Servant who was prostrate on the bed of sickness, but
thinking that I might thus gain an opportunity of persuading him to
attend Mysseri, I wrote a note mentioning my own affair of the sore
throat, and asking for the benefit of his medical advice. He
instantly followed back my messenger, and was at once shown up into
my room. I entreated him to stand off, telling him fairly how
deeply I was "compromised," and especially by my contact with a
person actually ill and since dead of plague. The generous fellow,
with a good-humoured laugh at the terrors of the contagionists,
marched straight up to me, and forcibly seized my hand, and shook
it with manly violence. I felt grateful indeed, and swelled with
fresh pride of race because that my countryman could carry himself
so nobly. He soon cured Mysseri as well as me, and all this he did
from no other motives than the pleasure of doing a kindness and the
delight of braving a danger.
At length the great difficulty {36} which I had had in procuring
beasts for my departure was overcome, and now, too, I was to have
the new excitement of travelling on dromedaries. With two of these
beasts and three camels I gladly wound my way from out of the pest-
stricken city. As I passed through the streets I observed a
fanatical-looking elder, who stretched forth his arms, and lifted
up his voice in a speech which seemed to have some reference to me.
Requiring an interpretation, I found that the man had said, "The
Pasha seeks camels, and he finds them not; the Englishman says,
'Let camels be brought,' and behold, there they are!"
I no sooner breathed the free, wholesome air of the Desert than I
felt that a great burden which I had been scarcely conscious of
bearing was lifted away from my mind. For nearly three weeks I had
lived under peril of death; the peril ceased, and not till then did
I know how much alarm and anxiety I had really been suffering.
CHAPTER XIX - THE PYRAMIDS
I went to see and to explore the Pyramids.
Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the forms of
the Egyptian Pyramids, and now, as I approached them from the banks
of the Nile, I had no print, no picture before me, and yet the old
shapes were there; there was no change; they were just as I had
always known them. I straightened myself in my stirrups, and
strived to persuade my understanding that this was real Egypt, and
that those angles which stood up between me and the West were of
harder stuff, and more ancient than the paper pyramids of the green
portfolio. Yet it was not till I came to the base of the great
Pyramid that reality began to weigh upon my mind.
