The American Consul wired from Asiut that he was detained by an Important Personage, who wanted to know things about Egyptian Cotton and its enemy the boll worm. But Mr. and Mrs. Bronson would arrive at the Villa Sirius, Luxor, day after to-morrow, "ready for emergencies."
Of course, being Conductor of a tour, and next a man, I ought to have put the interests of Sir Marcus and his "Lark Pie" (as we were called by rival firms) ahead of personal concerns. I ought to have immolated myself in the western Mummyland with the consciousness of duty done, while on the eastern side of the Nile, Anthony Fenton and Monny Gilder and Biddy played the live, modern game of kidnapping a lady. But I determined to do nothing of the sort. I gazed at the telegram with the air of committing to heart instructions from my superior officer; and without sign of inward tremour, announced that we would explore the wonders of the west before visiting those nearer at hand. The weather being cool and the wind not too high (I said), it would be well to seize this opportunity for the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, an expedition trying in heat or sand storms. To-morrow also would be devoted to the west, and our third day would belong to Luxor and Karnak. As a bonne bouche, I dangled the adventure of the Temple of Mût, to sweeten the temper of grumblers: but there were no grumblers. The Set listened calmly to my honeyed plausibilities; and the alarmed stewards dared not betray their consternation at the lightning change.
No doubt they thought me mad, or worse, because a day in western Thebes meant a picnic: magical apparition at the right moment, in a convenient tomb, of smiling Arabs and Nubian men with baskets of food and iced drinks.
Somehow the trick had to be managed, however; for I must be in eastern Thebes, alias Luxor, on the day when the Bronsons' presence would render our second attempt at rescue feasible. I had to interview the chêf—a formidable person—hypnotizing him and the stewards to work my will, and above all, I had to make sure of boats and donkeys for the party at short notice. Only by a miracle could all go well; but I set my heart upon that miracle. "Antoun," hurriedly taken into my confidence, volunteered to arrange about the boats, and the donkeys for the other side. Fortunately there was no rival ahead of us; and with juggling of plans and jingle of silver, Anthony's part was done. Just at the moment when, by dint of bribes and adjurations I had induced chêf and stewards to smile, Fenton dashed on board to cry "Victory!" Somehow, less than an hour later than we should have started, we got off in two big boats with white sails and brown rowers. The canvas did its work in silent, bulging dignity; but the rowers exhausted themselves by breathlessly imploring Allah to grant them strength, and shouting extra prayers to some sailor-saint whose name was calculated to pump dry the strongest lungs.
On the mystic western side, where once landed with pomp and pageant the sun-boat of the gods, and the mourning boats of the dead, we scrambled on shore with that ribald mirth which always made the Set feel it was getting its money's worth of enjoyment. Many donkeys and a few carriages awaited us: the whole equipment previously engaged for to-morrow! and in opaline sunshine which stained with pale rose the Theban hills and piled the shadows full of dark, dulled rubies, we started across an emerald plain, kept ever verdant by Nile water. The touch of comedy in the dream of beauty was the queer, mud-brick village of Kurna, with its tomb dwellings of the poor, and immense mud vases shaped like mushrooms, standing straight up on thick brown stems before the crowded hovels. In each vase reposed sleeping babies, brooding hens, dogs, rabbits, or any other live stock, mixed with such rubbish as the family possessed: and the most ambitious mushrooms were decorated with barbaric crenellations.
Almost as far as the Temple of Seti I flowed the green wave like a lake in the desert, but beyond, to join the Sahara, rolled and billowed a waste of rose-pink sand, shot with topaz light, and walled with fantastic rocks, yellow and crimson, streaked with purple. In the heart of each shadow, fire burned like dying coals in a mass of rosy ashes: and the light over all was luminous as light on southern seas at moonrise and sunset. Before our eyes seemed to float a diaphanous veil of gilded gauze; and white robes and red sashes of donkey-boys, animals' bead necklaces, and blue or green scarfs on girls' hats, were like magical flowers blowing over the gold of the desert.
Everything blew: above all, sand blew. We found that out to our sorrow, after we had seen the Temple of Kurna, with its noble columns, and its fine fragment of roof, where squares of sky were let in like blocks of lapis lazuli. I rushed here and there on donkey-back assuring people that this was not wind we felt: it was only a breeze. We could not have a more favourable day for our excursion into this world of the dead. Why, if we'd waited till to-morrow we might have met a real wind, perhaps even Khamsin, alias Simoom, the terror of the desert. To make Miss Hassett-Bean and Cleopatra forget the smarting of their eyes, I told them what a true-sand-storm was like, and how its names in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian all came from the fiend "Samiel," who destroyed caravans, just as "devil" came from the Persian "div." Our little breeze was from the east, which at Thebes in old days was considered lucky. The west wind used to bear across the river evil spirits disguised as sand-clouds. And these wicked ones had not far to travel, because the Tuat, or Underworld, was a long narrow valley parallel to Egypt, beginning on the west bank of the Nile. Red-haired Set was ruler there, the god who had to be propitiated by having kings named after him. But Rä, greater than he, could safely pass down the dim river running through that world: could pass in his golden sun-boat, guided by magic words of Thoth instead of oars or sails; and the guardian hippopotamus (whom Greeks turned into the dog Cerberus) dared not put out a paw.
Mrs. East remembered that Thebes was Tape in "her day," at which Miss Hassett-Bean snorted: and when out came that familiar story about Cleopatra making red hair fashionable, Miss Hassett-Bean stared coldly at the lady's auburn waves. "I wonder if the queen got the colour at her hairdresser's, as people do now?" she murmured. "I've read that they had beauty-doctors in those days, and used arsenic for their complexion, and all sorts of mixtures. Besides, I can't imagine anything natural about Cleopatra, except the asp wanting to bite her!" Upon this, Mrs. East retaliated by calling her companion Miss Bean without the Hassett.
I shall always think of the Valley of the Tombs as a place of terror and splendour, meant to be hidden from mortals by the spells of Thoth, who circled the rock-houses of the dead with a zone of fire, as Wotan hid Brunhilda, and decreed that they should be lost forever in the blazing desert. Despite Thoth and his magic, men have burst through the blazing belt and found in the gold-rose heart of the rocks, sacred shrines the wise old god would have protected. They have found many but not all: for in the breast of some one among Thoth's sleeping lions which masquerade as rocks, may yet be discovered a tomb, better than all those we know with their buried store of jewels, and their painted walls like drapings of strange tapestry.
We broke through the zone of fire, and it pursued us with burning smoke of sand, pink as powdered rubies. Always it was beautiful and terrible as we rode in the blowing pink mist: and still it was beautiful and terrible, when half dazed we slipped off donkeys or slid out of carriages, to enter the tombs which the desert had vainly striven to hide. It was hot and breathless in those underground chambers, scooped out of solid rock thousands of years ago, that great kings and their queens and families and friends might rest with their kas in eternal privacy. Enid Biddell waited until Harry Snell happened to be exactly behind her, and then fainted, with dexterity beyond praise. Cleopatra, however, was in her element. She felt at home, and did not turn one of those auburn hairs scorned by "Miss Bean," at sight of the royal mummies lit up by electricity in their coffins. These gave the rest of us a shock, our nerves being already in the condition of Aladdin's on his way down to the Cave of Jewels. When the guardian of the Tomb of Amenhetep (the king had several other names, which annoyed Sir John Biddell) darkened the painted, royal chamber of death, and suddenly lit up several white, sleeping faces, the ghostly dusk was alive with little gasps. There lay Amenhetep himself, in a disproportionately large sarcophagus of rose-red granite from Suan; and in companion coffins were a woman and a girl, all three brilliantly illuminated. They had the look of the light hurting their poor eyes, and being outraged because, against their will, they were treated as if they had been paintings by old masters.