“We have enough to eat. The others like the Excellency’s white bread if there is any to spare. The wine made paradise of my stomach.”
I gave him a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine.
“What about water?” I asked.
“There is here a very good well. All the water bottles I have filled. The camels have drunk when they did not expect. They give thanks. But the sand drives even here and there is to-day and to-night. If the effendi likes and will come five minutes through the storm I can show him better shelter. Very good place, no wind, no sand, very cool place.”
I was used now to the place I was in, and averse from changing it until I started back to civilisation. I was profoundly distrustful of Jakoub, and I did not like the idea of going out again into that stinging storm.
But the man offered me better quarters. I had no good reason for refusing to try them. I was determined not to seem to fear him, and my wretched shyness prevented me from discussing the matter and questioning him as any sensible man would have done.
“Very well,” I said, “go on.”
He led me out again and we trod the ankle-deep sand past where the camels lay. They were of course unloaded and looked very contented and supercilious.
We reached the limit of the great wall, and I could just see that it was only one part of a vast building; we were at an angle where another wall met it. But the driving sand hid all the mysteries of the structure. Jakoub led me away from the Temple, and down the slope of a ridge on which it seemed to be built. I had to keep my head down for protection from the moving sand, but even so I could see that I was stumbling over masses of broken, worthless pottery. I passed fragments of marble pillars and fractured capitals lying in the sand. My feet slid on the loose sand covering a portion of tessellated pavement.
There had been Greek artists here, and I knew that, as I suspected, I was among the ruins of some old Ptolemaic pleasaunce and place of worship.