, Perry quickly saw most of the worth-while
parts of Cairo, and his cup of delight brimmed over when his guide
secured permission for him to see Cairo at night, and took him
through the old bazaars, agleam with light and merriment. Antoine
skillfully guided him through the unspoiled native quarters, and
avoided the half-and-half tourist section where a forced and
unnatural gayety gives strangers a false idea of the old capital of
Egypt under the caliphs.
“Perry,” said his uncle to him the following morning, “you’d better
come along with me to-day. I’ve had good news. The Survey is going
to lend me much of their equipment and one of their experts will
accompany us. The Viceroy has been exceedingly kind and given me
every opportunity I could have wished, and instead of being compelled
to spend a week in Cairo, we’re going to start over the desert
to-morrow.”
“How are we going, Uncle George?”
“On camels.”
“On camels!” Only the fact that he was attached to a Museum
expedition kept Perry from doing a war-dance on the spot. “And am I
going to ride on a camel?”
“You’re certainly not going to ride on anything else. What do you
suppose you’re going to ride, a broncho? You seem to forget that this
is Egypt, my boy.”
“But a camel, a real, live camel. Gee!”
“Maybe you won’t like it so well after a while,” retorted his uncle
with a grim smile. He had ridden camels before.
“Oh, won’t I!”
“We’ll see to-morrow night.”
“Why, Uncle George? Do they buck?”
“I never saw a camel try to buck,” the professor answered. “On the
whole, I think it’s fortunate they’ve never learned the trick.
Here’s the camel market now. Tell me what you think of them, Perry.”
It might have been the camel market, but it sounded like Bedlam. No
sooner did the professor appear than the camel-drivers were round
him like a swarm of flies, and the Egyptian Survey expert, who had
arranged to meet him there, had to shoulder the natives away like
sheep in order to get through to his friend.
A nearer view of the camels decided Perry that the Ship of the Desert
did not look nearly as peaceful in real life as in pictures. The
beasts had an ugly trick of lifting the upper lip and showing big
teeth that was quite disconcerting. Nor did the boy fail to note that
a number of the camels were strongly muzzled.
“Do camels bite, Uncle George?” Perry asked, as soon as the palaver
was over, and the Survey expert had not only chosen the camels he
wanted but also driven off the men who had not been hired—a much
harder task.
“Some of them do,” was the reply. “A camel can be one of the most
vicious beasts of burden in the world. You remember Kipling’s famous
verses about the ‘’oont, the commissariat ’oont?’”
“No,” honestly answered Perry, “I don’t.”
“Learn them when you get home,” advised the professor, “there’s
probably a copy in the hotel library. It’ll give you something to say
to-morrow, when you want to express your feelings. I know camels!”
“Never you mind, Perry,” said the government survey expert, who was
to join the expedition, a keen young fellow named Arnold Wyr, “I’ve
picked out a bunch that won’t give much trouble. But your uncle’s
right about camels. As a general rule, they’re a jolly mean beast to
handle. Still, desert work is impossible without them.”
“Couldn’t donkeys do instead?”
The other shook his head.
“A donkey can get along on poor pickings, when it comes to food, but
he’s got to have water, you know. No, for desert work, the camel is
the only creature that can stand it. A day without water doesn’t hurt
a camel, but it will cripple a donkey and kill a horse. The camel is
well-enough suited to his job, but he’s not a bally armchair. I hope
you’re jolly well seasoned.”
“Why?” asked the boy.
“Because you need to be, in order to stand your first few hours on
camel back. You’d better take a jolly good rest to-day.”
“I wasn’t planning to rest to-day at all,” responded Perry. Then,
turning to the professor, he continued,
“Uncle George, when are we going to the Pyramids?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, now,” was the reply. “I had planned to give
to-morrow to sight-seeing, but as we shall be able to start for the
desert to-morrow, thanks to the courtesy of the Egyptian Survey, I
think I’ll give up the idea of visiting them now. Perhaps we’ll have
time on the way back.”
“Are we going to be anywhere near the Pyramids to-night?”
“Right at them. We’re leaving this afternoon for the hotel close by.
The caravan will meet us there in the morning.”
The boy looked impatiently toward the expert, who was still wrangling
with a camel-driver.
“I wish Mr. Wyr would hurry,” he confided to his uncle in a low tone.
“I want to get out and see the Pyramids.”
In spite of the lowering of the tone, however, the other heard him.
“Sorry, but there isn’t even any word for ‘hurry’ in Arabic,” he
said good-humoredly. “You’re like the rest of the Americans, Perry,
you jolly well want everything done at once. In the East, you know,
you’ve got to use the methods of the East.”
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” said the lad, flushing, “but I do so want
to go. It’s all like feeling a dream come true.”
“There is a great deal of that feeling, I think,” said his uncle,
coming to the boy’s aid. “I know, I, for one, feel strange. I suppose
if this were merely a pleasure trip, the hiring of camels and so
forth might seem more or less natural. But, after all, this is an
American Museum expedition for fossil-hunting, and I’ve equipped a
score of expeditions for just such purposes, out West. There, Mr.
Wyr, it would seem quite natural to hire cow-ponies or mules in some
little jerk-water town, where there would be nothing but a bunch of
frame houses, a general store, a couple of churches and half a dozen
saloons. Two or three cowboys riding in from the range, shooting up
the town, wouldn’t surprise me a bit, I’m more or less used to that.
But these bazaars of Cairo are so far removed from that picture that
I can hardly believe that I’m really equipping a paleontological
expedition.”
The Englishman smiled understandingly.
“I should feel the same way if I were out in your Wild West,” he
said, “and a few ‘cowboys, shooting up the town,’ as you call it,
would seem to me jolly well like a circus performance. I should be
as much out of it making arrangements there, as you feel here. But I
think you’ll find, Dr. Hunt, that the men and animals I have hired
will be satisfactory, that is, as satisfactory as can be expected in
the East. We’re not what you call ‘hustlers,’ in Egypt, you know.”
“I think you English have done wonders,” the scientist replied, “look
at the Assouan Dam,” and the talk drifted into the ever-important
question of the irrigation problems of the Nile.
Perry was impatient, but he did his best not to show it, and in the
meantime was thinking hard. As soon as the party returned to the
hotel, he slipped away and had an earnest conversation with one of
the hotel guides. He turned up at lunch half an hour later, with a
suspiciously innocent look. His uncle, who had begun to understand
the lad, said to him suddenly,
“What have you got up your sleeve, Perry?”
“I was thinking,” the boy answered, “that, if you didn’t mind, I’d
like to go over to the Pyramids this afternoon.”
“With Antoine? Certainly. Why not?”
“Antoine’s busy,” Perry responded. “I wanted to go alone.”
The professor shook his head dubiously.
“But, Uncle George,” pleaded the lad, “I could take the trolley right
there. It’s quite an easy trip and I can join you at the hotel for
dinner.”
“What do you think, Antoine?” queried the leader of the expedition,
and Perry felt easier, for he knew that Antoine always was on his
side.
“He cannot get lost, Dr. Hunt,” said the other, “it is a straight,
broad road all the way.”
“All right, then,” said the professor. “Antoine knows this part of
the world. Go ahead! I wouldn’t like to let you roam around alone in
the Arab quarters of the city, but aside from that, you’re old enough
to go where you please. Only, don’t forget that you’re to join us at
dinner at six-thirty.”
The rest of Perry’s lunch took but a few moments to swallow and he
excused himself from the table in a hurry. He had hardly unpacked
anything in Cairo, so it was only the work of a minute or two to
put back in his suit-case the few articles that had been taken out.
He took it to his uncle’s room, left it with the other luggage that
was to be sent that afternoon to the hotel beside the Pyramids, and
was off. He boarded a trolley car for Ghizeh, but left the car after
crossing the Nile, at the opening of the great road bordered with
shade-giving lebbek trees that leads straight from Cairo to Ghizeh.
One of his fellow-passengers remarked that it wasn’t considered wise
in Egypt to walk when there was a chance to ride, but Perry, with
American independence, decided that he would go ahead in spite of any
advice, however well-meant, and set out alone along the road.
There is, perhaps, no well-trodden road in the world more picturesque
than the road between Cairo and Ghizeh. From all the deserts to the
west come the caravans to Cairo, the old capital of Egypt throughout
the centuries of Mohammedan rule. This was the first time that Perry
had been alone since his arrival on the shores of Africa, and the
spirit of adventure was strong upon him.
There came towards him a long train of camels, heavily laden,
bringing loads of dates from some oasis far beyond the horizon. He
longed for a knowledge of Arabic that he might be able to question
the white-robed leaders of the camels concerning their lives beyond
that waste of sand; and started, with a sudden shock, as a loud “honk
honk” behind him caused him to turn and see a motor-car of the very
latest model come racing by.
He met itinerant cooks, carrying their kitchens with them, ready
to squat on the roadside and cook a meal for a hungry passer-by,
and the boy had to rub his eyes when he looked from them to the
gleaming metals of the trolley-car line. An Egyptian cavalry officer,
resplendent in gold lace, cantering towards the town, smiled at the
trudging lad, while fellahs in tarboosh and galabeah stalked by
unheeding. Here and there a hadj or holy pilgrim passed, his green
turban showing that he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the place of
Mohammed’s death. For quite a space the road seemed to be the highway
of the orient alone, and then there came towards him a carriage, with
two prettily gowned women, probably, Perry thought, the wife and
daughter of some English Government official, and these, too, smiled
at the lithe American lad swinging along with eagerness and wonder in
his step.
The shafts of white light, as they pierced between the interstices of
the trees were dazzling, so bright, indeed, that the light seemed to
hide rather than to reveal. Perry overtook an old man, evidently an
artist, with portable easel and canvas, who was walking slowly, very
slowly, along the road. He had not passed him more than five minutes,
when, before him, at the end of the road, seen through the long line
of trees, a faint blue object shimmered against the deep-blue sky. In
the hot and wavering air it seemed to float. The boy stopped dead.
Little by little, as his eye took a steadier focus, the Great Pyramid
of Cheops revealed itself to him, as do scenes in misty pictures. He
stood rooted to the spot.
A hoarse voice, that yet seemed to have a child’s eagerness in its
tones, spoke over his shoulder.
“What does it make you think of?” said the voice.
“It’s like Euclid turned into music,” responded Perry, half turning
to the old artist, who had overtaken him as he stood gazing at his
first sight of the Pyramid.
“H’m,” said his new friend, looking at the boy. “That’s quite an
intelligent reply.”
He walked on, and Perry, struck by something very likable in the old
artist, fell into step beside him. For at least ten minutes neither
spoke, and then the artist repeated,
“Euclid turned into music! H’m.”
He turned to the lad suddenly.
“You paint?”
“Not a scrap,” answered the boy, “I can’t draw for sour apples.”
“American!” ejaculated the artist, noticing the turn of the
expression. “H’m.”
A trolley-car whizzed by.
“Why aren’t you on that rattle-bang tram?” he demanded.
“Didn’t like the idea,” the boy replied simply. “Too much like going
to church on rollerskates.”
“H’m,” was the artist’s only reply, but the boy could see that he was
pleased.
“Are you disappointed?” was the artist’s next query.
“In Egypt?”
“No. In _it_!”
He pointed to the pyramid at the end of the road before them, its
outlines shining clearer as the sun sank, lengthening the shadows of
the trees before them.
“It looks smaller than I expected,” Perry replied truthfully,
although he suspected any criticism would hurt the artist’s feelings.
“That’s because of its shape. You’ll find it seem huge, near by.”
The two walked on together in silence.
“Are you going to do a picture of the Pyramid?” Perry asked, after a
long pause.
“Perhaps,” the other answered. “I am waiting.”
He did not seem to want to talk, and, as they tramped along the
avenue of lebbek trees, Perry fell silent also. His companion was
one of those men whose friendship is felt as much in silence as in
speech, and the two went forward happily together.
Half a mile further on, an Arab stopped the artist, and spoke gravely
in Arabic. Hearing that the reply was also in Arabic, Perry strolled
on slowly. The artist caught up to him again before long.
“You speak Arabic?” queried the boy.
“H’m, yes,” the other answered. “I have to speak it; none of them
speak the old Egyptian here.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. H’m. It is necessary. I am waiting.”
Perry wondered what it could be for which the old artist was waiting,
and he realized that his neighbor was eccentric, if not, indeed, a
little queer. But he liked him tremendously, just the same.
As the lebbek trees stopped, the road swerved round and led to a
big building which Perry at once recognized to be the hotel, but
the artist struck off by a path to the side, out toward a clump of
date-palms. There he stopped. Before them, now sharply outlined,
stood the three great and the six smaller pyramids of Ghizeh, and
silhouetted against the sky, near the Second or Cephren pyramid, was
the bold block of the sphinx. A feeling stole over Perry that the
artist was praying, and he wondered. But it was not a question that
could be asked.
For at least half an hour, the artist stood there, motionless. Perry
fidgeted, impatient to press on, but he could not find the heart
to leave his new-found friend. At last the artist picked up the
canvas that he had leant against one of the palms, and started on.
Following a path that the boy could hardly trace, he skirted to the
southward of the group of pyramids and halted at last, beside a flat
boulder, about two hundred paces from the Sphinx. Stooping, he drew
from under the boulder a tattered blanket which he laid on the stone,
set up his easel, a little to his left, not as though he were going
to work, and fell into a brown study. Twice Perry spoke to him, but
received no answer. At last, deciding that his presence was no longer
welcome, he said:
“Good-bye, and thank you.”
“H’m,” replied the artist, breaking the long silence. “Euclid turned
into music. H’m. I shall be here to-night,” and relapsed into
contemplation.
By this time the afternoon was drawing on and Perry realized that if
he wanted to see anything of the Pyramids, he had better hurry. As
soon as he came near, he was assailed by a hideous outcry of guides
and donkey boys, clamoring for employment and for baksheesh—in other
words, begging—to all of which Perry turned a deaf ear until an
athletic young Arab, with snapping eyes, said in good English,
“Want to go to top?”
“You bet,” replied the lad, then, seeing that this was not
understood, continued, “Yes.”
“Twenty piastres,” the guide demanded.
As Perry had learned that a piastre was worth only a trifle less than
a nickel, he did not deem a dollar too much, and promptly agreed.
Whereupon the guide called, and another equally athletic Arab joined
them.
“Twenty piastres,” he said in a mournful voice.
Perry protested. For all he knew, the whole tribe might come around
demanding the same twenty piastres, and the lad’s purse was slim. His
father had given him enough spending money, but by no means too much.
“Twenty piastres to this one,” he said, pointing to the first Arab
who had spoken to him.
“No go alone,” was the reply. “Always two.”
Perry hesitated. After all, was there anything he wanted to do more
than climb that Pyramid? He decided that there wasn’t, and let go his
second dollar with a good grace.
And then they started.
It had never occurred to Perry to think what climbing a pyramid would
be like. In the distance, truly, the blocks seemed like large steps.
But no sooner was the lad fairly on the ledge from which the pyramid
rises, and looked upward, than his heart gave a bound. The Pyramid
seemed miles high! He turned hesitatingly to the guide.
“I’ve got to be back by—” he began, when each of the Arabs grasped
him by an arm and jumped upwards.
The first leap was nearly five feet high!
As the Arabs dragged him up the face of the stone, the boy felt as
though his arms would come clear out of their sockets. A final jerk
brought him on the stone. Again a swing and a leap, and he found
himself scrambling up another block, again almost five feet high. A
third stretch, which he tried to open his legs to reach, as though
he were a pair of scissors, felt as if it were going to split him in
half, and he found himself already out of breath.
“Wow!” he said, feeling that he would give a good deal to have a hand
free to rub himself.
“Eoie!” cried the Arabs and swung him up another of the great
boulders.
“But look here—” began Perry, seeking to gain a moment’s breathing
space.
“Easier by-’n-by,” answered the Arab who had first spoken to him.
“Eoie!”
And up he went again.
Perry remembered that he had read how, throughout all the ages,
people had wondered in what way the builders of four thousand years
ago, who had no machinery, had managed to raise these huge stones,
for the lower courses were four feet ten inches high and sometimes
eight feet long. Even the upper stones were little less than three
feet.
“Eoie!” cried the Arabs, and he took another flying leap.
“That’s only six out of two hundred and three,” said Perry, half
aloud, and he wondered whether he would get to the top as a complete
boy or as two half boys. But, after another dozen jerks, which made
Perry feel as though he were a cross between a grasshopper and a
kangaroo, they reached the part of the pyramid where the steps were
only three feet high. As his eye caught sight of them, the boy felt
easier in his mind. Now he could get his breath.
Did the Arabs spare him? Not a bit.
“Eoie!” they cried, and increased their speed amazingly.
“I’m—I’m not trying for—any—record!” panted the lad.
Much the Arabs cared what he said.
“Eoie!” they cried, and their lithe brown legs flashed upwards.
Perry set his teeth and said no more until they reached the top.
The ascent took less than twenty minutes and when at last the Arabs
let go his arms and the boy had a chance to breathe, he felt quite
satisfied that his guides had earned every cent of their twenty
piastres. The top was a platform about thirty feet square, caused by
the loss of the old apex of the pyramid. The view was magnificent,
and Perry, looking down, four hundred and fifty feet below and a
quarter of a mile away, saw, looking not much bigger than an ant, the
old artist in contemplation before the Sphinx.
The descent was even more sensational. Perry counted himself in good
training and had a nervy head. In spite of that, a dozen times he was
sure the Arabs would lose their footing and roll on down, smashing
from ledge to ledge. Realizing that they had an athletic patron, and
eager to get down again in the hope of finding other customers, the
Arabs took that fearful stairway in a series of leaps that would not
have disgraced a delirious chamois, but they delivered Perry safe
and sound at the bottom, out of breath, wild with excitement, and
unfeignedly glad to get back to solid earth once more. Yet, as he
turned back for one last look at the Great Pyramid of Cheops, before
entering the hotel, Perry knew that he would like to climb it again
next day.
“Uncle George,” said the lad at dinner, after telling of his pyramid
climb, “I met a queer old artist to-day, on the road. I liked him
heaps,” and he proceeded to tell of his meeting and of the way in
which the artist had settled down to meditation on a boulder in front
of the Great Sphinx.
“That must have been Quinward, Mad Quinward, they call him here,”
said Wyr, who was to accompany the expedition. “I’m surprised that
you liked him. He’s usually jolly wrathy when people disturb him.”
“He was as nice as pie to me,” said Perry. “Why do you call him ‘Mad
Quinward’? He didn’t seem the littlest bit mad to me. I did think him
queer, but heaps of worth-while folks are that.”
“But he’s jolly odd, you know, Perry,” said the other. “He’s lived
in Cairo for twenty or thirty years, perhaps more, and he’s always
going to paint a picture of the Sphinx. He goes there, every day all
these twenty years, and he’s never painted a line yet.”
“Perhaps he can’t paint, Mr. Wyr,” suggested the boy.
“Oh, yes, he can. He’s one of the very best we’ve got. Some of his
work on the old rock-mosques can’t be equalled by anybody. But, you
know, he can’t be bribed into doing a picture of the Sphinx or the
pyramids. He’s been offered some jolly big sums, quite a pot of
money, you know, for an artist chap. But he always makes the same
reply—”
“‘I am waiting,’” queried the boy, “is that it?”
“That’s it. But what it is that he is waiting for, no one knows,
unless it’s inspiration. And I should jolly well think he ought to
know, after twenty or thirty years, whether he can get an inspiration
or not.”
“He seemed mighty interesting,” rejoined Perry. “He told me he knew
Ancient Egyptian.”
“He does,” Wyr responded. “Oh, yes, there aren’t many people around
Cairo who know more about Egypt than Quinward. But you must have
touched him in a tender spot, Perry, for generally, he’s awfully like
a bear.”
“P’raps it was because I didn’t bother him an awful lot,” said Perry.
“Anyhow, he half suggested that I should go to see him this evening.”
“Well, why not?” said the professor. “If this artist friend of yours
is as well-informed as Mr. Wyr seems to think, get him talking about
Egypt and then you can tell us all about it.”
“Won’t you come along, Uncle George?” suggested Perry.
“No, lad,” the professor replied. “I’m sorry to say that I’ve got to
get back to Cairo to-night. Two or three things have come up that I
want to look after, in order to have everything clear before starting
off in the morning. I’ve been over the Pyramids before, Perry, you
know, and it’s an old story. What I want to see is fossil elephants!
Compared with those, my boy, the Pyramids are very young.”
“Oh, we’re going to find heaps of fossils that no one ever saw
before,” asserted Perry, with a buoyancy so infectious that the two
men laughed. “But just now, I’m after Pyramids. Fossil elephants,
later.”
“Put your heavy coat on, then, Perry,” the Survey expert advised him,
as they rose from the table. “If you’re going to sit on the sand with
Mad Quinward, you’ll find that it gets jolly cold here at night.”
A lurid glow as of a volcano’s reflection was all that the sky still
held of the sunset when Perry reached the boulder where he had left
the artist. Mad Quinward, as the boy had come to know him, was still
sitting on the rock, but he, also, had been having dinner, for he was
putting into one of his capacious pockets a flat tin food-box, and
into another a flask. Seeing the boy, however, he unhooked the lid of
the box, sprinkled some salt over a crust that remained, and gravely
handed it to Perry.
“Bread and salt,” he said.
The boy took it gravely, remembering the old custom that whosoever
has accepted bread and salt at your hands has thereby cemented
friendship, and munched the crust in silence, feeling something very
fitting in this ancient oriental rite in the presence of the Sphinx
as the day died down.
The crimson faded out of the sky with the last crumb of the little
ritual meal, and then Perry saw, for the first time in his life,
the up-coming of a night in Egypt. The darkness hurled itself after
the sunset like a battle-charge, and within a few seconds, the
palm-trees that had been dark green in the glowing sunset, loomed
like black sentinels against the sky. The stars, as though in
panic at the darkness, leaped into full brilliancy, and a bright
star-shine gleamed where the sunset had been but a moment before. The
transformation was so sudden as to seem almost theatrical.
The artist unfolded the tattered blanket on which he had been seated
and threw one-half of its length upon the sand, motioning to Perry
to sit down. The boy did so, feeling the heat of the sun-warmed sand
beneath him and, taking his cue from the artist, lapsed into silence.
It was some time before Mad Quinward spoke.
“Nearly five thousand years ago,” he said, in a low, thoughtful
voice, “there came a wise man to the old city beside the Nile.”
He stopped, and in the pause Perry felt himself slide into a reverie
of life as it was in the days of the Pyramid-builders.
“A Chaldæan mage he was, of the land where the seven-storied towers
stood wherefrom men watched the stars.”
And Perry, answering nothing, looked at the constellations. From
where he lay, the studded belt of Orion gleamed directly over the
Sphinx, and, as he watched the slow circling of the stars, he thought
how they circled in the same path thousands of years ago.
And so, through the evening, and into the night, artist and boy sat
there, sat there till the sounds from the hotel died down; sat there
till even the barking of the Egyptian dogs was stilled; sat there
silently, save for a sentence now and then from the slowly-moving
lips of the old artist. And gradually, by word and influence, Perry
slipped his own aggressive personality and became at one with Egypt
and the night. Little by little, the story wove itself into his
brain, while the Sphinx and the Pyramids stayed moveless and the
restless stars swung on.
“He saw the follies of the temples and prophesied their fall—he
stayed the Pharaoh in his chariot and mocked his power—he laughed
to scorn the colossi of the gods—he flung in every face the eternal
question: ‘What is Man sent on earth to do?’”
Again came silence.
“And Pharaoh led him to a mass of rock upon the desert—‘Carve there a
Sphinx!’ he said, ‘with face like to mine own. Thou wert sent here to
build my greatness, in spite of all thy wisdom.’”
The stars swung slowly on.
“For years he toiled— A thousand workmen quarried and labored at the
body—the face was his alone— Always it was covered with a veil—Behind
that veil he worked—within that veil he slept—and no man saw the
graven face behind the veil.”
Midnight had long gone by and the chill of a night half turned to
morning numbed Perry to his bones, but he hardly dared to move, lest
he should break the spirit that had gripped the watcher—the watcher
who for twenty years and more had never failed to see the stars
circle above the Sphinx. Almost an hour passed before the artist
spoke again.
“There came a day that all was finished— A runner went to Pharaoh,
and the Pharaoh came— Over the figure’s face was still the veil— The
sun shone pitilessly and the desert shimmered with the heat.
“They tore away the veil—”
Upon the dark desert settled an expectant hush.
“Over Great Pharaoh, the Greater Sphinx smiled in a splendid mockery.
“‘Great Pharaoh,’ cried the sculptor, ‘I was sent here to mock thy
little greatness, not to build it.’
“The Pharaoh raised his finger— The spears struck home— And over the
dying sculptor, the mocking Sphinx smiled still.”
The glint as of a black pearl over the East told of the approach of
day.
The artist clutched the boy’s arm.
“It speaks,” he said, in an awed whisper, “at last it speaks!”
The dawn trembled closer, and, in the utter distance, a bird’s faint
notes were heard.
“You hear—”
Not for the world would the boy have said that the sound the artist
heard was but a bird singing to the morning.
“I hear,” he answered.
The sun thrust up a beam of welcome, and with the first long, level
ray, the artist sprang to his feet. He snatched the canvas that for
twenty years had never known a brush and feverishly, madly, began to
paint.
Color and line grew like a swifter life upon the canvas, strokes so
rapid and so sure that the eye could scarcely follow them as they
gave birth to form. The day was not yet an hour old when the artist
laid down his palette.
“It is done!” he said. “It was well to wait. There is the message of
the Sphinx!”
And, dropping his brushes on the boulder, the artist threw himself
upon the ground, and, in a moment, was asleep.
Cramped and stiff, Perry rose and stretched himself. The sun rose
over the lebbek-trees, warm and comforting.
Two tourists, early risers, coming from the hotel, strolled over to
where the boy was standing. Seeing that they were about to speak,
Perry held up his hand.
“Please!” he said softly; “he’s asleep.”
The first looked at the artist, recumbent on the sand.
“Why, it’s Mad Quinward!” he exclaimed.
The second looked at the picture. He removed his helmet, as though
entering a shrine.
“That will be deemed one of the world’s great masterpieces,” he said
reverently. “You saw him paint it?”
Simply, the lad replied:
“I have been here all night.”