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OUR
CHAPTER XXXI
Sleeping at the Feet of the Sphinx
project of sleeping at the feet of the Sphinx was
put off by the advice of more experienced friends,
until just before we left Egypt. The air of the desert is so
cold at night, in the winter and the early spring, though by
day you are afraid of getting sunstroke till nearly tea-time.
We chose by chance a night of special significance in the
Near East—Good Friday night. Think what that would
have meant if we had been sleeping in the desert outside
Jerusalem, instead of the desert outside Cairo. As it was, we
thought only of the picnic phase of it, besides our blankets
and waterproof sheets for the desert dews. We had the
wherewithal for tea, and something stronger than tea, and
bread and Cross-and-Blackwelliana. For four persons the
baskets and rugs came to quite a respectable camel-load.
The Berberine of an Arab-speaking surveyor friend, who
helped us to carry out our project, conveyed our stores to
the Mena end of the tramway, and loaded a camel with them
to take them to whatever camping ground our madness might
select. He disapproved of the whole thing. Berberines don't
like being out at night ; they are so unusually well off for
ghosts. If he had had sufficient intelligence to realise that
there was an Arab cemetery just over the rise from the
Sphinx, he would probably have fled screaming back to
Cairo—run all the way if he couldn't get a tram. But he
did not find this out till the morning, when he climbed the
rise to say his prayers in the first rays of the sun. He
thought it very unconstitutional that we should not have a
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