Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/598

590 recking then as now who was their master, provided the taxes were not too heavy, had been stirred up by the priests to a state of most unwonted agitation, in consequence of some insult offered by the Roman soldiery to the sacred animals of the district.

The palm-trees were standing motionless, not a breath stirring their long pendent branches; the broad, swollen Nile was glittering like molten metal, as he rolled majestically to the sea. In the back ground the steep sandy ridges and black crags were baking in the sun, and the only sound that broke the silence was the roar of the distant cataract.

“Curse these Egyptians and their gods,” muttered poor melting Septimius. “I only wish I had the bull Apis here to-day, or that lumbering brute Basis which pretty Cleopatra used to worship at Hermonthis, and I would see how he could stand this weather. I say, Lepidus, a steak cut out of Apis would be a blessed change for us from those eternal scraggy fowls, that they feed us on. How snug the fat brute looked in his temple at Memphis. I only wish the Emperor’s Centurions were put up half as luxuriously.”

“Hush, hush, Septimius,” answered Lepidus, his second in command, “you shouldn’t ventilate those free-thinking opinions of yours so openly. Whatever you think, keep a check on your tongue, for the old priesthood is jealous and powerful even yet, and strange stories are told of their secret doings.”

“A fig for the priesthood!” quoth Septimius. “What care I for Apis or Osiris either? I am a Roman citizen and a Roman soldier. I fear no man but my superior officer, and I know no god but the Emperor.”

“Mark my words,” was the reply. “Antony was a greater than you, Septimius, and he bowed the knee to Apis and Osiris too; why, they say, he was consecrated himself, and stood high in the priestly ranks, and yet he crouched like a beaten hound to old Petamon, the priest of Isis, and obeyed his very nod. I have heard strange things of that Petamon; men say he knew the old Egyptian secrets, and could raise the very dead from their long sleep to answer him. And his grandson and successor is a mightier enchanter than his sire. It was he that stirred up these poor Egyptian slaves almost to rebellion, not ten days ago, because one of the legionaries broke the head of a dirty ape that he caught stealing the stores. They say he is at Philæ just now concocting some new plot; so, my good fellow, do keep your eyes open, and your mouth shut—if you can.”

Septimius laughed, half good-naturedly, half contemptuously; and, humming a stave of Horace, turned in to take a nap, while Lepidus went round the sentries, to see that none were sleeping on their posts.

It was evening, the sun had set some half hour before; and the sky, after melting through all the hues of the rainbow, had merged in one delicious violet, in which the pure clear moon and the planet Venus were shining with a glorious light such as they never attain in duller climes, and throwing long, quivering, silver reflections across the dark water; the soldiery were preparing for their night’s rest, and the simple inhabitants of the country had already forgotten all their cares in sleep. The silence was broken only by the baying of a few dogs, and the howl of a distant jackal, when Septimius, shaking off his drowsiness, left his tent to saunter through the village and see how his troop were faring.

The beauty and stillness of the night tempted him to extend his ramble. The purlieus of the town were soon passed, the few dogs he met shrank cowering from before his tall form and the clank of the good sword at his side, and in a few moments he was alone in the desert. He had more than once followed the same track towards the now silent quarries, where the old Egyptians once hewed those blocks of granite which are a wonder to all succeeding ages. It was the same scene, yet how different! When he had marched over the ground once before at the head of his legionaries to check an incursion of one of the marauding desert tribes, the sky seemed brass, the earth iron, the sun was blazing overhead like a ball of molten metal, and scorching all colour and life out of the landscape; the heat, reflected from the black basalt and red syenite rocks, had beaten on his armour almost beyond endurance; while his stout soldiers could barely struggle on through the heavy sand, sighing and groaning for one drop of water where none was to be had.

How different it was now; the moon, hanging low in heaven, threw the long black shadows of the craggy rocks over the silvered sand; and the air was deliciously cool and fresh after the extreme heat of the day.

So he wandered on, till he reached a huge boulder, on which some old Pharaoh, now forgotten, had carved the record of his marches and victories. The figures of gods and kings were half obliterated, but the Centurion stood trying to follow the mouldering lines in idle curiosity.

“Be their gods true or false,” muttered he, “they were great men, these Egyptians, and their works are mighty—surely ‘there were giants in those days. ”

As he turned round, a huge crag behind him was shaped out by the uncertain moonlight into the figure of a colossus seated on a throne, such as he had seen at Thebes, on his way to Syene, and that so distinctly that he was for a moment fairly startled. Ere long the light changed, and the colossus faded away again into an ordinary rock.

Suddenly from behind the boulder an old man advanced to him, and bowing low, with the cringing servility to which the lower classes of the Egyptians had been reduced by long ages of tyranny, prostrated himself at the feet of the Centurion, and in broken Greek craved a hearing. Septimius was good-natured, and at a loss for occupation: he, therefore, gladly welcomed the interruption, and as he was, like all well-educated men of his time, as well or better acquainted with Greek than with his native tongue, in a few kindly words bade the old man speak on.

“My lord Centurion,” said the beggar, “I have followed your steps for days, in the hope of obtaining a hearing. My tongue is Greek, but my