ing, don't they? They're always in
want of bossing-up. But as for this display of art, they haven't
it in them, and they never had.'

The engineer did not seem interested in what was said, or in what
I answered. He was a man of few words. He went off to the eastern
wall, whither we followed him. I found him poking about there
with a stick. The Jo'burg charioteer was soon fussing along,
hurrying on tea-time. 'He didn't want to get a dose of fever this
trip,' he said. He had heard about our unhealthy season up north,
and the month was now April. He wanted to be back by sunset. So
it came to pass that his party went off to tea with but side-glances
at the hill-fastness.

'I'm neither a baboon nor a nigger,' said their host, when I
proposed that he should go up. After all, it was good-natured of
him to motor the dignitary out, I considered. He himself affected
no sort of interest in antiquities, and the dignified antiquarian
under his care was so wearily keen. I went to tea with them,
postponing my reveries to camping time and night. It was not
until we were eating guavas at the end of our meal that the
engineer came in. Then the Jo'burger told him to hurry up, and
went off to cherish his car. As to the engineer, his scanty
tea-time was not left in peace. The dignitary lectured him on the
true and patriotic theory of Ophir, on Astarte's worship, and
Solomon's gold. He answered very little, but he hinted that there
were difficulties. His lecturer glowed, and appealed to the
Curator, who had just come in, bent and shaken with fever.
Unhappily, yet happily for me, he trod on one of the curator's
archaeological corns and involved himself in an apology. Before
he was out of the wood I had asked the engineer a question or
two.

'No time to talk now,' he said, 'too much cackle. Come and see me
in the town. Or, if I miss you there, I may see you on the road,
mayn't I? I'm due out your way in three days.'

Soon after he was petroled away. I went to camp in a clearing, to
sup, to smoke, to read my guidebook. At last the night aged, and
the moon rose. My carriers slept. I looked up in the night's
starred face and beheld 'Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance'
there. But would I ever live to trace them by 'the magic hand of
chance,' as Keats called the grace of God? I began again to
mumble the lines of my guide-book, and found them rather bare and
dry. I looked up at the vast tapering walls. Why was there no
script there? After