Eleven Possible Cases. Maurice Thompson

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      "Why not, then, let us anticipate this and build the city of refuge by your great sea in the path of this civilization which you say will so surely come?"

      Like the golden doors of dawn was the great earnest idea to me as she spoke. But of course I know, as I said before, that the "peculiar people" could not be induced to brave the desert. They do not seek rest, but action – employment in the marts. They would rest but a single night even by the sweet waters of Jacob's well.

      CHAPTER II

      As winter came on and Egypt began to be oppressively full of tourists, it was decided that we should make our escape up the Nile and haunt the ruin of Kamak and other places until the outgoing tide set in. Once fairly on our way, it did not take long to persuade me that she was not only gaining strength each day in body but in soul. We had been more than a month on the Nile; a tattered palm tree here tossing in the wind and sand; a gaunt, clay-colored camel yonder, all legs and hair; beggars, disease, despair all around us; a land to fly from, fit place for tombs, jackals, and famishing lions!

      But she was stronger, there were roses in her face. Her glorious black hair had not the dampness of death in it now, but was luxuriously sensate with renewed life and health and possible happiness.

      One warm sunset, as the boat lay with its prow in the yellow sand that seemed to stretch away into infinity, she proposed that she and I should ascend to the top of the tall ruins on a hill a little distance back from the river, and there wait and watch and listen for the coming day.

      It was a dreadful place. I had already walked a little way out, but on seeing a shriveled black hand stretching up from the sand, I had turned back; only to stumble over the head of a mummy which I had afterward seen one of our servants gather up and take to his Arab camp for firewood. Still, we had been pent up in the boat much; and then would not she be with me?

      Two Arabs were taken with us to carry a bottle of water and the rugs and robes. The hill was steeper than it at first seemed; and the ascent through the sand heavy. I was having an opportunity to test her strength and endurance. I might also have an occasion to test her courage before the break of morning, for as we entered between two towering columns of red granite, one of the Arabs dropped on a knee and spread his hand as wide as he could in the sand. But wide as he spread it, he could not more than half cover the fresh foot-print of a huge lion.

      The clamber to the top was steep and hard. Yet it was not nearly so steep and hard as I could have wished it, when I reflected that very likely before midnight a lion might pass that way.

      We found that these wonderful columns of granite were coped with great slabs of granite. These granite slabs were of astonishing breadth and thickness. This temple, as it is called, had probably been a tomb. I took good care to see that there was no other means of ascent to the place where we had chosen to spend the night than the one by which we had ascended. And I remember how eagerly I wished for a crowbar in order that I might break down a little of the débris, so that the ascent might be less easy for prowling beasts.

      But as there was nothing of the sort at hand, I dismissed the two Arabs and resolved to be as brave, if possible, as the singularly brave and beautiful woman who had come here to hear the voices of desolation.

      The sky was rimmed with yellow; yellow to the east, yellow to the west; a world of soft and restful yellow that melted away by gradations as the eye ascended from the desert. It was like melody in its serene harmonies and awful glory.

      And she at my side partook of it all; she breathed it, absorbed it, literally became a part of it. I saw her grow and glow. Soul and body I saw her dilate and expand till she was in absolute harmony with the awe and splendor that encompassed us. I felt that she had been in the midst of, even a part of, this tawny desolation ages and ages before. Perhaps her soul had been born here, born before the pyramids.

      CHAPTER III

      With my own hands I spread her couch of skins and rugs in the remotest corner of a great stone slab that still lifted its unbroken front, in defiance of time, high above the tawny sands of the desert. The night was very sultry, even here on this high and roomy summit. The broad, deep slab of granite was still warm with sunshine gone away, and gave out heat like a dying furnace. The steep and arduous ascent had taxed her strength, and unloosing her robe as I turned to examine more minutely 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 upturned palm, her face lifted away toward the rising moon.

      Half a dozen paces to the right I saw two tall and ponderous columns of granite standing in line with those that supported the great slab on which she rested. Evidently these grand and solitary columns had also once been topped by granite slabs. But these had fallen to the ground under the leveling feet of many centuries, and now lay almost swallowed up in the sea of yellow sands below. I put out my foot carefully, trying to reach the broad top of the nearest column of granite, but it was beyond me. Stepping back a couple of paces and quietly removing my boots, I gathered up my strength and made a leap, landing almost in the center of the column's top. A half step backward, another leap – who could resist the challenge of that lone and kingly column that remained? I landed securely as before, then turned about. Her face had not lifted an instant from the awful majesty of the Orient.

      Slowly, wearily, the immense moon came shouldering up through the seas of yellow sand. These billows of sand seemed to breathe and move. The expiring heat of the departed sun made them scintillate and shimmer in a soft and undulating light. And yet it was not light; only the lone and solemn ghost of a departed day. Yellow and huge and startling stood the moon at last, full grown and fearful in its nearness and immensity on the topmost lift of yellow sands in the yellow seas before us. Distance seemed to be annihilated. The moon seemed to have forgotten her place and all proportion. Looking down into the sullen Nile, it seemed a black and bottomless chasm. And it seemed so far away! And the moon so very near.

      Black as blackest Egypt rolled the somber Nile down and on and on through this world of yellow light; this light that was not light. Silence, desolation, death lay on all things below, about, above. The west was molten yellow gold, faint and fading, it is true: but where the yellow sands left off and the yellow skies began no man could say or guess, save by the yellow stars that studded the west with an intense yellow.

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