And then a creaking of heavy ropes over great pulleys....
Chapter III
Next morning, the soft, even light of a tea-rose dawn spread over a magic spectacle, beautiful as a marvellous dream, flimsy as a vision, compelling as an enchantment. The ship had glided past the monumental, marble, nine-storeyed Pharos into the Great Harbour; and Alexandria lay before the eyes of the delighted travellers, Lucius, Thrasyllus, Catullus, shining pink through diaphanous, mother-o’-pearl gleams and a slowly-lifting silvery mist, like a city of magic and fairy-tale. A long, long row of white palaces, with irregular gables, loomed through the mist and the gleam.
On the left, on the rocks of Lochias, the pillars of the former royal palace shone magical and fairylike in the silvery mist. Thrasyllus knew that, since Egypt had become a Roman province, the legate resided there, surrounded with royal honours. Under the palace the little square basin of the palace-harbour showed, gay with the purple sails of the legate’s triremes; with the little island of Antirrhodos, behind which pillars and yet more pillars outlined more and more clearly the white theatre; with the bight of the Posidium, where stood the Temple of Poseidon and the great Emporium, the great market of the merchant shippers, while a pier ran into the harbour on which, dainty as a marble ornament, stood the villa of the Timoneum, built by Mark Antony. A riot of luxuriant green gardens, with the stately crowns of palm-trees and the dreamy-delicate crests of tamarisks, flung cool, dark nosegays between all those gleaming white buildings, which began to blink in the ever fiercer sunshine....
Thrasyllus pointed with his finger, along the harbour, the long row of palaces of the Cæsareum, the huge docks and yards teeming all motley with people and industry, to the Heptastadium, the promenade-jetty which stretched out to unite the city with the island of Pharos, whence the light-house took its name. On the one side of this pier, with rostra and statues on the marble balustrade and gates, lay the harbour of Eunostus and the naval docks of Cibotus.
The water on every side was crowded and swarming with vessels: biremes and triremes, battle-ships and merchant-ships; the masts rose like a forest of poplars and the sails glowed like the many-coloured wings of one bird against another; and, as soon as the quadrireme glided in, she was surrounded by a host of sloops, filled with traders, with yelling Arabs and Nubians. The Aphrodite heaved to; a pilot came on board; then she glided on again through the press of the sloops, the yelling of the traders and with swanlike elegance turned and lay to beside the great quay, at the place where she was expected, the place kept open for her.
The quay, between the obelisks, was alive with a maddening concourse of people: sailors and merchants, vendors of fruit and water and vegetables, chattering women, screaming children, Ethiopian beggars, Greek students, priests of Serapis and Isis, Roman soldiers; and all pointed at the ship and streamed in unison to gaze at her in wide-eyed and open-mouthed admiration. For, though numbers of vessels entered the Great Harbour of Alexandria daily, it was not every day that the quay was visited by so impressive a quadrireme as this; and the beautiful ship aroused curiosity.
The three travellers stood on the prow, beside the silver figure of Aphrodite, and Catullus said, in an appreciative tone:
“It’s not half bad. Just look at that row of palaces! It is as though Alexandria were one great palace, opening on its harbour! And what people, white, dark and black, all mixed! And what a noise they make, what a noise! We are much calmer in Italy!... Do look, Lucius, at all those ibises walking about on the quay, quiet and tame, pecking here and there, upon my word as though they were at home! Do you see the ibises, Thrasyllus? I thought that they just stood and dreamed on one leg, beside the Nile, like poetic birds ... and, the moment I arrive, I see great flocks of them actually walking on the quay of Alexandria’s harbour! White ibises, black ibises, piebald ibises! What a crowd of ibises! What a crowd of them! And so dignified, much more dignified than the people! Ye gods, what a noisy crew the Alexandrians are!”