CHAPTER III.
With my own hands I spread her couch of skins and rugs in the remotestcorner of a great stone slab that still lifted its unbroken front, indefiance of time, high above the tawny sands of the desert. The nightwas very sultry, even here on this high and roomy summit. The broad,deep slab of granite was still warm with sunshine gone away, and gaveout heat like a dying furnace. The steep and arduous ascent had taxedher strength, and unloosing her robe as I turned to examine moreminutely our strange quarters on the top of this lofty tomb, or temple,she sank to rest, half reclining on her arm, her chin in her upturnedpalm, her face lifted away toward the rising moon.
Half a dozen paces to the right I saw two tall and ponderous columns ofgranite standing in line with those that supported the great slab onwhich she rested. Evidently these grand and solitary columns had alsoonce been topped by granite slabs. But these had fallen to the groundunder the leveling feet of many centuries, and now lay almost swallowedup in the sea of yellow sands below. I put out my foot carefully, tryingto reach the broad top of the nearest column of granite, but it wasbeyond me. Stepping back a couple of paces and quietly removing myboots, I gathered up my strength and made a leap, landing almost in thecenter of the column's top. A half step backward, another leap--whocould resist the challenge of that lone and kingly column that remained?I landed securely as before, then turned about. Her face had not liftedan instant from the awful majesty of the Orient.
Slowly, wearily, the immense moon came shouldering up through the seasof yellow sand. These billows of sand seemed to breathe and move. Theexpiring heat of the departed sun made them scintillate and shimmer in asoft and undulating light. And yet it was not light; only the lone andsolemn ghost of a departed day. Yellow and huge and startling stood themoon at last, full grown and fearful in its nearness and immensity onthe topmost lift of yellow sands in the yellow seas before us. Distanceseemed to be annihilated. The moon seemed to have forgotten her placeand all proportion. Looking down into the sullen Nile, it seemed a blackand bottomless chasm. And it seemed so far away! And the moon so verynear.
Black as blackest Egypt rolled the somber Nile down and on and onthrough this world of yellow light; this light that was not light.Silence, desolation, death lay on all things below, about, above. Thewest was molten yellow gold, faint and fading, it is true: but where theyellow sands left off and the yellow skies began no man could say orguess, save by the yellow stars that studded the west with an intenseyellow.
Yellow to the right and yellow to the left, yellow overhead and yellowunderfoot; with only this endless chasm of Erebus cleaving the yellowearth in halves with its bottomless pit of endless and indissolubleblackness.
After a time--and all the world still one sea of softened yellow, tornin two by Charon's chasm of black waters--I silently leaped back,replaced my boots on my feet and then held my breath. For I had seen, orperhaps felt, an object move on the lifted levels of sand between us andthe moon.
Cautiously I sank down on my breast and peered low and long up thehorizon. I saw, heard nothing. Glancing around to where my companionlay, I saw that she still had not stirred from the half recliningposition she had first taken, with half lifted face in her upturnedpalm.
Then she had seen nothing, heard nothing. This, however, did not arguemuch. Her life had not been of the desert. She had spent her years inthe study of men and women. I had spent mine with wild beasts. I couldtrust her to detect motives in men, give the warning note of danger fromdangerous men; but the wild beasts and wilder men of the border weremine to watch and battle with, not hers.
She had seen nothing; evidently she feared nothing, and so was resting,resting in mind as in body. And as I glanced again over my shoulder andsaw how entirely content she seemed, I was glad. Surely she dependedentirely on me; on my watchfulness and my courage. And this made me morewatchful and more resolute and stout of heart. A man likes to betrusted. A true man likes a true woman's trust, much indeed. A strongman likes to be leaned upon. It makes him stronger, braver, better. Letwomen never forget this. Admit that she, too, has her days of strengthand endurance; and admit that she, too, has her peculiar fortress ofstrength and courage, and these also man respects and regards withpiteous tenderness. But man, incapable of her finer and loftier courageand endurance, resents her invasion of his prerogative.
It is only a womanly man who can really love a manly woman. But tocontinue: Looking up a third time to this woman at my side, I saw thatshe had let her head sink low on her leaning arm. She was surelysleeping. How I liked her trust and her faith in me? And how I liked hercourage, too, and her high quality of endurance. It was her courage thathad brought me up here this night to the contemplation of awful andall-glorious Africa. Silently and without lifting a finger, she hadshown me a world of burnished gold. I had surely seen God through her.We stood nearer together now than ever before. This single hour ofindescribable glory should forever stand as an altar in the desert. Oursouls had melted and flown and tided on, intermingled like molten goldin the golden atmosphere and the yellow scene that wrapped us roundabout, and no word had been said. When God speaks so audibly let man besilent.
I must have looked longer on the sleeping and trustful woman at my sidethan I ought to have looked, for on turning my eyes again to thehorizon, there distinctly on the yellow sand and under the yellow moonmoved, stealthily as a cat, yet graceful and grand, the most kinglybeast I ever beheld. He did not look right nor left, but moved alongwith huge head in the air, slow and stately, and triumphant in hisfearful symmetry and strength.
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