Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/163

 I cannot attempt to explain this psychological phase of my sojourn in the land of Kamt. I can but record it, and do so chiefly because I know that Hugh experienced the same sensation as I did, only in a much more intense form.

He walked and looked as if he had never done anything all his life but rule over strange and picturesque nations. He never found his robes uncomfortable, nor got entangled in the intricacies of the native tongue, and he met the great Pharaoh's sarcastic chuckles, and the high priest's hypocritical obsequiousness, with the same unruffled composure and truly regal dignity.

To-night, having dismissed our tiresome attendants, we gave ourselves over, heart and soul, to the beauty of the scene around us. To our right and left, in the dark shadows ghostly forms of birds or beasts fled frightened at our approach, and the white cows in the tall papyrus grass, disturbed by our tread, gave forth long and melancholy plaints, while overhead the crowd of monkeys in the branches of the acacia trees pelted us in wanton mischief with showers of white sweet-scented petals as we passed.

We had reached the edge of the canal and looked out across it on the majesty of the sleeping city, which, with its alabaster steps, its roofs of copper and of gold, its mammoth temples and gigantic carvings, looked more than ever like a city of dreamland. Beyond, far away, stretched the line of mystic hills which divided this habitation of beauty from the vast graveyard in the wilderness. One by one we saw the lights of the city flicker and die out: on the canal one or two belated boats flitted ghostlike and swift, crescent-shaped, with a burning lamp at prow and poop; the boatmen, as they dipped their oars into the water, sang their monotonous barcarolle, and beneath the gaily-striped awnings