Well, sir, I thought dad was a brave man, but he blatted like a calf, and when the camel stopped and went to eating a clump of grass dad opened his eyes, and when he saw that the procession had stopped he rolled off his camel like a bag of wheat, and stuck in the sand and began to say a prayer, but when he saw me standing there, laughing, he stopped praying, and said to me: “I thought you were blown up when that jackass kicked the can of dynamite. You have more lives than a cat. Now, get a hustle on you and we will climb that pyramid, and then quit this blasted country,” and dad sat down on a hummock and began to pull himself together, after the most fearful ride he ever had. He said the camel loped, trotted, galloped, single-footed and shied all at the same time, and when one hump was not jamming him in the back the other hump was kicking him in the stomach, and if he had a gun he would shoot the camel, and the Arabs, and bust up the show.
By the time dad got so he could stand up without leaning against a pyramid the Arabs came up and they all talked at once, and drew knives, and it seemed as though they were blaming dad for something. We found an interpreter among the tourists, and he talked with the Arabs, and pointing to the camel dad had ridden, which was stretched out on the sand like he was dead, he told dad the Arabs wanted him to pay for the camel he had ridden to death, and foundered by letting it drink a wagon load of water, and then entered in a race across the desert, and the interpreter said dad better pay, or they would kill him.
Dad settled for the camel for a hundred dollars, and a promise of the skin of the camel, which he was going to take home and have stuffed. Then a man who pretended to be a justice of the peace had dad arrested for driving off of a walk, and he was fined $10 and costs for that, and then all the Arabs stuck him for money for one thing and another, and when he had settled all around and paid extra for not riding back to Cairo on the camel, we got ready to climb up the pyramid. Dad said he wouldn't ride that camel back to Cairo for a million dollars, for he was split up so his legs began where his arms left off, and he was lame from Genesis to Revelations.
But I never saw such a lot of people to pray as these pirates are. Just before they rob a man they get down on their knees on a rug, and mumble something to some god, and after they have got you robbed good and plenty, they get down and pray while they are concealing the money they took from you. Gee, but when I get home I am going to steer the train robbers and burglars onto the idea of always being on praying grounds.
Well, I told dad he hadn't better try to climb up the pyramid, that I would go up, 'cause I could climb like a goat, and when I got up to the top I would fire a salute, so everybody would know that a star spangled American was on deck, but dad said he would go up or quit the tourist business. He said he had come thousands of miles to climb the pyramids, and sit in the shadow of the spinks, and by ginger he was going to do it, and so we started.
Well, say, each stone is about four feet high, and dad couldn't get up without help, so an Arab would go up a stone ahead, and take hold of dad's hands, and two more Arabs would get their shoulders under dad's pants, and shove, and he would get up gradually. We got about half way up when dad weakened, and said he didn't care so much about pyramids as he thought he did, and he was ready to quit, but the guide and some of the tourists said we were right near the entrance to the great tomb of the kings, and that we better go in and at least make a formal call on the crowned heads, and so we went in, through dark passages, with little candles that the guides carried, and up and down stairs, until finally we got into a big room that smelled like a morgue, with bats and evil looking things all around, and I felt creepy.
The guides got down on their knees to pray, and I thought it was time to be robbed again. I do not know what made me think of making a sensation right there in the bowels of that pyramid, where there were corpses thousands of years old, of Egypt's rulers. I never felt that way at home, when I visited a cemetery, but I though I would shoot my last roman candle and fire my last giant firecracker right there in that moseleum, and take the chances that we would get out alive. So when the tourists were lined up beside a tomb of some Rameses or other, and the guides were praying for strength and endurance, probably, to get away with all the money we had, I picked out a place up toward the roof that seemed full of bats and birds of ill omen, and I sneaked my roman candle out from under my shirt, and touched the fuse to a candle on the turban of a guide who was on his knees, and just as the first fire ball was ready to come out I yelled “Whoop-la-much-a wano, epluribus un-um,” and the fire balls lighted up the gloom and knocked the bats gaily west.