shaft of light lent a solemn beauty to the bleak wastes on either hand.
In front, the canal's silvery riband shimmered in magic life. Its
nearer ripples formed a glittering corsage for the ship's tapered stem,
and merged into a witches' way of blackness beyond. The red signal of a
distant _gare_, or station, or the white gleam of an approaching
vessel's masthead light, shone from the void like low-pitched stars.
Overhead the sky was of deepest blue, its stupendous arch studded with
stars of extraordinary radiance, while low on the west could be seen
the paler sheen of departing day. At times his wondering eyes fell on
some Arab encampment on the neighboring bank, where shrouded figures
sat round a fire, and ghostly camels in the background raised ungainly
heads and gazed at the ever-mysterious sight of the moving ship.

The marvelous scene was at once intimate and remote. Its
distinguishable features had the sense of nearness and actuality of
some piece of splendid stagecraft, yet he seemed to be peering not at
the rigid outlines of time but rather into the vague, almost
terrifying, depths of eternity. And it was a bewildering fact that this
glimpse into the portals of the desert was no new thing to him. Though
never before had his mortal eyes rested on the far-flung vista, he
absorbed its soothing glamour with all the zest of one who came back to
a familiar horizon after long sojourn in pent streets and tree-shrouded
valleys.

Time and again he strove to shake off this eerie feeling, but it was
not to be repelled. He fought against its dominance, and denounced its
folly, yet his heart whispered that he was not mistaken, that the
majestic silence conveyed some thrilling message which he could not
understand. How long he stood there, and how utterly he had yielded to
the strange prepossession of his dream, he scarce realized until he