“May the gods bless you, Brother Caleb; may Thoth, Hermes and Serapis bless you! Quick, let us look in the cellars if we have enough in store!”
There came a sudden shower, as though poured from an urn in the sky by an invisible water-god; and the two brothers, with their garments girdled up, rushed bare-legged through the puddles of their palm-garden to their wine-cellars, which lay warm as stone cupolas in the sun, or else were kept cool with double walls filled with snow.
Chapter XIV
In the still and silent night, the Delta lay flooded by the kindly waters of the sacred river. From the Canopic to the Sebennytic mouth, from the Phatmetic along the Mendesian to the Pelusiac mouth, the Delta lay flooded: one still and silent sea in the night, a wide, silver sheet of water without a ripple, stretching farther than the eye could reach in the soft-falling sheen of the full moon. Between the river-mouths the canals lay in streaks of silver light, full of water to their edges. Past the blossoming reeds, past the blossoming lotuses and water-lilies, the great barge glided up the stream as in a vision.
There was not a sound amid the silence but the dripping from the oars.
The night was muffled, wide and immense. It was as though the moon, up above, had inundated the sky, even as the flood the sacred land below. It was as though the flood of moonshine were drenching the sacred sky also with a calm, unrippled sea, but a sea of light. The night was like a noiseless, silvery day; the night was like a shadow of the day. In that inundation of the light of heaven the stars paled, innumerous, like a silvery powder sprinkled by the moonshine. There lay the lake of Butos, wide and mystic and gleaming. Island emerged after island. Palms stood in clusters, stately, motionless and delicate. A shrine appeared and vanished as the dream-barge glided down a bend of the canal. Country-mansions stood peacefully linked together. There were taller dykes and patches of golden, shadowy wheat. Sheaves of corn looked like the images of gods, reverence-compelling, ranged in order beside one another, against the wall of a barn. A peculiar scent was wafted by, a fresh aroma as of always moist flowers.
The outline of a village came into view. And hamlet joined itself to hamlet, with shrines and mansions in between. Suddenly, farther up, in the sea of glory, in the sea of light, huge needles rose on high from the ground, with quivering lines, and became lost in the midst of light.
Thrasyllus standing by Cora on the fore-castle pointed:
“The obelisks of Sais.”