AN EGYPTIAN SOLDIER.
CHAPTER IX
A MILLION SUNRISES
It is very cold and quite dark when I wake. The steamer is anchored close up to the bank and not a sound comes from the still water. My blankets are very comfortable; it can't be time to turn out yet. It is an effort even to stretch out a hand and strike a light to see my watch—5.15! Yes, we ought to go!
You take some waking, and only my threat of, "You'll never get another chance in your life," brings you out of your bunk at last.
If you've ever done anything nastier than trying to dress against time, two together in a small cabin on a cold morning in the pitch dark, I'd like to know it. The electric light is off, because the engines are not running, and there are no candles. By the time we've got into some sort of clothing we're both at snarling-point. Twice I've violently tried to put on your boots, thinking they were mine, and I know you've got my shirt on, because I couldn't find it and had to drag out a clean one!
A walk along the cold dark deck and across a slippery plank to the mud bank does not improve matters. Apparently we have this exhilarating entertainment all to ourselves, for the rest of the fifteen passengers have not appeared.
The sand is like the softest silk, and it seems sometimes as if we must be walking backwards so little headway do we make. If it wasn't for this icy wind I should think I was still dreaming. All the time that red bar in the east glows steadily brighter, and warns us that if we want to see one of the grandest sights in the world—Abu Simbel by sunrise—we must hurry up.
When at last we get clear of the sand we find ourselves on a piece of ground cut up by cracks wide enough to put a foot in. There is just sufficient light to keep us from twisting our ankles if we walk along with our eyes glued to the ground, and so we get along somehow, till suddenly we stop—sunrise is here!