Natheless his somewhat gloomy letter to Hester Maule, Malcolm Skene, though feeling to the fullest extent the influence of the presentiment of evil therein referred to, was too young, and of too elastic a nature, not to feel also a sense of ardour, enterprise, and enthusiasm at the confidence reposed in him by his superiors. With an inherent love of adventure and a certain recklessness of spirit, he armed himself, mounted, and quitted his quarters at Cairo just when the first red rays of the morning sun were tipping with light the summit of the citadel or the apex of each distant pyramid, and rode on his solitary way—solitary all save Hassan, the swarthy Egyptian guide provided for him by the Quartermaster-General's Department.
He had been chiefly selected for the duty in question—to bear despatches to the Amir-Ali, or Colonel, commanding the Egyptian force at Dayr-el-Syrian, in consequence of his proficiency in Arabic—the most prevailing language of the country.
He and his guide were mounted on camels. Skene's was one of great beauty, if an animal so ungainly can be said to possess it, with a small head, short ears, and bending neck. Its tail was long, its hoofs small, and it was swift of action. The rider was without baggage; he wore his fighting kit of Khakee cloth and tropical helmet with a pugaree. He had his sword and revolver, with goggles, and a pocket compass for use if his guide in any way proved at fault.
Unnoticed he traversed the picturesque streets that lay between the citadel and the gate that led by a straight road towards the castle and gardens of Ghizeh, passing the groups and features incident to Cairo: a lumbering train of British baggage waggons, escorted by our soldiers in clay-coloured khakee with bayonets fixed; an Egyptian officer in sky-blue uniform and red tarboosh 'tooling' along on a circus-like Arab; a whole regiment of darkies, perhaps with rattling drums and French bugles; strings of maimed, deformed, and blind beggars; private carriages with outriders in Turkish costumes of white muslin with gold embroideries, and bare-legged grooms; 'the gallant, gray donkeys of which Cairo is so proud, and which the Cairenes delight in naming after European celebrities, from Mrs. Langtry to Lord Wolseley;' singers of Nubian and Arabian songs and dealers in Syrian magic, all were left behind, and in the cool air of the morning Malcolm Skene found himself ambling on his camel under the shadows of the lebbek trees, with wading buffaloes and flocks of herons on either side of the road as he skirted the plain where the Pyramids stand—the Pyramids that mock Time, which mocks all things.
He was too familiar with them then to bestow on them more than a passing glance, and rode forward on his somewhat lonely way. Hassan, his guide, like a true Arab, uttered a mocking yell on seeing the vast stony face of the Sphinx—an efrit—fired a pistol, and threw stones at it, as at a devil, and then civilization was left behind.
Trusting to his guide Hassan, Skene was taken a few miles off his direct route southward down the left bank of the Nile, and while riding on, turning from time to time to converse with that personage, who was a typical Fellah—very dark-skinned, with good teeth, black and sparkling eyes, muscular of form, yet spare of habit, and clad simply in loose blue cotton drawers with a blue tunic and red tarboosh—it seemed that his face and voice were somehow not unfamiliar to him.
But where, amid the thousands of low-class Fellaheen in Cairo, could Malcolm Skene have seen the former or heard the latter? Never before had he heard of Hassan Abdullah even by name. But 'strange it is, for how many days and weeks we may be haunted by a likeness before we know what it is that is gladdening us with sweet recollections, or vexing us with some association we hoped to have left behind.'
Memphis, with its ruins and mounds, in the midst of which stand the Arab hamlets of Sokkara and Mitraheny, was traversed with some difficulty, though the site is now chiefly occupied by waste and marshes that reach to the sand-hills on the edge of the desert; but from Abusir all round to the west and south, for miles, Skene and his guide found themselves stepping from grave to grave amid bones and fragments of mummy cloth—the remains of that wondrous necropolis which, according to Strabo, extended half a day's journey each way from the great city of Central Egypt.
'Ugh!' muttered Malcolm Skene, as he guided the steps of his camel and lighted more than one long havannah, 'this is anything but lively! What a dismal scene!'
'The work of the Pharaohs,' said Hassan, for to them everything is attributed by the Fellaheen, who suppose they lived about three hundred years ago.