vast experience of the river, knows bythe appearance of the water where lie the ever-shifting sand-banks.
"Oh yes," remarked the _reis_ in Arabic; "by Allah's grace we shallanchor at Abu Simbel by sunset. It is now just past the noon," addedthe bearded old man--who looked like a prophet--as he glanced upward atthe 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 excellentcigarette.
"How farest thou this journey?"
"Very well. The Prophet hath given me grace to sell several statuettesand scarabs. The little American hath bought my bronze of Isis."
"I congratulate thee, O wise one among the infidels," laughed the oldman, raising his left hand to alter the course of the vessel. "Thybronze hath lain for many moons--eh?"
"Since the last Ramadan. And now, with Allah's help, I have sold it tothe 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 inthanks, lit it with great gusto, glancing up to the deck where hischarges were lolling beneath the awning.
Lola, in white, and wearing her sun-helmet, leaned over the rail andcalled in her broken English:
"Boulos, when do we arrive at Abu Simbel?"
"At ze sunset, mees," was the dragoman's smiling reply. "To-morrowmorning, at haf-pas tree we land, and we watch ze sun rise from insideze gr-reat Tem-pel of Rameses." Then raising his voice, so that allcould hear, as is the habit of dragomans: "Ze gr-reat Tem-pel is cut inze 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 Ramesesseated. Zees, la-dees and gen'lemens, you will be able to see first aswe come round ze bend of ze Nile about seex o'clock. To-morrow morningwe land at haf-pas tree, and ze sight is one of ze grandest in all ourEgypt."
"Half-past three!" echoed Chester Dawson, who was sitting in adeck-chair at Edna's side. "I shall still be in my berth, I hope. NoTemple of Rameses would get me up before sunrise."
"Say, you're real lazy," declared the buxom American girl. "I'll beright there--you bet."
"But is the old ruin worth it? We've seen the wonderful works ofRameses all up the Nile."
"Waal--is it worth coming to Egypt at all?" she asked in her nativedrawl. "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 avigorous stroke with his horsehair fly-whisk with which each travellerwas provided. Beelzebub assuredly lived in Egypt, for was he not thegod of flies. Everything has a god in Egypt.
Boulos had resumed his comfortable chat with Melek, the _reis_. Histhousand piastre deal of that morning had fully satisfied him. Not thathe ever overcharged the travellers for any antiques which he sold them.As everyone on the Nile knows--from Cairo to far Khartoum--Boulos thelaughing, easy-going though gorgeously attired dragoman, is ascrupulously honest dealer. He is a friend of the greatestEgyptologists in the world and, unlike the common run of dragomans, hasstudied Egyptian history, and possesses quite a remarkable knowledge ofhieroglyphics. Many a well-known European professor has sat at the kneeof Boulos, and many an antique is now in one or other of the Europeannational collections which originally passed through the hands of theever-faithful Boulos.
Waldron was sipping an innocuous drink composed of Evian water with alime squeezed into it, and chatting in French with old Jules Gigleux,passing one of those usual mornings of laziness, away from the worriesof 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 stripof cultivated mud, sometimes only a few feet in width, and then thedesert--that great glaring waste of brown sand--stretching away to thehorizon where the sky shone like burnished copper.
Mademoiselle, as full of mischief as ever, was the very life and soul ofthat smart party of moneyed folk which included two English peers, threeAmerican millionaires, an Austrian banker, a wealthy Russian prince, andtwo Members of Parliament who had paired. It had been whispered thatshe was daughter of Duprez, the millionaire sugar-refiner of Lyons; and,as everyone knows, the sugar of the Maison Duprez is used in nearlyevery household throughout France.
Yet Waldron had heard quite a different story from her own lips whilethey had been seated together on deck the previous evening drinkingcoffee.
"Ah?" she had sighed, "if I were only wealthy like the several othergirls of this party, it would be different. Perhaps I could break awayfrom uncle, and remain independent. But, alas! I cannot. I oweeverything to him--I am dependent upon him for all I have."
This surprised Hubert considerably. Hitherto he had believed her to bethe daughter of a wealthy man, because Miss Lambert showed her suchmarked deference. But such apparently was not the fact. Indeed she haddeclared later on to Waldron that she was very poor, and to hereccentric old uncle she was indebted for everything she received.
Hers was a curious, complex character. Sometimes she would sit and chatand flirt violently with him--for by her woman's intuition she knew fullwell that he admired her greatly--while at others she would scarcelyutter a word to him.
Hubert Waldron detested old Gigleux. Even though he sat chatting andlaughing with him that morning, he held him in supreme contempt for hisconstant espionage upon his niece. The old fellow seemed ubiquitous.He turned up in every corner of the steamer, always feigning to take nonotice of his niece's constant companionship with the diplomat, and yethis sharp, shrewd eyes took in everything.
On more than one occasion the Englishman was upon the point of demandingoutright why that irritating observation was so constantly kept,nevertheless with a diplomat's discretion, he realised that a judicioussilence was best.
That long, blazing day passed slowly, till at last the sun sank westwardover the desert in a flame of green and gold. Then the thirty or sopassengers stood upon the deck waiting in patience till, suddenlyrounding the sharp bend of the river, they saw upon the right--carved inthe high, sandstone cliff--the greatest and most wonderful sight in allNubia.
Lola was at the moment leaning over the rail, while Waldron stood idlysmoking at her side.
"See!" he cried suddenly. "Over there! Those four colossal seatedfigures guarding the entrance of the temple which faces the sunrise.That is Abu Simbel."
"How perfectly marvellous!" gasped the girl, astounded at the wonderfulmonument of Rameses the Great.
"The temple is hewn in the solid rock--a temple about the size ofWestminster Abbey in London. In the Holy of holies are four more seatedfigures in the darkness, and to-morrow as we stand in there at dawn, thesun, as it rises, will shine in at the temple door and gradually lightup the faces of those images, until they glow and seem to become livingbeings--surely the most impressive sight of all the wonders of Egypt."
"I am longing to see it," replied the girl, her eyes fixed infascination at the far-off colossi seated there gazing with such calm,contented expression over the Nile waters, now blood-red in the stilland gorgeous desert sunset.
On the arid banks there was no sign of life, or even of vegetation. Allwas 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 mostwonderful of all temples? Gone, every trace save the place where thesun 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 theirnecks below, saw that the black-faced crew had turned towards Mecca andsunk upon their knees, including even the gorgeou
s Boulos himself, andwith many genuflexions were adoring Allah.
"Allah is great. Allah is merciful. He is the One," they cried intheir 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, pushedon the steamer more quickly so as to anchor opposite Abu Simbel beforedarkness fell. The excitement among the passengers grew intense, for,on the morrow, ere the first pink of the dawn, the travellers were tostand within that rock-hewn temple, the most wonderful of all the worksof the Pharaohs.
The evening proved a merry one, for after dinner, with the vesselanchored in mid-stream--to obviate thieves--opposite the great temple,the Nubian crew gave a
Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe Page 5
