Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/135

Rh seasons of the year, now sit through the months of overflow with their huge feet in the flooding Nile waters, and throughout the winter and springtime plant them in its rich alluvium, green with the sprouting wheat, or blue-flecked with blossoms of the lentil.

More than sixteen hundred years had passed since either of them had uttered a sound, and the silence was becoming monotonous. Shama, the Southern Colossus, was the first to break it.

"Are you still there, Tama?" he asked, in a low and carefully modulated voice, which, however, awoke thunderous echoes from the Libyan range behind him, and slightly shook the windows of the Luxor Hotel.

"Why, certainly," replied his companion in the same subdued tone.

"It seems an age since I heard you sing at sunrise," muttered the Southern Colossus.

"Does it?" said Tama, with a slightly ironical inflection of the voice. "Only an