Here the travellers rested to breakfast. But after a short halt, they pursued their way until they reached the ruins of an ancient city. The spot was called Abou Kesheed: here the intolerable heat compelled them again to stop for a couple of hours. Sidney and Campbell, sheltered from the sun by an old carpet hung on three lances, reclined beside an immense block of granite, which had been transported from its native quarry at Syene, a distance of five hundred miles, to be sculptured into three strange figures, and covered with signs and symbols of strange import. Sidney, who had paid some attention to the researches of Champollion and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, considered their authority decisive that the figures were those of Rameses the Great, the Sesostris of the Greeks, placed between the two deities Re and Atmoo. He pointed out the hieroglyphic signet of the mighty monarch, and maintained that the ruins around were the relics of one of the treasure cities, built by Pharaoh to secure the tribute paid by the children of Israel when they dwelt in the land of Goshen.
The banks of the great canal which once joined the Nile and the Red Sea, were visible near the ruins in two long ranges of sandy mounds. This mighty work was said by the Greeks to have been constructed by Sesostris, or Rameses—the very monarch who now sat before them turned into granite with his immortal name wrought into an enigma beside him. Sidney argued that this spot was the Raamses of Exodus; and Campbell declared that as it was only two days’ march from Suez, it was a military point which he thought himself bound to occupy, in a dissertation on the invasion of Egypt by an Indian army from the Red Sea. Mr Lascelles Hamilton, who was very impatient during these discussions, could not lay claim to the poetic lines that may now be seen issuing from the mouth of a magnificent ram-headed god, in Belzoni’s tomb at Thebes—for neither the lines, nor the guide-book which suggested them, were then in existence— “I am, and always have been, Ammon,
In spite of all Sir Gardner’s gammon;”
but the speaking machine expressed a similar sentiment a dozen times, clothed in language partaking less of what he himself called humbug.
All these learned cogitations were interrupted by Aali, who came to inform them that Hassan had found that the horses were waiting for them at a neighbouring well. This well, though said to be in the neighbourhood, it took them more than two long hours to reach. The party grew excessively impatient. Mr Ringlady entered into a violent altercation with his accomplished dragoman Mohammed, accusing him of ignorance of the route, and of deception concerning the distance. Campbell declared he could go no farther, saying, “that he did not see why they should mak a tile o’ a pleesure.” His pronunciation certified his fatigue; nature got the better of art at this crisis, as happened with Dante’s cat, which, though taught to sit on the table with a candle in its paw, dropped the light on Dante’s fingers when it saw a mouse. The loquacious Mr Lascelles Hamilton was silent, and apparently asleep. Sidney endeavoured to keep up the courage of Campbell, and keep down the wrath of Ringlady, by complaining of his own sufferings.
The well of Saba Biar was not reached until it was dark. Indeed Sidney had all along suspected that Hassan would not approach it by daylight, in order to conceal their movements as much as possible. He had kept the party for two long hours moving in the hollow of the ancient canal, without a breath of air, and suffering the intolerable heat of a bright sun reflected from two parallel lines of sand-hills.
At Saba Biar, it became necessary to hold a council of war; in order to admit all the party into the secret of the flight of Aali and his bride, and propose that they should join in taking horses, and flying all together into Syria. It was therefore announced to Mr Ringlady, that his advice was required concerning the movements of the caravan next day. Pleased with the deference thus shown to his mellifluous voice and large tent, he invited the whole party to discuss the matter over tchibooks and Mocha. The party assembled. Ringlady, Campbell, and Lascelles Hamilton seated on stools, Sidney, Aali, and Hassan squatting on the ground, formed a circle.
Hassan began by a very long speech, which it was needless for Sidney to translate, as it gave them no idea of what he intended to communicate. Aali followed in one quite as long, in what appeared, from the words of which it was composed, to be Italian; but the interminable length of the sentences, and the flowery nature of the diction, rendered it as unintelligible to every one present, as if it had really been in the Farsee of the Ottoman chancery, of which it was a copy. Sidney then stated shortly in English, that the consent of the travellers was wanted to aid in the escape of Aali and his bride from the power of Mohammed Ali, and that it was proposed that they should have horses ready waiting for them and ride all together to Gaza. He treated it as the simplest thing in the world, just as if their pursuit, capture, and murder, in the midst of the desert, by some party of wild Bedoweens despatched from Cairo was not an event to excite a moment’s hesitation.
Mr Ringlady began now to perceive that he was not on the route he had bargained to take, and of which he had, with the assistance of his faithful dragoman Mohammed, compiled a very minute itinerary and description before leaving Cairo. Instead of being at El Gran, he was in the centre of the Isthmus of Suez. He called the faithful Mohammed into the tent, and inquired with desperate calmness the name of the place where they were.
Mohammed replied with the same calm—“El Gran.”
“Is it El Gran?” repeated Mr Ringlady.
Aali, who thought the inquiry was dictated by the eagerness Mr Ringlady usually displayed in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, innocently said the place was called Saba Biar.