the waters have not yet reached, and there
we are able to put foot to earth. Our footsteps resound noisily on the
large resonant flags, and the owls take to flight. Profound darkness;
the wind and the dampness freeze us. Three hours to go before the rising
of the moon; to wait in this place would be our death. Rather let us
return to Chelal, and shelter ourselves in any lodging that offers,
however wretched it may be.

*****

A tavern of the horrible village in the light of an electric lamp. It
reeks of absinthe, this desert tavern, in which we warm ourselves at a
little smoking fire. It has been hastily built of old tin boxes, of the
debris of whisky cases, and by way of mural decoration the landlord, an
ignorant Maltese, has pasted everywhere pictures cut from our European
pornographic newspapers. During our hours of waiting, Nubians and
Arabians follow one another hither, asking for drink, and are supplied
with brimming glassfuls of our alcoholic beverages. They are the workers
in the new factories who were formerly healthy beings, living in the
open air. But now their faces are stained with coal dust, and their
haggard eyes look unhappy and ill.

*****

The rising of the moon is fortunately at hand. Once more in our boat
we make our way slowly towards the sad rock which to-day is Philae. The
wind has fallen with the night, as happens almost invariably in this
country in winter, and the lake is calm. To the mournful yellow sky has
succeeded one that is blue-black, infinitely distant, where the stars of
Egypt scintillate in myriads.

A great glimmering light shows now in the east and at length the full
moon rises, not blood-coloured as in our climates but straightway very
luminous, and surrounded by an aureole of a kind of mist, caused by
the eternal dust of the sands. And when we return to the baseless
kiosk--lulled always by the Nubian song of the boatmen--a great disc is
already illuminating everything with a gentle splendour. As our little
boat winds in and out, we see the great ruddy disc passing and repassing
between the high columns, so striking in their archaism, whose images
are repeated in the water, that is now grown calm--more than ever a
kiosk of dreamland, a kiosk of old-world magic.

In returning to the temple of the goddess, we follow for a second time
the submerged road between the capitals and friezes of the colonnade
which emerge like a row of little reefs.

In the uncovered hall which form