CHAPTER VTHE 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 signthat 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 floweringweeds. “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 oldplace 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 goingto 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’sthe 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 standyour 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 believethat 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 anythingin 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, smiledat 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. Init!”
He pointed to the pyramid at the end of theroad 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 haveto 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 seriesof 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,” saidthe 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, therearen’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 wherethe 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 twentyyears 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 greatmasterpieces,” he said reverently. “You saw him paint it?”
Simply, the lad replied:
“I have been here all night.”