Yet, who knows, perhaps the little charm was to assist him, and this in spite of himself.
HOW RENNY THE SYRIAN ESCAPED THE CROCODILES
We have already alluded to the violent sandstorm which had raged over Thebes. As Kham-hat had truthfully said, such a storm had not been known since that memorable day when Thi the Beautiful, had been brought up-river to Egypt’s capital, there to become the favorite wife of the late Pharaoh.
The storm had been especially severe in the immediate vicinity of the capital, or so at least, it had seemed to the disgusted Thebans. Their loud complaints as to the hideous damage done were not unduly emphasized, since the baleful effects of this storm, both in and about the resident city, were apparent on every hand.
Many of the famous palms and giant sycamores in Pharaoh’s palace garden had been uprooted or despoiled of their finest branches. Many of the Abyssinian trees and Lebanus cedars, that lined the causeway leading to Hatshepsut’s ivory-toned chapel, now lay prone across its well-paved incline, or, loosened at the roots, hung shriveled, torn and dejected, far out across its brightly painted parapets.
Dust, a foot or more in depth, had drifted against the gates of the villas, many of which seemed as if they might rather have opened upon some gloomy mortuary-garden than upon the dainty gardens of exalted nobles, with their wealth of tamarisks, acacias, myrrh, sandalwood and stately Lebanus cedars.
Not a sign of life was visible along the sloping walls of the city, not a living thing stirred in its dark and narrow streets. Covered by the same gray pall of dust, Thebes had seemingly united herself with her immense burial-ground to the westward. Thebes appeared to have become one vast city of the dead!
A swirl of the fine impalpable Egyptian dust rose into the shimmering air, a whirling and ever-widening cone—part sand, part river-silt, part _human_ ashes. Yes, throughout the Nile Valley, an Egyptian might be said to breathe the very ashes of his ancestors.
Suddenly the sun leaped above the Eastern Hills. The city awoke. Smoke rose upon the heavy morning air and drifted slowly, like a blue-gray streamer, up the curving shores of the Theban Valley.