E. F. Benson

“ On the other side is a mud wall. There are many other graves about, but they are all asleep. This is the grave, because it is awake, and it moist and not sandy."
"I thought so," said Weston. "It is Abdul's grave he is talking about."
"There is a red moon sitting on the desert," continued Machmout, "and it is now. There is the puffing of khamseen, and much dust coming. The moon is red with dust, and because it is low." ”

“ From inside came the click of brass castanets in the hands of some dancing-girl, sounding sharp and precise against the wailing bagpipe music of the strings and pipes which accompany these movements which Arabs love and Europeans think so unpleasing. Eastwards the sky was paler and luminous, for the moon was imminently rising, and even as I looked the red rim of the enormous disc cut the line of the desert, and on the instant, with a curious aptness, one of the Arabs outside the café broke out into that wonderful chant—
"I cannot sleep for longing for thee, O full moon. ”

“ Even in the bright lamp light, the spirit of Black Magic was a sufficiently terrific personage.
"I don't believe in Black Magic," he said, "but others do. If it is necessary to put a stop to—to anything that is going on, we will hoist the man on his own petard. Come along. Whom do you suspect it is—I mean, of course, who was the person you were thinking of when your thoughts were transferred to Machmout."
"What Machmout said," I answered, "suggested Achmet to me."
Weston indulged in a laugh of scientific incredulity, and we set off. ”

“ At Abdul Ali's Grave
LUXOR, as most of those who have been there will allow, is a place of notable charm, and boasts many attractions for the traveller, chief among which he will reckon an excellent hotel containing a billiard-room, a garden fit for the gods to sit in, any quantity of visitors, at least a weekly dance on board a tourist steamer, quail shooting, a climate as of Avilion, and a number of stupendously ancient monuments for those archæologically inclined. ”

“ Abdul Ali with his hundred years was dead, his century of sovereigns—they might as well have been an annuity—were dead with him, and his son Mohamed, who had previously enjoyed a sort of brevet rank in anticipation of the event, was considered to be throwing far more dust in the air than the genuine affection even of a chief mourner wholly justified. ”

“ What do you make of it?"
"I make that the White Magic has shown Machmout that somebody with Black Magic is going to Abdul's grave, perhaps to rob it," I answered resolutely.
"What are we to do when we get there?" asked Weston.
"See the Black Magic at work. Personally I am in a blue funk. So are you."
"There is no such thing as Black Magic," said Weston. "Ah, I have it. Give me that orange."
Weston rapidly skinned it, and cut from the rind two circles as big as a five shilling piece, and two long, white fangs of skin. The first he fixed in his eyes, the two latter in the corners of his mouth. ”

“ For in Egypt, while to despoil the bodies of ancient kings and priests is a privilege for which advanced and learned societies vie with each other, to rob the corpses of your contemporaries is considered the deed of a dog. ”

“ The row of tamarisks close to which the tomb lay went down the centre of the graveyard, and by skirting the wall outside and climbing softly over where they approached it, the fury of the wind might help us to get near the grave without being seen, if anyone happened to be there. ”