I HAD placed my bed on a rock high enough to get the benefit of any breath of cooler air which the north breeze might bring; the nightly drop in the temperature usual in the desert does not obtain in like manner on the edge of the Nile. Our exalted position on the roof of Edfu temple had been conducive to sleep, and during the first three nights I slept well, perched up on my rock. Strange dreams, however, disturbed the fourth night. My identity got hopelessly mixed up with that of Horus; the steam-launch and the ship I had copied at Edfu temple became a composite craft, with the lassoed hippopotamus serving as a drag anchor. I resented the anxiety shown by the goddess in the prow to meet the handsome young king on the bank, and felt I was handicapped in my courtship by having a hawk’s head. My divinity was outweighed by the good looks of the mortal, and I was preparing to use my spear in as effective a manner on him as I had on the hippopotamus, when the boat bumped heavily against the bank and awoke me.

I was shivering on the rock, having fallen out of my bed, and was soon conscious enough to know that I had fever. I never sleep out of doors without having a blanket handy to pull over me in case of a sudden drop in the temperature, and I made use of it now. I could not trust myself to climb down the rock and get to the more sheltered place of my companions, nor could I make any one hear me. Slowly the night went by, shivering fits alternating with fantastic dreams—yet no inclination to rise came with the dawn. I heard shouts from below that breakfast was ready, but all the breakfast I wanted was a dose of quinine. My friend climbed up bringing me the drug, and was anxious to see what was the matter. Thinking it was a touch of the malarious fever which for years I had been subject to, I hoped that in a day or two I should be all right again. I could not, however, remain where I lay, for as the sun got up, so my rock became untenable. Getting into the shade of the tomb, which we called our living-room, ways and means were discussed, I acquiescing in whatever my friend proposed.

Assuan was the nearest place where a doctor could be found, and a four-mile ride would take us to the nearest station on the line. A train left about two o’clock, and donkeys might be obtainable at the nearest village. We drifted down the Nile to the nearest spot from which we could ride to the station, and while writing these lines that ride comes back to me as a horrible nightmare. The midday sun of June in Upper Egypt is carefully avoided by those in the best of health, even when a well-saddled donkey is obtainable. But ill as I was, with nothing but a sack of straw for a saddle, the trials of that ride are indescribable. My sketching umbrella and pith helmet were a protection from the direct rays of the sun, but none from the scorching heat which rose from the baked soil. When we left the sandstone rocks on our right we got on to the cultivated land, and I could see the little station, across the plain, trembling in the heated air. I managed somehow to get there without tumbling off the straw sack, and I had that sack taken off my donkey to use it as a pillow on the station floor. Some fellaheen were lying about on the flags, and even they seemed overcome with the oven-like heat of the station, on the flat roof of which the vertical rays of the sun had been beating.

The train service in Upper Egypt is excellent while the tourist season is on; but, as may be supposed, few trains crawl along the desert track in midsummer. Happily there is generally one first-class car attached, on the chance of some official being obliged to make a journey, and in this car there is often a sunk well in the floor, which serves as a small ice cellar. I had at other times unfavourably contrasted the luxuriousness of the official car with the cattle trucks which seemed good enough for the natives. I forgave them readily enough now, while I greedily drank of the cold water obtainable by means of the ice cellar. Fortunately, also, one decent hotel remains open at Assuan after the more luxurious ones put up their shutters. I could, therefore, look forward to a comfortable bed after the five long hours of the train journey.

THE VILLAGE OF MARG

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When the proprietor seemed satisfied that I had neither the plague nor cholera, a room was got ready for me, and the only European doctor then in Assuan was soon at my bedside. He was a kind-hearted Swiss missionary, who had still four days to remain here before he left for Jerusalem, and should I not be well enough to move then, the permanent medical man at the dam could be sent for from Shellal. He said I was down with sunstroke, and ordered an ice-bag to be put to my head, and told me I could put another on my chest if I liked. He looked in again about midnight, and several Englishmen also called to offer any assistance they could give. Who they were and what they said I only found out when I returned to Egypt the following season. One sentence, however, I understood, and that was that the thermometer had reached 124 degrees in the shade during the afternoon. I was also conscious enough, when left alone, of a cutting pain in the right side of my chest, and decided to dispense with the ice-bag there until I knew what this pain meant. I heard voices in another room, and a declaration of ‘no trumps,’ also an argument about ‘going diamonds,’ and I felt a certain comfort that countrymen of mine were near at hand.

While I lay awake that night a curious sensation that I was two people got hold of me. Was it I or my double who felt this cutting pain? And whose turn was it to take the medicine the doctor had left? It was very nasty, and I rather resented that my double had not fairly shared in the taste. The Ka (which the ancient Egyptians believed was born with the body, as distinct from the soul) served as a guardian spirit or ‘double,’ who accompanied the mortal during his lifetime and tended to his wants after death as long as his remains were preserved in their mummy state. One of us must be this Ka, I thought; and whether I or the other fellow was the ‘double’ exercised what little mind I could bring to bear on the subject.