Mirah

“ In the desert, too, the sky conspires with the earth in its bewitchment. The mirage has power to arrest and overawe the spirit with something of the same sense of helplessness as that felt in earthquake. In the one case earth, in the other heaven, are turning ordinary procedure upside down, and the bewildered mortal knows not what is to come next upon him. The writer has had experience of both, though with an interval of several years between them. The mirage he saw to the east of the Great Haj Road in Hauran. ”

“ It is a singular coincidence{219} with this observation, that the mirage is called by the Arabs of the Desert,—the lake of the gazelles.
I was anxious to learn something further on this curious subject, and not knowing what books to consult, I applied to my uncle. He tells me that a species of mirage is very common at sea; distant ships seem grotesquely caricatured by it either in length or in height; and sometimes, over the real vessel, an inverted picture of it appears suspended in the sky, with the masts of each prolonged, so as to unite. ”

“ The ghosts sate of a woman and a boy,
Shadows beside the dead; and Setne cried:
'Ye thronèd Shadows, whosoe'er ye be,
And thou, dead Pharaoh, tombed in majesty,
All hail! I, Setne, scribe and Priest of Ptah,
Command thy Book be rendered up to me,
[Pg 5]
The Book of Thoth which lies beneath thy head.'
Then never word nor sign came from the dead,
But the two Shadows lifted up their arms
Lamenting, and the woman swift outspread
Her hand to save the Book, and cried: 'Aha!
Setne Khamuas, is the will of Ra
Not yet fulfilled upon us? This is I,
Ahure of the race of Merneb-Ptah. ”

“ Myra always maintains that she never gave the Witch permission to take the moth; but, as she spoke, they both vanished, and Myra only saw the drawer with the big gap in its row of moths where the death's-head had been, and the Memory-Saver grinning ecstatically at her from the window-sill. Poor little fellow; he was so glad to get away from the Witch's pocket. ”

“ Up through the troubled air, heavy with thunder-clouds, soars their praise, as a lark might rise and pour its strains above a volcano in eruption—'I will mention the loving kindness of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us and the great goodness toward the house of Israel which He hath bestowed on them, according to His mercies, and according to the multitude of His loving kindnesses.' Pharaoh is drowned in the Red Sea; Miriam and her maidens on the bank clash their cymbals, and lift shrill voices in their triumphant hymn. ”

“ Half Bagdad leaped to meet him, and all cried: "Hail, Mirza, Lord of Bagdad!" The two storks upon the roof of the palace looked at each other, and the Caliph said: "Canst thou now divine, Grand Vizier, why I am enchanted? This Mirza is the son of my deadly enemy, the mighty magician Cachnur, who, in an evil hour, swore revenge upon me. But still I will not give up hope. Come with me, thou true companion of my misfortune! We will wander to the grave of the Prophet. Perhaps on that holy spot this spell will vanish;" and they at once soared from the roof of the palace and flew toward Mecca. ”

“ So he asked them where their journey lay, and they answered, "East."
"Eastward," said Mivarsh, "all ways lead to the Moruna. None may go thither and not die."
But they laughed and answered him, "Do not too narrowly define our power, sweet Mivarsh, restraining it to thy capacities. Know that our journey is a matter determined of, and it is fixed with nails of diamond to the wall of inevitable necessity." ”

“ He pour'd his eloquence to Pharaoh's ear.
“Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, God Omnipotent!
Let thou this people go—their wives, their children,
Their herds of cattle, and their snowy flocks,—
And whatsoe'er belongeth unto them,
Shall with themselves, unransom'd, all be free.
Say not within thy heart, as thou hast said,
That his unchanging will shall pass away,
And yet be unaccomplish'd; nor yet hope
With words deceitful to evade his purpose.
Why should'st thou war with Heaven? ”

“ It has its pleasant side when it paints water and palms where there is no water nor any palms. It has its sinister side when it clothes the most innocent features of the landscape in images of dread. Who knows how it touched up that flying column of ambulance wagons in the eyes of the Turks? There are certain areas that are constantly the site of mirage. Our gunners found this a continual difficulty at the front, for the hostile Arabs, knowing the mirage areas, would get into them and make ranging impossible. A transport column on the move through mirage is a curious sight. ”

“ The moonlight was not more clear and untouched of baleful fire than Myra's sweet eyes looking up at him, and now he was walking the wet pavement of the great metropolis, with the clang and grind of cars all about him, on his way to meet a woman whose life was spent in simulating acts as destructive as Myra's had been serene and trustful. At the moment he saw his own life as a thread in some mysterious drama. ”

“ Of the rays from the mountain that shone on thy shrine.
IV.
And now on that mountain I stood on that day,
But I marked not the twilight beam melting away;
Oh! would that the lightning had glared in its stead,
And the thunderbolt burst on the Conqueror's head! [4]
V.
But the Gods of the Pagan shall never profane
The shrine where Jehovah disdained not to reign;
And scattered and scorned as thy people may be,
Our worship, oh Father! is only for thee. ”

“ On each side of the Mihrab are two columns of greater beauty than the rest, and in the central aisle in front of it are three more on each side, with smaller ones between, regarding which the Arabs have a superstition that only those whose salvation is assured are able to pass between them. Any person in mortal sin, whatever be his stature, however stout or however thin, would certainly find himself unable to squeeze through. ”

“ I shall bring him back to our gods.
The Pharaoh. You will fail.
High Priest. He who for long has breathed the air of temples can never wholly clear his breast of it. If he give way, he shall never leave the house of the Gods again, if he be still rebellious, he shall leave to go to his death.
The Pharaoh. I order you to give Satni up to me.
High Priest. I would I might bow to your will. But he is a priest: his life is sacred. And I may not transgress the orders given me by the Gods.
The Pharaoh. Prate not of these follies to me—do you take me for one of your priests? Obey! I command you! ”

“ I saw the big Buddha of Ballambong. We were in the old tower storm-bound. Mirrikh—that horrible Mirrikh—was forming as a whitish cloud at my feet; when suddenly—snap went the Doctor’s match; the flame flared up above the pipe bowl, and my visions vanished with the smoke.
“Now I can talk,” said the Doctor, satisfiedly. “Nothing like it when you are rattled. Wylde you have got us into a horrible mess.”
“I know it. I wish I might have died before I ever met Maurice.” ”

“ Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, "I do remember my faults this day: Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in prison in the house of the captain of the guard, me and the chief baker: and we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he; we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream. And there was with us there a young man, an Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guards; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret. ”

“ Only no boulders in that country are flat-topped like the houses built in lands of the sun, and no dunes are wall-sided. Mirage, we are told, is but a picture of distant things, mirrored on atmospheric planes, but then maybe a ghost is only a mirage deflected on our atmosphere from worlds outside our ken, and it is always easy in the desert to see things that you cannot possibly believe. Whatever they are, mirages are real to the eye. ”

“ It is that settled, ceaseless gloom The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore, That will not look beyond the tomb, But cannot hope for rest before. What exile from himself can flee? To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of life—the demon Thought. Yet others rapt in pleasure seem, And taste of all that I forsake: Oh! may they still of transport dream, And ne'er, at least like me, awake! Through many a clime 'tis mine to go, With many a retrospection curst ”

“ Then Mura’ash went up to the palace of Japhet son of Noah and sat down on the throne of his kingship, which was of alabaster, ten stages high and latticed with wands of gold wherefrom hung all manner coloured silks. The people of the city stood before him and he said to them, “O seed of Yafis bin Nuh, what did your fathers and grandfathers worship?” They replied, “We found them worshipping Fire and followed their example, as thou well knowest.” “O folk,” rejoined Mura’ash, “we have been shown that the fire is but one of the creatures of Almighty Allah, Creator of all things ”

“ It is not meet that the Queen of all the Lands should worship at the shrine of a strange woman, come—like thyself, Eperitus—from none knows where: if indeed she be a woman and not a fiend from the Under World. But if thou wouldest learn more, ask my Lord the Pharaoh, for he knows the Shrine of the False Hathor, and he knows who guard it, and what is it that bars the way.”
Now the Wanderer turned to Pharaoh saying: “O Pharaoh, may I know the truth of this mystery?” ”

“ From Mazinan to Mihr the distance is twenty miles, and this with the good horses with which we were supplied we covered in two and a half hours. The road was good, but uninteresting, with hills on one side and the Desert on the other. Mihr is a pretty village with trees, cultivated ground, and many streams of water. The chapar khaneh was good, but, unlike the majority of them, was commanded by the neighbouring houses, from the roof of which the inhabitants watched all our proceedings with irritating pertinacity, until they were driven off by threats and imprecations. ”

“ Miriam watched it with a kind of rapture, letting its glory and its peace sink into her troubled soul, while from below arose the sound of awakening camps making ready for the daily battle. Soon a ray of burning light, cast like a spear from the crest of the Mount of Olives across the Valley of Jehoshaphat, struck full upon the gold-roofed Temple and its courts. At its coming, as though at a signal, the northern gates were thrown wide, and through them poured a flood of gaunt and savage warriors. They came on in thousands, uttering fierce war-cries. ”

“ As far as the eye could reach gorgeous forest and crimson sward skirted a silent sea, and about all towered the brilliant monster guardian cliffs. Once we thought we discerned a gilded minaret gleaming in the sun amidst the waving tops of far-distant trees, but we soon abandoned the idea in the belief that it was but an hallucination born of our great desire to discover the haunts of civilized men in this beautiful, yet forbidding, spot. ”

“ What does the hot sand and the trackless waste matter so long as I have these beautiful mirages to look at?' When you say that mirages are insubstantial, evanishing, mere tricks of air and eye, the Clarindas retort, 'But if you take away our mirages, where are we to turn? What will you give us in the place of them?' She thinks, for example, if a dying soldier calls on his mother or his sweetheart that they must be good women. ”

“ When the sun rose on the third day, Pharaoh marched out of Memphis, and he pursued for half a day with forced marches. At noon, Pharaoh had come up with Moses, and the fore-front of Pharaoh’s army thrust the rear-guard of the army of Moses. Then the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, and they said to Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?” ”

“ A moment later, across the spaces of the desert, whitened by the moon, rode the figure mademoiselle had seen in the mirage. Upon his saddle he bore a dreaming woman. And in the ears of the woman through all the night beat the thunderous music of a horse’s hoofs spurning the desert sand. ”

“ So Mura’ash said to Gharib, “How shall we do, O King of Mankind?” He replied, “O King, divide your men into four bodies and encompass with them the camp of the Infidels; then, in the middle of the Night, let them cry out, saying, ‘God is Most Great!’ and withdraw and watch what happeneth among the tribes of the Jinn.” So Mura’ash did as Gharib counselled and the troops waited till midnight, when they encircled the foe and shouted “Allaho Akbar! Ho for the Faith of Abraham the Friend, on whom be the Peace!” ”

“ In the foreground is a pillar with hieroglyphics inscribed upon it, its capital lost in the darkness gives a strange sense of awe, but the pervading influence, the power of the scene, is the apprehension of death which seems to rest over the mighty columns, which fills the great temple, which bows to the earth Pharaoh himself, for it is his first-born who lies dead before him. ”

“ It has come to our ears, O Pharaoh, that the woman Merapi, daughter of Nathan, who has refuged in your city, she who is named Moon of Israel, has shown herself to be a prophetess of power, one to whom our God has given strength, in that, standing alone amidst the priests and magicians of Amon of the Egyptians, she took no harm from their sorceries and was able with the sword of prayer to smite the idol of Amon to the dust. ”