WE ARE CAUGHT IN A KHAMSIN
As I got used to the apparent insecurity of my position and the rocking
motion which the camel’s gait imposes on one, I began to find something
soothing in the slow but dignified progression. The vast monotony of
the desert had a hypnotic effect, and I was even anxious lest I might
fall asleep and slip from my lofty perch.
The heat was most oppressive, and I noticed a new quality in the slight
wind. It was from the south, a quarter it had not blown from before,
and it came in puffs like a breath from the opened door of a furnace;
a dry fierce heat that burned one’s cheek and made the eyes smart. In
the full glare of the afternoon sun, the desert was disappointing in
its monotony. I had read novels full of “word-painting” and gush about
the “mystery and wonder” of the desert. I had seen it in a moment of
iridescent loveliness at dawn. But now there was neither mystery nor
beauty: it was just sand, sand and loose stones, stretching everywhere
in billows to the ring of the horizon. The ridges of sand hid nothing
but other ridges, and hollows full of sand. I found I hated it.
Away to the south, in the wind’s eye, the horizon was darkened by a
strange haze, yellowish brown, rising slowly higher in the sky, a
queer, unnatural, threatening cloud.
There were three Arab boys who trudged along beside the baggage camels,
occasionally addressing what sounded like insults to them. I thought
they looked uneasily from time to time at the southern sky, and tried
to hurry the unwilling camels.
The hot wind blew every moment stronger and more steadily, and now it
blew up a cloud of dust and sand from the shuffling feet of the camels.
Jakoub rode on ahead with a mounted Arab, whom I took to be the owner,
or at least the hirer of the camels.
We were travelling about east-sou’-east, our route making an acute
angle with the coast. After about an hour’s going, the desert rose to
a stony ridge where there was an outcrop of some pale fossiliferous
rock which lay in flat slabs like an artificial pavement. Turning to
look back from the summit of this ridge I found I could see the sea
again. It was ruffled and grey. Darker “cat’s-paws” flew over it here
and there, and already the waves were beginning to curl and show white
gleams of foam.
The _Astarte_ was visible near the sky-line, standing out to sea with
a free sheet. My heart yearned after her, as I thought of the familiar
cosy saloon and the friendly faces I had left.
Jakoub halted his camel and waited till I came up. He salaamed
respectfully, perfect in his part of dragoman, and rode side by side
with me.
“It will be a bad night, effendi,” he said. “It is a khamsin.”
“Well, I suppose we must grin and bear it.”
I spoke boldly, though I quailed at the word khamsin; I had heard so
much of this dreaded wind.
“As long as the camels will travel,” he said. “But the sky looks as if
it will be a very bad sand-storm.”
“How far is it to this place we are going to?”
“If the camels go well, we might do it in six hours, in five hours from
now. But it will be difficult to find the place in a sand-storm.”
“What is this ruin? Another Sheikh’s tomb?”
“No, no. This very great ruin. How do you call a mosque of the
ancients?”
“A temple?”
“That is it. It is the Temple of Osiris. Very grand ruin. There is
plenty shelter there for all, camels and all.”
“Is there any shelter nearer?”
“We could go back where I fetch the camels from. About two hours now.”
“How long will this storm last?”
“It is a khamsin; it may last three days.”
“Then we must go on and find the temple if we can.”
“It is as your Excellency wishes.”
I had almost forgotten it was Jakoub speaking through the mouth of
this pleasant respectful servant, but now he added with a touch of the
familiarity I loathed, “If anyone is looking for Jakoub he will not
find him in a khamsin.”
I ignored this remark.
“And they will not find what the camels are loaded with,” he said with
his most insolent sneer.
I could have chastised him with scorpions, but I maintained silence,
and only looked my disapproval. I knew silence was more dignified than
any speech to such a man; besides, I had no doubt at the time that he
was trying to find out from me what the packing-cases contained.
But there was in his smile a suggestion that we shared some vile
secret; a suggestion which gave me nausea of the soul.
He trotted forward and rejoined his companion, and at once I heard an
order shouted to the foot-boys, who began belabouring their camels, and
the whole procession moved forward at a mended pace.
I ventured to guide my camel a little to the right so as to bring it to
windward of the baggage camels and out of the dust their feet stirred
up. I was gratified to find the animal obedient, even obsequious.
Then the wind suddenly grew stronger. I cannot say it freshened, for
it came as a hot blast that burned and threatened. The surface of the
desert seemed to slide away from the camel’s feet, as the loose sand
shifts away with a receding wave in shallow water. It made me giddy to
look down at it. The air became dark, opaque with the sand blown up
from a thousand miles of red-hot desert.
The particles of sand drove and pricked my skin. Sand filled my eyes
and nostrils and stuck to the streaming surface of my sweating face and
hands. I had to keep close to the baggage animals. I had a horror of
losing touch with them, in this new strange opacity.
I knew that if I found myself alone I should go mad with horror. I felt
the beast under me tremble with some similar terror, and for the first
time there was sympathy between us.
The scorching wind hummed in my ears with a strange thin sound, mingled
with the hiss of the moving sand. It made my helmet a maddening
incumbrance, and set loose parts of my clothes and the corners of the
rugs I sat on flapping.
The flying sand was all around us now, and sky and sun were blotted
out. I knew that the sun was near its setting and dreaded to think of
the darkness of night added to this new terrifying darkness.
A blank misery of fear settled down upon me, and I cursed the
wretchedness of my discomfort.
It seemed impossible that I should be here, perched unfamiliarly on the
back of a camel, unprotected and wretched amid the unknown dangers of
this horror of the sand. The thought of my home came to me, of Bates
and Mrs. Rattray! What had brought me here?
The darkness became denser and denser and I felt that the sun had set.
But it’s going brought no coolness. The burning wind seemed now to
parch my lungs. My camel was pressed up to the baggage animals, its
nose almost touching the tail of the beast before it. It evidently
shared my dread of finding itself alone.
Much as I hated Jakoub it was a relief when he again joined me.
“You all raight, effendi?” he asked.
“All right,” I said. I would not expose my craven fear to him. I could
have found it in my heart to bless him when he handed me a bottle of
tepid water. As a rule I hate drinking out of a bottle. I have seldom
done it, I have not got the knack. The motion of the camel did not make
it easier, and some of the precious water ran over my chin and down my
neck. Nevertheless that was the most precious drink of all my lifetime.
“Shall we be able to find the way?” I asked.
“Oh yes, we will find it. The camels know,” said Jakoub, “but we must
not halt. It might be impossible to make them start again.”
“I don’t want to halt.”
“Good. The effendi is very strong, what you call ‘very hard,’ is it
not? There will be times when we will be able to see a little with the
moon, when the sand will not be so thick in the air to blind us. So, we
will find the temple and rest.”
The man’s confidence encouraged me and I could not but admire it in
face of the wrath of Nature.
Every joint of me ached with the ungainly motion of my mount, and my
skin was become as sodden paper. A stream of tears cut channels in the
dust that plastered my face. Sometimes the darkness lightened a little,
and a greenish light filtered through the sand from the invisible moon,
reminding me of the faint light that comes down through the water in
glazed tanks of a darkened aquarium.
I could now just see the pale hindquarters of the beast in front of me,
and the long neck and head of my own solemnly bowing as it went.
I do not know how long this torment lasted, for I lost all count of
time. My only fear was lest the camels should stop in their march, and
I counted every painful step a gain.
I had reached the stage of half-conscious misery when suddenly the wind
seemed to cease blowing. There were harsh guttural shouts from the Arab
boys, and the camels stopped. Then I felt rather than saw the loom of a
vast building beside me on my right.
An Arab boy came and took the head-rope from my hand, and dragging at
it he made a noise as though he was clearing his throat of all the
colds that ever afflicted humanity. Again I was flung backwards and
forwards as my camel folded itself up and came to rest on the ground.
I slid off too weak in the knees even to get out of the range of its
teeth. But the poor beast made no assault on me, and I felt that it had
carried me faithfully and well and was grateful.
I saw a match struck, and Jakoub came up with a lantern. My heart
faintly warmed to him.
“All raight, effendi?” he asked again.
“All right,” I said. “You have done well to find this place on such a
night, Jakoub.”
“The camels have the wisdom that Allah has bestowed,” he answered quite
simply and humbly.
I came nearer liking him then than at any moment of our short
intercourse. But I distrusted him profoundly all the same, and the
pressure of Edmund’s revolver against my hip was a kind of comfort to
me.
“This way, effendi,” he said, making a kind of servile sweep with his
lantern.
I followed him into what I took at first to be a cave. But there was
a hot draught and sand blowing through it, and the swinging light of
Jakoub’s lantern lit up great blocks of stone that must have been
placed there by human agency. I don’t know why, but I followed him more
willingly when I realised that I was among the work of human hands,
however many thousand years they had been dead, than I would have
followed into some crevice that represented a mere process of Nature.
My feeling about Jakoub demanded human allies, however remote in time.
I realised that this was some gateway or entrance in the vast building
that had saved us from the sand-storm.
Jakoub turned sharply to the left, and I followed him through a narrow
entrance where I had to stoop among enormous blocks of stone.
I found myself in a moderate-sized chamber. As far as I could see by
the feeble light it was built entirely of stone. Some of the stone was
blackened as though by fire. There was another opening in the great
stone-work that looked like the beginning of a narrow staircase. But I
was too tired for exploration. The floor was soft sand, and there was
no wind blowing here.
I sat down thankfully and began scooping dust out of my eyes.
Two of the Arab boys who had walked by the baggage camels came in with
rugs and mats, and the hamper packed by Hassan.
Jakoub gave them directions in their own language, and all these people
busied themselves about providing for my comfort.
I asked myself why I hated Jakoub, and how I knew that he despised me.
I did not know these Arab boys at all. If among them they had decided
to put me to death, they would have an easy task. They might have done
it before I could even have pointed my revolver at them.
Jakoub skilfully made a kind of couch for me with the rugs, and opened
the hamper. Hassan had packed enough to keep me for a week, so there
was no need to economise. I did not know what provisions Jakoub or the
Arabs might have. After all he had so far served me well. I offered him
some meat and bread, which he gratefully accepted.
“I suppose,” I said, “you do not drink wine, Jakoub?”
“I keep the fast of Ramadan, Excellency,” he said, “but for the rest of
the year----” He ended with a shrug and a smile which seemed to suggest
his belief in the tenderness of Allah towards human nature which could
not always live up to the exacting standard of the Prophet.
“The wind has burned the roots of my tongue and the sand grates in the
gateway of my lungs,” he added apologetically, as he drank off the
tumbler of Burgundy I handed him.
The wine revived him and I realised that he too had been suffering
from the exhaustion of our terrible ride, but had waited on me before
refreshing himself.
I finished my strange picnic alone in this dim vault of some old
forgotten worship; then lying down on the outspread rug, I slept
profoundly in the sand.
When I awoke a faint daylight was trickling in through a kind of
irregular hole or tunnel in the titanic masonry that surrounded me.
A distant humming of the wind recalled to my mind the horrors of the
storm outside, and I knew it had not abated. During the night, sand had
drifted even into this chamber of mine. I was covered with it as I lay,
and I noticed it piled up like snow against the farther wall.
But someone, Jakoub I knew it must be, had left a canvas bucket of
water beside me, and I was able to have the wash my soul was craving
for.
The faint light made me think that it was dawn, although the heat even
here was oppressive, but looking at my watch I found it was twelve
o’clock! I had slept for ten hours. At first I could hardly move my
aching limbs.
But the healing touch of the water restored me. My parched skin seemed
to absorb it, and my courage, such as it was, became restored. I began
to take a kind of pleasure in the sense of adventure, and thought
with pride of the story I should have for the other old fogies at the
Athenæum!
If I had had a companion I should have been happy, but it was lonely
work as it was.
I made a table of my hamper, and breakfasted heartily on lukewarm ham
and the remains of the bottle of wine I had broached over-night.
Then I began to explore my surroundings.
I went down the short narrow passage leading from the chamber, and
found that it opened into what looked at first like a tunnel through
which the wind and the sand still raved. This tunnel I found was really
a gateway piercing a vast wall, in the thickness of which my chamber
was built. I turned to the right retracing our steps of the night
before and came out into the day, which I found was darkened by the
sand-storm. I huddled under the lee of the great wall, and I could see
the camels were still lying there in a row, placidly chewing the cud
with a queer sideways movement of their jaws. The nearest turned its
head and looked at me with a sneer of ineffable contempt.
I went back and found that opposite to the passage which led to my
chamber was another similar opening.
Listening I heard the deep fierce tones of Arabic talk and a man
laughing. I guessed there must be another chamber there where Jakoub
and the Arabs had taken refuge. I felt I would be glad of even Jakoub’s
society, but shyness prevented my seeking him, shyness and nothing else!
I returned to my chamber, intent on exploring the staircase or passage
I had seen leading from it.
The opening led, as I thought, to remains of a broken staircase,
roughly spiral, in the thickness of the great wall. Many of the steps
were broken away, and I was soon in darkness. I came back, shuddering,
for Jakoub’s lantern which he had left with me, and stiff and sore and
frightened as I was, I clambered up and up and came at last out into
the rushing, blinding storm again, on the top of the vast wall of the
Temple.
It was broken into irregular masses of enormous masonry, and must
originally have been some twenty feet in width. The tunnel piercing the
bottom of the wall was forty feet in length, and I guessed I must be
about sixty feet above the ground. But the storm drove me down before
I could form any estimate of its length, or discover how much of the
building existed. I could see nothing through the driving sand.
I came back to my chamber, which had already begun to seem homelike to
me, and Jakoub was there waiting for me.
I was glad to see him. I think I would have been glad of the company
of an orang-utan, if adequately chained, for I was finding out what a
horrible thing solitude can be although it was not twenty-four hours
since I had parted with Edmund and Welfare.
Jakoub greeted me with his invariable “all raight?” and I grunted at
him for reply. I felt I had a reputation as an English gentleman to
maintain.
“We cannot start the camels to-day, effendi,” he went on, “the sand is
still very bad.”
“We didn’t reckon to travel to-day,” I reminded him. “What about
to-night?”
He shrugged his shoulders in his disgustingly expressive way.
“No good, effendi. The camels would not put their heads--I mean what
you call--face it. It may blow all to-morrow again, or it might stop
to-night.”
“Well, we’ve got to wait for it then, and not worry,” I answered
irritably. “How are you and the other fellows off for food?”
“We have enough to eat. The others like the Excellency’s white bread if
there is any to spare. The wine made paradise of my stomach.”
I gave him a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine.
“What about water?” I asked.
“There is here a very good well. All the water bottles I have filled.
The camels have drunk when they did not expect. They give thanks. But
the sand drives even here and there is to-day and to-night. If the
effendi likes and will come five minutes through the storm I can show
him better shelter. Very good place, no wind, no sand, very cool place.”
I was used now to the place I was in, and averse from changing it until
I started back to civilisation. I was profoundly distrustful of Jakoub,
and I did not like the idea of going out again into that stinging storm.
But the man offered me better quarters. I had no good reason for
refusing to try them. I was determined not to seem to fear him, and
my wretched shyness prevented me from discussing the matter and
questioning him as any sensible man would have done.
“Very well,” I said, “go on.”
He led me out again and we trod the ankle-deep sand past where the
camels lay. They were of course unloaded and looked very contented and
supercilious.
We reached the limit of the great wall, and I could just see that
it was only one part of a vast building; we were at an angle where
another wall met it. But the driving sand hid all the mysteries of the
structure. Jakoub led me away from the Temple, and down the slope of a
ridge on which it seemed to be built. I had to keep my head down for
protection from the moving sand, but even so I could see that I was
stumbling over masses of broken, worthless pottery. I passed fragments
of marble pillars and fractured capitals lying in the sand. My feet
slid on the loose sand covering a portion of tessellated pavement.
There had been Greek artists here, and I knew that, as I suspected,
I was among the ruins of some old Ptolemaic pleasaunce and place of
worship.
Jakoub stopped.
“Down here, effendi,” he called through the wind, pointing to a hole
that the moving sand had silted up but could not fill.
I hesitated. It was like being invited to go down a rabbit-burrow.
Jakoub disappeared down the hole, and his lean, brown, beautiful hand
alone was left inviting me to follow.
I took his hand and went down after him. It was impossible to hesitate,
alone there in that blinding hurricane. I slid down through sand, and
sand followed my clumsy descent like an avalanche. Then I found my feet
on rock. I felt my way down a rough descent, with Jakoub’s loathed
assistance, and I found myself on level solid ground in total darkness.
Jakoub had brought his lantern and lit it at once.
At first I could see nothing but his hated face, smiling into mine.
“All raight here, effendi,” he said, and behind him I saw all the
packing-cases the camels had carried.
Although I had seen the camels were relieved of their loads, I had
never thought of how the things might be bestowed. I had thought of
nothing but my own discomfort, and had accepted all Jakoub’s efforts
to lessen it. He and his Arabs must have worked hard to get all this
merchandise down here, while I slept. I recognised that he did not
despise me without some reason.
Of course Edmund or Welfare would have seen the stuff bestowed before
anything else. I had shown myself a mere passenger.
Jakoub saw me looking at the packing-cases.
“They would be hard to find here, like Jakoub,” he said.
I took the lantern from him, and began to examine the cave, for such I
took it to be.
I found myself in a large rectangular chamber hewn out of the solid
rock that here closely underlay the desert sand.
At one end of it I found a grave-like excavation about three feet deep
and six feet long. I saw the remains of an earthenware pipe leading
into it, and turned away with an involuntary shudder.
In the opposite wall there was a narrow pointed opening. I had to stoop
to go through it, and found myself in a circular chamber. There were
low seats, or sedilia, carved in the rock all around, and over each
seat a square niche cut in the rock. In the centre were the broken
remains of a slab of rock which could only have been an altar.
I did not know what hateful rites had been celebrated on it, but
everything told me I was in a place of ancient secret worship. I
recalled a smattering recollection of Mithraic superstition with its
blood-bath. That was probably the meaning of the grave-like place with
its conduit. Here men had hidden themselves from the light of day 2,000
years ago, and here a man lost now would never be recovered.
Jakoub smiled in my face. I put my hand on the revolver. If this were
a trap he had led me into, I swore to myself that he should die in it
too.
“No sand comes here,” he said. “The effendi will be cool while we wait.”
It was evident that the man was still considering only my comfort. My
fears of him were nothing but the cowardice of jangled nerves.
The two Arab boys joined us, bearing my rugs and hamper, some extra
candles, and a copy of _The Contemporary Review_ with an article of my
own in it; the sort of encumbrance that clings so long to civilised
man. And under Jakoub’s directions they proceeded to make a kind of
couch for me, where I should be able to spend the hours before us in
comparative comfort.
Then they left me. I began to read my own article in the review, but
I found that matters that had once seemed intensely interesting and
important had become profoundly boring, and I slept.
I suppose it was exhaustion, but I slept most of that afternoon.
I fed again and went to sleep again. So I spent those hours amid
circumstances that from a distance would have seemed the most
enthralling. But I had examined this weird subterranean chamber. Its
bare rock faces had nothing more to tell my ignorance. I had not the
knowledge or experience to interpret the history that might be graven
on them.
I slept again lightly, and not for very long. Consciousness returned in
the form of uneasiness. I was in utter darkness, but awake and alert.
I was in no uncertainty as to my whereabouts or the recent events that
had brought me there. I was not even quite sure that I had slept.
I knew I had but to stretch out my hand to find a box of matches and
light my candle, but I found I could not make the effort. Fear kept my
hand immobilised. I can say honestly that it was no mere superstitious
dread of my surroundings. I was perfectly conscious of my unseen
environment of hewn rock beneath the remote desert. I was untroubled
by any thought of possible horrors enacted there in the distant past.
Yet I was afraid, afraid of some human presence that I knew was there,
invisible and unfelt, unheard, yet palpable in the darkness and silence
which surrounded me. I lay there conscious that my face was distorted
by fear, waiting, longing for something, anything that would stimulate
any normal human sense. I think I could have welcomed the thrust of a
dagger if it had ended that horrible suspense in the darkness of the
old subterranean church of a forgotten religion.
Something moved near me and the spell was broken. I was aware of myself
sitting up, my blanket thrown aside, my left arm doubled across my face
by some defensive instinct.
“Who is that?” said a voice that must have been mine.
Without knowing what I did, my right hand went out and found the
matches beside me. The box rattled faintly as I grasped it, and before
it rattled again, before I could move it towards my left hand, my hand
was seized and held in a soft firm grip.
I fell backwards again incapable of effort. “No light, effendi. Make no
sound. There is danger.”
It was Jakoub’s voice, whispering.
I dreaded and feared the man, yet I knew his whisper was not that of my
murderer. I felt that for the time at all events we were allies against
some unknown danger threatening us both.
“What is it?” I asked, whispering like him. “Let go my hand.”
“You will make no light, if my hand leaves your hand?”
“No; not till you tell me. Why are you here?”
The delicate firm pressure of his hand was removed, and I was again
out of touch with the universe. But I was relieved. All those visceral
disturbances which attend pure fright began to adjust themselves. The
pumping of my heart ceased to be palpable, the rhythm of my breathing
was restored, and I was conscious that I was no longer making queer
faces in the dark. These are but normal reactions to stimuli, labelled
“cowardice” by the insensitive. I am as little inclined to apologise
for them as for hunger or sea-sickness. They passed, and reflection
returned to aid my will.
“Why have you come, Jakoub?” I asked of the darkness. It was strange to
speak, not knowing in which direction to send my voice, nor whether my
hearer was close to me or far away.
“I must remain here with you, effendi. Those who seek me have come.
They too shelter from the storm. They seek also this that we have
brought with us. But Allah is merciful, and I remembered to put it here
where they will not find it.”
From the sound of Jakoub’s whisper I could tell that his usual
imperturbability had gone. There was fear in every syllable he uttered.
Fear is said to be contagious, yet I took heart. “Those who sought
him” must be the police. I knew, of course, that he was a hunted man.
But I had nothing to fear from the police, and as yet I had no reason
to suppose that they were concerned with our merchandise. They would,
of course, examine it if they found it, and that, as Welfare had so
carefully explained, would spoil the market for our “rare earths for
incandescent mantles.”
I felt that I had nothing to lose by their discovering Jakoub. I shrank
from the thought of sharing with him a long vigil in this subterranean
darkness, and his arrest would rescue me from this.
Even if I wanted to, however, I could make no move to compass his
arrest. At present he was in a sense my protector, at least my ally.
The least suspicious move on my part would convert him into a deadly
and ruthless foe, and I remembered how he had instantly found my hand
as though he saw in the darkness, while I was blind and helpless.
Looking back now, I think all these prudential calculations passed
through my mind really in an attempt to justify a feeling of loyalty to
what was after all my side. However I might hate and distrust Jakoub, I
was yet pledged in a sense to abide by him.
So I resigned myself to the long wait, crouching there in the darkness
of our stone vault.
“How long will these men stay?” I asked at length.
“When the khamsin ends they will go; unless the camel-men betray us.”
“And can you trust them?”
“I trust no Arab. But they know it is death to betray me. But one can
come in here at a time. Allah is very merciful and my knife is sharp.
Many would die before Jakoub is taken. If the Excellency will agree now
to make no light or sound, I go to wait by the entry. It will soon be
day and a little light will come then. But to one from outside it will
be dark in here. He would feel the knife of Jakoub before he saw it,
and then he would see no more.”
“Go, Jakoub,” I said, “I will not move.”
There was no sound but I somehow felt that Jakoub was withdrawn from
close beside me.
For a long time, as it seemed to me, I crouched there, my hands clasped
round my knees, wondering if I were destined to be the helpless witness
of a murder or series of murders.
But gradually the strain on my mind, the heat and the close unchanged
air numbed my spirits. I sank back thankfully on my rug, and slept as
soundly as though I were back in my own vicarage.
I awoke unwillingly and unrested. There was a dim light by which I
could just discern the graven rock that formed the walls and roof of
our refuge--or our prison.
It was Jakoub’s voice calling softly that had awakened me. I could see
the outline of his figure squatting like a graven image by the entry,
and a faint gleam from the blade of his knife. Untiring he had watched
there motionless while I had slept.
“Well, Jakoub?” I questioned.
“It is day, effendi, and the storm has gone. The khamsin has spared us
one day. The leader of the camels has come, and says my enemies have
gone. But that may be a trap.”
I rose wearily and went over to Jakoub. By the entry there was a
freshness in the air that revived me, and I noticed there was no longer
any humming of the wind.
“How shall we know if it is a trap, Jakoub?”
He fondled the knife in his hand, and then looked up at me with
pleading in his eyes. It was the first time he had humbled himself to
me, and I saw that a vision of the gaol at Tourah was very clear to him.
“I like not to ask it,” he said at last; “but if the effendi had
courage to go first they would not harm him, and Jakoub would at least
be warned. If Jakoub must die, he will take some with him, to bear
false witness against him before the Prophet. But the Prophet is not
deceived. He will intercede with Allah, and Allah is merciful to the
true believer.”
Nothing could better have restored my self-esteem than this appeal. I
had hitherto been entirely dependent on this abhorred protector; but
now he needed my aid and appealed to my courage.
I said no more, but walked past him and climbed up the steep and narrow
entry to the desert surface above, dazzled indeed by the glare of
light, but thankful to breathe again the fresh pure air of morning that
was wafted across by a faint sea-breeze. The terrible oppression of the
hot wind had gone. The sand was at rest. My spirits rose as, looking
around, I saw no trace of the enemy.
The sun was just rising and the desert lay once more sparkling and
burnished beneath its level rays.
I saw before me the stately mass of the great Temple of Osiris.
The mighty wall, wherein I had spent the first night and morning, was
revealed as part of a great quadrangle enclosing an _enceinte_ of about
100 yards square.
The wall and the gateway, which I seemed to know as a blind man knows
things by his sense of touch, were the only parts of the building which
retained any semblance of its original design. The rest was a vast
tumbled ruin, wrecked by man and his unruliness, by Nature and by Time.
I climbed again to the summit of the great wall where I had been the
day before.
There was a cool refreshing breeze, and I could see around me the great
ruin, and on the slope below it what I took to be the outlines of a
Ptolemaic pleasure city that had once been busy and important under the
shadow of the Temple’s walls.
Now the desert lay utterly barren all round, and far in the distance I
could just see the sea with that bewildering blue of the butterfly’s
wing.
Looking inland I could still make out on the horizon a dozen horsemen,
and through my field-glasses could see the white uniforms, the red
tarbooshes and slung carbines which I presumed were worn by mounted
police or troopers of the Egyptian army. Jakoub’s enemies had
certainly gone. His cunning and foresight and the labours of those old
worshippers of Mithras had saved him for the time being.
Below me the Arabs were busy reloading the camels, and I was eager
to be on the road again, willing enough to leave behind me all these
relics of ancient mystery and magnificence which for me were associated
with that night of vigil and horror.
A few hours later the Temple had faded like a dream into the sand that
surrounded us, as our party toiled across the last few miles to the
railway.
We came to it at last, a wavy track following the contours of the
desert, an iron link with civilisation.
There was a plain stone building for a station, and Jakoub was almost
immediately in the midst of a wordy fracas with the station-master.
This functionary came out and inspected our camels and their loads.
He immediately fell into a state of almost maniacal excitement. My
smattering of Arabic was not sufficient to enable me to gather more
than the merest fragment of his complaint, but he seemed to be calling
Allah and the Prophet to witness that no freight-train ever could or
would take such a load as ours was.
Jakoub let him rave; but the camel-boys joined in, whether on the
station-master’s side or against him I could not tell. Even the camels
put in their word.
When they were all out of breath, Jakoub said a few sharp authoritative
words which started the whole tornado of sound again.
This happened several times, and then Jakoub came up to me.
“He requires 150 piastres backshish, effendi. There is a train coming
in half an hour. Had I more time I would make him to take less.”
I was so relieved to know that the train was nearly due that I did not
grudge the money.
The camels were unloaded, and their owners led them away in dignified
gratitude for liberal backshish.
The train came up like a miracle out of the desert.
There was another scene with the guard; but now Jakoub had a firm
supporter in the station-master, and for the consideration of a
100-piastre note the whole of our cargo was safely stowed on board.
A feeling of intense relief from responsibility came over me as I found
myself back in the impossibly familiar surroundings of a first-class
compartment, and four hours of heat and dust were the end of my
physical discomfort.
Remembering Edmund’s injunction I wiped my heated face and neck and
donned my clerical collar as the train ran into the Gare de Caire at
Alexandria.