Chapter 23

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 quarter of a mile away.
For mercy's sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly
whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips. There's a white man a few
hundred miles off, dying on my lap of thirst--thirst that you cure with
a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you hold him down with the one
hand, and he thinks he is cursing you aloud, but he isn't, because his
tongue is outside his mouth and he can't get it back. Thank _you_, my
noble captain!' For naturally one tips half the drink over the rail with
the ancient prayer: 'May it reach him who needs it,' and turns one's
back on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning their
mid-day mirage-dance.

At evening the Desert obtrudes again--tricked out as a Nautch girl in
veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures
shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of
homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on
crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries,
like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile
features--the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My
allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' So She floats
through all Her changes and retires upstage into the arms of the dusk.
But at midnight She drops all pretence and bears down in Her natural
shape, which depends upon the conscience of the beholder and his
distance from the next white man.

You will observe in the _Benedicite Omnia