Five days later.
Boulos, the faithful Egyptian dragoman, in his red fez and long caftan
of yellow silk reaching to his heels, stood leaning over the bows of the
small white steamer which was slowly wending its way around the many
curves of the mighty river which lay between the Island of Philae and
the Second Cataract at Wady Haifa, the gate of the Sudan.
No railway runs through that wild desert of rock and sand, and the road
to Khartoum lies by water over those sharp rocks and ever-shifting
shoals where navigation is always dangerous, and progress only possible
by daylight.
Boulos, the dark, pleasant-faced man who is such an inveterate gossip,
who knows much more of Egyptology than his parrot-talk to travellers,
and who is popular with all those who go to and fro between Cairo and
Khartoum, stood chatting in Arabic with the white-bearded, black-faced
_reis_, or pilot.
The latter, wearing a white turban, was wrapped in a red cloak though
the sun was blazing. He squatted upon a piece of carpet in the bows,
idly smoking a cigarette from dawn till sundown, and navigating the
vessel by raising his right or left hand as signal to the man at the
helm.
A Nile steamer has no captain. The Nubian _reis_ is supreme over the
native crew, and being a man of vast experience of the river, knows by
the appearance of the water where lie the ever-shifting sand-banks.
"Oh yes," remarked the _reis_ in Arabic; "by Allah's grace we shall
anchor at Abu Simbel by sunset. It is now just past the noon," added
the bearded old man--who looked like a prophet--as he glanced upward at
the burning sun.
"And when shall we leave?" asked the dragoman.
"At noon to-morrow--if Allah willeth it," replied the old man.
"To-night the crew will give a fantasia. Will you tell the passengers."
"If it be thy will," responded Boulos, drawing at his excellent
cigarette.
"How farest thou this journey?"
"Very well. The Prophet hath given me grace to sell several statuettes
and scarabs. The little American hath bought my bronze of Isis."
"I congratulate thee, O wise one among the infidels," laughed the old
man, raising his left hand to alter the course of the vessel. "Thy
bronze hath lain for many moons--eh?"
"Since the last Ramadan. And now, with Allah's help, I have sold it to
the American for a thousand piastres."
Old Melek the _reis_ grunted, and thoughtfully rolled another cigarette,
which he handed unstuck to his friend, the sign of Arab courtesy.
Boulos ran his tongue along it, and raising his hand to his fez in
thanks, lit it with great gusto, glancing up to the deck where his
charges were lolling beneath the awning.
Lola, in white, and wearing her sun-helmet, leaned over the rail and
called in her broken English:
"Boulos, when do we arrive at Abu Simbel?"
"At ze sunset, mees," was the dragoman's smiling reply. "To-morrow
morning, at haf-pas tree we land, and we watch ze sun rise from inside
ze gr-reat Tem-pel of Rameses." Then raising his voice, so that all
could hear, as is the habit of dragomans: "Ze gr-reat Tem-pel is cut in
ze rock and made by Rameses to hees gr-reat gawd, Ra, gawd of ze sun.
In ze front are fo-our colossi--gr-reat carved statues of Rameses
seated. Zees, la-dees and gen'lemens, you will be able to see first as
we come round ze bend of ze Nile about seex o'clock. To-morrow morning
we land at haf-pas tree, and ze sight is one of ze grandest in all our
Egypt."
"Half-past three!" echoed Chester Dawson, who was sitting in a
deck-chair at Edna's side. "I shall still be in my berth, I hope. No
Temple of Rameses would get me up before sunrise."
"Say, you're real lazy," declared the buxom American girl. "I'll be
right there--you bet."
"But is the old ruin worth it? We've seen the wonderful works of
Rameses all up the Nile."
"Waal--is it worth coming to Egypt at all?" she asked in her native
drawl. "Guess it is--better than Eu-rope--even if you're fed up by it."
"Oh, I don't know. This beastly heat makes me sick," and he gave a
vigorous stroke with his horsehair fly-whisk with which each traveller
was provided. Beelzebub assuredly lived in Egypt, for was he not the
god of flies. Everything has a god in Egypt.
Boulos had resumed his comfortable chat with Melek, the _reis_. His
thousand piastre deal of that morning had fully satisfied him. Not that
he ever overcharged the travellers for any antiques which he sold them.
As everyone on the Nile knows--from Cairo to far Khartoum--Boulos the
laughing, easy-going though gorgeously attired dragoman, is a
scrupulously honest dealer. He is a friend of the greatest
Egyptologists in the world and, unlike the common run of dragomans, has
studied Egyptian history, and possesses quite a remarkable knowledge of
hieroglyphics. Many a well-known European professor has sat at the knee
of Boulos, and many an antique is now in one or other of the European
national collections which originally passed through the hands of the
ever-faithful Boulos.
Waldron was sipping an innocuous drink composed of Evian water with a
lime squeezed into it, and chatting in French with old Jules Gigleux,
passing one of those usual mornings of laziness, away from the worries
of letters and newspapers, which are so delightful up the Nile.
Beneath the wide awning the soft, hot breeze pleasantly fanned them,
while away on the banks rose the feathery palms on the tiny green strip
of cultivated mud, sometimes only a few feet in width, and then the
desert--that great glaring waste of brown sand--stretching away to the
horizon where the sky shone like burnished copper.
Mademoiselle, as full of mischief as ever, was the very life and soul of
that smart party of moneyed folk which included two English peers, three
American millionaires, an Austrian banker, a wealthy Russian prince, and
two Members of Parliament who had paired. It had been whispered that
she was daughter of Duprez, the millionaire sugar-refiner of Lyons; and,
as everyone knows, the sugar of the Maison Duprez is used in nearly
every household throughout France.
Yet Waldron had heard quite a different story from her own lips while
they had been seated together on deck the previous evening drinking
coffee.
"Ah?" she had sighed, "if I were only wealthy like the several other
girls of this party, it would be different. Perhaps I could break away
from uncle, and remain independent. But, alas! I cannot. I owe
everything to him--I am dependent upon him for all I have."
This surprised Hubert considerably. Hitherto he had believed her to be
the daughter of a wealthy man, because Miss Lambert showed her such
marked deference. But such apparently was not the fact. Indeed she had
declared later on to Waldron that she was very poor, and to her
eccentric old uncle she was indebted for everything she received.
Hers was a curious, complex character. Sometimes she would sit and chat
and flirt violently with him--for by her woman's intuition she knew full
well that he admired her greatly--while at others she would scarcely
utter a word to him.
Hubert Waldron detested old Gigleux. Even though he sat chatting and
laughing with him that morning, he held him in supreme contempt for his
constant espionage upon his niece. The old fellow seemed ubiquitous.
He turned up in every corner of the steamer, always feigning to take no
notice of his niece's constant companionship with the diplomat, and yet
his sharp, shrewd eyes took in everything.
On more than one occasion the Englishman was upon the point of demanding
outright why that irritating observation was so constantly kept,
nevertheless with a diplomat's discretion, he realised that a judicious
silence was best.
That long, blazing day passed slowly, till at last the sun sank westward
over the desert in a flame of green and gold. Then the thirty or so
passengers stood upon the deck waiting in patience till, suddenly
rounding the sharp bend of the river, they saw upon the right--carved in
the high, sandstone cliff--the greatest and most wonderful sight in all
Nubia.
Lola was at the moment leaning over the rail, while Waldron stood idly
smoking at her side.
"See!" he cried suddenly. "Over there! Those four colossal seated
figures guarding the entrance of the temple which faces the sunrise.
That is Abu Simbel."
"How perfectly marvellous!" gasped the girl, astounded at the wonderful
monument of Rameses the Great.
"The temple is hewn in the solid rock--a temple about the size of
Westminster Abbey in London. In the Holy of holies are four more seated
figures in the darkness, and to-morrow as we stand in there at dawn, the
sun, as it rises, will shine in at the temple door and gradually light
up the faces of those images, until they glow and seem to become living
beings--surely the most impressive sight of all the wonders of Egypt."
"I am longing to see it," replied the girl, her eyes fixed in
fascination at the far-off colossi seated there gazing with such calm,
contented expression over the Nile waters, now blood-red in the still
and gorgeous desert sunset.
On the arid banks there was no sign of life, or even of vegetation. All
was desert, rock, sand, and desolation. Where was the great,
palpitating civilisation which had existed there in the days of Rameses,
the cultured world which worshipped the great god, Ra, in that most
wonderful of all temples? Gone, every trace save the place where the
sun god was worshipped, swept out of existence, effaced, and forgotten.
Over the vessel a great grey vulture hovered with slowly flapping wings.
Then from the bows came a low chant, and the passengers craning their
necks below, saw that the black-faced crew had turned towards Mecca and
sunk upon their knees, including even the gorgeous Boulos himself, and
with many genuflexions were adoring Allah.
"Allah is great. Allah is merciful. He is the One," they cried in
their low, musical Arabic. "There is no god but Allah!"
The sun sank and twilight came swiftly, as it does in the glowing,
mystic East. And the white-bearded _reis_, his prayers finished, pushed
on the steamer more quickly so as to anchor opposite Abu Simbel before
darkness fell. The excitement among the passengers grew intense, for,
on the morrow, ere the first pink of the dawn, the travellers were to
stand within that rock-hewn temple, the most wonderful of all the works
of the Pharaohs.
The evening proved a merry one, for after dinner, with the vessel
anchored in mid-stream--to obviate thieves--opposite the great temple,
the Nubian crew gave a fantasia, or native song and dance, for the
benefit of the travellers.
On each trip from Shellal to Wady Haifa this was usual, for European
travellers like to hear the weird native music, and the crooning desert
songs in which Allah is praised so incessantly. Besides, a collection
is made afterwards, and the sturdy, hard-working crew are benefited by
many piastres.
On the lower deck, beneath the brilliant stars the black-faced toilers
of the Nile beat their tom-toms vigorously and chanted weirdly while the
passengers stood leaning over, watching and applauding. The crew
squatted in a circle, and one after the other sprang up and performed a
wild, mad dance while their companions kept time by clapping their hands
or strumming upon their big earthenware tom-toms.
Then at eleven, the hour when the dynamos cease their humming and the
electric light goes out, the concert ended with all the crew--headed by
the venerable, white-bearded old pilot--standing up, salaaming and
crying in their broken English:
"Gud nites, la-dees and gen'lemens. Gud nites?"
It was just before three on the following morning when the huge gong,
carried around by an Arab servant, aroused everyone, and very soon from
most of the cabins there turned out sleepy travellers who found the
black giant Hassan ready with his little cups of delicious black coffee.
Boulos was there, already gorgeous in a pale green silk robe, while the
steamer had half an hour before moved up to the landing-place.
"La-dees and gen'lemens!" cried the dragoman in his loud, drawling tone,
"we no-ow go to see ze gree-at tem-pel of ze gawd, Ra--gawd of ze sun--
ze tem-pel of ze sun-rise and ze greatest monument in all our Eg-eept.
We shall start in fif mineets. In fif mineets, la-dees. Monuments
tick-eets ve-ry much wanted. No gallopin' donkeys in Abu Simbel!"
Whereat there was a laugh.
Then the under-dragoman, a person in a less gorgeous attire, proceeded
to make up a parcel of candles, matches, and magnesium wire, and
presently the travellers, all of whom had hastily dressed, followed
their guide on shore, and over the tiny strip of cultivated mud until
they came to the broad stone steps which led from the Nile bank to the
square doorway of the temple.
Here a number of candles were lit by the under-dragoman; and Waldron,
taking one, escorted Lola and Miss Lambert. Within, they found a huge,
echoing temple with high columns marvellously carved and covered by
hieroglyphics and sculptured pictures.
Through one huge chamber after another they passed, the vaulted roof so
high that the light of their candles did not reach to it. Only could it
be seen when the magnesium wire was burned, and then the little knot of
travellers stood aghast in wonder at its stupendous proportions.
At last they stood in the Holy of holies--a small, square chamber at the
extreme end.
In the centre stood the altar for the living sacrifices, the narrow
groves in the stones telling plainly their use--the draining off of the
blood.
All was darkness. Only Boulos spoke, his drawling, parrot-like voice
explaining many intensely interesting facts concerning that spot where
Rameses the Great worshipped the sun god.
Then there was a dead silence. Not one of that gay, chattering company
dared to speak, so impressive and awe-inspiring was it all.
Suddenly, from out of the darkness they saw before them slowly, yet
distinctly, four huge figures seated, their hands lying upon their
knees, gradually come into being as the sun's faint pink rays, entering
by the door, struck upon their stone faces, infusing life into their
sphinx-like countenances until they glowed and seemed almost to speak.
Expressions of amazement broke from everyone's lips.
"Marvellous!" declared Lola in an awed whisper. "Truly they seem really
to live. It is astounding."
"Yes," answered Waldron. "And thus they have lived each morning in the
one brief hour of the sunrise through all the ages. From Rameses to
Cleopatra each king and queen of Egypt has stood upon this spot and
worshipped their great gods, Ra and the all-merciful Osiris. Such a
sight as this surely dwarfs our present civilisation, and should bring
us nearer to thoughts of our own Christian God--the Almighty."