IV
The first time Mahmoud woke the moon had won the battle, and was shining on the temple, turning all to unreal, ethereal building, faintly roseate, a temple seen in a dream. Mahmoud looked towards the lake and all was still; the moon made a white sheet of water.
The second time Mahmoud woke the moon was down, but from the lake came a light—soft, lambent, golden. He looked towards it, and oh the glory, the wonder! a golden boat was riding on the water.
Mahmoud had often seen under the hot sun, in some ripple of desert sand, a sudden sheet of water. In the middle it was clear water, bright, reflecting the edge of cultivated land. At the margin it was uncertain; no eye could tell where it melted into the shaking haze of heat. So here, the middle of the boat was clear and distinct, and on the deck was standing one single figure; but at the stern and prow, though he saw figures he saw them dimly, the outlines of them melted into the gold reflection of the water.
The central figure on the deck he marked from head to foot. He says he has seen the face outlined on some temple wall, but he can never find it. He says, too, it was not unlike the father of Gorgius the Copt donkey-boy. But the father of Gorgius, he added, was only a fellah-man; this was a great man, greater than the Khedive of Egypt, as great as a King of England.
But of one thing he is certain: not only had the figure a strange erection on his head, but he wore a lion’s tail behind. Mahmoud’s eyes were so riveted to the figure that he could not tell how the boat moved. He said something about a sail and something about oars; but this he knew, that though it moved on with its golden reflection over the lake, it stirred no water in front and no widening ripple ran out behind.
It was drawing to the shore, and suddenly, as if it had come within focus, the prow was clear to him, with a man leaping down to the land, a coil of golden rope upon his arm.
What passed next was but the work of an instant. Without rising to his feet Mahmoud shot down like a snake among the stones, and as the man coiled the rope round a rock he seized it.
As the lightning flash strikes across the sky, so the man with this golden light upon him leaped back; and into the waters of the lake, into the golden reflection, sank the boat, without sound or ripple.