(by which he knew
he was, underground), and directly beneath a warm-patterned
ceiling-cloth--rather like a tent-lining. And there he had to say his
say, while panic terror sat in his throat. The second time was in the
Valley of the Kings, where very similar passages, crowded with people,
led him into a room cut of rock, fathoms underground, with what looked
like a sagging chintz cloth not three feet above his head. The man I'd
like to catch,' he said when he came outside again, 'is that
decorator-man. D'you suppose he meant to produce that effect?'

Every man has his private terrors, other than those of his own
conscience. From what I saw in the Valley of the Kings, the Egyptians
seem to have known this some time ago. They certainly have impressed it
on most unexpected people. I heard two voices down a passage talking
together as follows:

_She_. I guess we weren't ever meant to see these old tombs from inside,
anyway.

_He_. How so?

_She_. For one thing, they believe so hard in being dead. Of course,
their outlook on spiritual things wasn't as broad as ours.

_He_. Well, there's no danger of _our_ being led away by it. Did you buy
that alleged scarab off the dragoman this morning?

VI

THE FACE OF THE DESERT

Going up the Nile is like running the gauntlet before Eternity. Till one
has seen it, one does not realise the amazing thinness of that little
damp trickle of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws of
established death. A rifle-shot would cover the widest limits of
cultivation, a bow-shot would reach the narrower. Once beyond them a man
may carry his next drink with him till he reaches Cape Blanco on the
west (where he may signal for one from a passing Union Castle boat) or
the Karachi Club on the east. Say four thousand dry miles to the left
hand and three thousand to the right.

The weight of the Desert is on one, every day and every hour. At
morning, when the cavalcade tramps along in the rear of the tulip-like
dragoman, She says: 'I am here----just beyond that ridge of pink sand
that you are admiring. Come along, pretty gentleman, and I'll tell you
your fortune.' But the dragoman says very clearly: 'Please, sar, do not
separate yourself at _all_ from the main body,' which, the Desert knows
well, you had no thought of doing. At noon, when the stewards rummage
out lunch-drinks from the dewy ice-chest, the Desert whines louder than
the well-wheels on the bank: 'I am here, only a q