第65章

Since my return to England it has been told me that like sounds have been heard at sea, and that the sailor becalmed under a vertical sun in the midst of the wide ocean has listened in trembling wonder to the chime of his own village bells.

At this time I kept a poor shabby pretence of a journal, which just enabled me to know the day of the month and the week according to the European calendar, and when in my tent at night I got out my pocket-book I found that the day was Sunday, and roughly allowing for the difference of time in this longitude, I concluded that at the moment of my hearing that strange peal the church-going bells of Marlen must have been actually calling the prim congregation of the parish to morning prayer. The coincidence amused me faintly, but Icould not pluck up the least hope that the effect which I had experienced was anything other than an illusion, an illusion liable to be explained (as every illusion is in these days)by some of the philosophers who guess at Nature's riddles.

It would have been sweeter to believe that my kneeling mother by some pious enchantment had asked, and found, this spell to rouse me from my scandalous forgetfulness of God's holy day, but my fancy was too weak to carry a faith like that.

Indeed, the vale through which the bells of Marlen send their song is a highly respectable vale, and its people (save one, two, or three) are wholly unaddicted to the practice of magical arts.

After the fifth day of my journey I no longer travelled over shifting hills, but came upon a dead level, a dead level bed of sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining pebbles.

The heat grew fierce; there was no valley nor hollow, no hill, no mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which Icould mark the way I was making. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change - I was still the very centre of a round horizon; hour by hour I advanced, and still there was the same, and the same, and the same - the same circle of flaming sky - the same circle of sand still glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above, over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power that could balk the fierce will of the sun: "he rejoiced as a strong man to run a race; his going forth was from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there was nothing hid from the heat thereof." From pole to pole, and from the east to the west, he brandished his fiery sceptre as though he had usurped all heaven and earth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so now, and fiercely too, he bid me bow down and worship him; so now in his pride he seemed to command me, and say, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." I was all alone before him. There were these two pitted together, and face to face - the mighty sun for one, and for the other this poor, pale, solitary self of mine, that I always carry about with me.

But on the eighth day, and before I had yet turned away from Jehovah for the glittering god of the Persians, there appeared a dark line upon the edge of the forward horizon, and soon the line deepened into a delicate fringe, that sparkled here and there as though it were sewn with diamonds.

There, then, before me were the gardens and the minarets of Egypt and the mighty works of the Nile, and I (the eternal Ego that I am!) - I had lived to see, and I saw them.

When evening came I was still within the confines of the Desert, and my tent was pitched as usual; but one of my Arabs stalked away rapidly towards the west, without telling me of the errand on which he was bent. After a while he returned;he had toiled on a graceful service; he had travelled all the way on to the border of the living world, and brought me back for token an ear of rice, full, fresh, and green.

The next day I entered upon Egypt, and floated along (for the delight was as the delight of bathing) through green wavy fields of rice, and pastures fresh and plentiful, and dived into the cold verdure of groves and gardens, and quenched my hot eyes in shade, as though in deep, rushing waters.