Museums everywhere stored them—grinning, literal

relicts that told nothing.

But now, while he packed and sang, these hopes of enthusiastic

younger days stirred again—because the emotion that gave them birth

was real and true in him. Through the morning mists upon the Nile an

old pyramid bowed hugely at him across London roofs: “Come,” he heard

its awful whisper beneath the ceiling, “I have things to show you, and

to tell.” He saw the flock of them sailing the Desert like weird grey

solemn ships that make no earthly port. And he imagined them as one:

multiple expressions of some single unearthly portent they adumbrated

in mighty form—dead symbols of some spiritual conception long vanished

from the world.

“I mustn’t dream like this,” he laughed, “or I shall get

absent-minded and pack fire-tongs instead of boots. It looks like a

jumble sale already!” And he stood on a heap of things to wedge them

down still tighter.

But the picture would not cease. He saw the kites circling high in

the blue air. A couple of white vultures flapped lazily away over

whining miles. Felucca sails, like giant wings emerging from the

ground, curved towards him fro the Nile. The palm-trees dropped long

shadows over Memphis. He felt the delicious, drenching heat, and the

Khamasin, that over-wind from Nubia, brushed his very cheeks. In the

little gardens the mish-mish was in bloom… . He smelt the desert .

. . grey sepulchre of cancelled cycles… . The stillness of her

interminable reaches dropped down upon old London… .

The magic of the sand stole round him in its silent-footed tempest.

And while he struggled with that strange, capacious sack, the piles

of clothing ran into shapes of gleaming Bedouin faces; London garments

settled down with the mournful sound of camels’ feet, half dropping

wind, half water flowing underground—sound that old Time has brought

over into modern life and left a moment for out wonder and perhaps our

tears.

He rose at length with the excitement of some deep enchantment in

his eyes. The thought of Egypt plunged ever so deeply into him,

carrying him into depths where he found it difficult to breathe, so

strangely far away it seemed, yet indefinably familiar. He lost his

way. A touch of fear came with it.

“A sack like that is the wonder of the world,” he laughed again,

kicking the unwieldy, sausage-shaped monster into a corner of the room,

and sitting down to write the thrilling labels: “Felix Henriot,

Alexandria via Marseilles.” But his pen blotted the letters; there was

sand in it. He rewrote the words. Then he remembered a dozen things he

had left out. Impatiently, yet with confusion somewhere, he stuffed

them in. They ran away into shifting heaps; they disappeared, they

emerged suddenly again. It was like packing hot, dry, flowing sand.

From the pockets of a coat—he had worn it last summer down Dorset

way—out trickled sand. There was sand in his mind and thoughts.

And his dreams that night were full of winds, the old sad winds of

Egypt, and of moving, shifting sand. Arabs and Afreets danced amazingly

together across dunes he could never reach. For he could not follow

fast enough. Something infinitely older than these ever caught his feet

and held him back. A million tiny fingers stung and pricked him.

Something flung a veil before his eyes. Once it touched him—his face

and hands and neck. “Stay here with us,” he heard a host of muffled

voices crying, but their sound was smothered, buried, rising through

the ground. A myriad throats were chocked.