Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/287

 

THE MOSLEMS OF GAZA — A BRAVE MISSIONARY.

The message which awaked me Saturday night produced a strange tumult in my thoughts. "All well!" Did those words drop down from heaven, or from the top of the campanile at Florence, to be caught up by the night wind, and borne to this farthest corner of the Mediterranean? Was it strange if, under the cover of our tent, I felt as if "rocked in the cradle of the deep," and listening to the cry "All's well" from the ship's deck — a cry repeated all night long, marking the hours? But that cry sounded so far away that it seemed as if it were not uttered by any earthly guard or sentinel, but by some heavenly Watcher gliding before us through the darkness, and making a path of safety in the great waters. Such at least were the fancies that, waking or sleeping, filled my thoughts and mingled with my dreams, till the sun shone through the curtains of the tent, and lo! the Sabbath had come. It was broad day, and yet there was neither sight nor sound of motion in the camp. The camels were still prone on the earth, as if they had reached the end of their wanderings, and the desert should know them no more; while the men lay motionless, as if they were sleeping their last sleep. The sky was of the deepest blue, as if it had caught the reflection from the Mediterranean; and in the air there was

which no philosophy can explain but as an Invisible