Leaving Alexandria, we wandered first to the town of Misra, which stood near to the mighty pyramids, beneath whose shadow we slept one night in an empty tomb.  Thence by slow marches we made our way up the banks of the Nile, earning our daily bread by the exercise of our art.  Once or twice we were stopped as spies, but always released again when I produced the writing that the officer Yusuf had given me upon the ship.  For the rest, none molested us in a land where wandering beggars were so common.  Of money it is true we earned little, but as we had gold in plenty sewn into our garments this did not matter.  Food was all we needed, and that, as I have said, was never lacking.

So we went on our strange journey, day by day learning more of the tongues spoken in Egypt, and especially of Arabic, which the Moslems used.  Whither did we journey?  We know not for certain.  What I sought to find were those two huge statues of which I had dreamed at Aar on the night of the robbing of the Wanderer’s tomb.  We heard that there were such figures of stone, which were said to sing at daybreak, and that they sat upon a plain on the western bank of the Nile, near to the ruins of the great city of Thebes, now but a village, called by the Arabs El-Uksor, or “the Palaces.”  So far as we could discover, it was in the neighbourhood of this city that Heliodore had escaped from Musa, and there, if anywhere, I hoped to gain tidings of her fate.  Also something within my heart drew me to those images of forgotten gods or men.

At length, two months or more after we left Alexandria, from the deck of the boat in which we had hired a passage for the last hundred miles of our journey, Martina saw to the east the ruins of Thebes.  To the west she saw other ruins, and seated in front of them two mighty figures of stone.

“This is the place,” she said, and my heart leapt at her words.  “Now let us land and follow our fortune.”

So when the boat was tied up at sunset, to the west bank of the river, as it happened, we bade farewell to the owner and went ashore.

“Whither now?” asked Martina.

“To the figures of stone,” I answered.

So she led me through fields in which the corn was growing, to the edge of the desert, meeting no man all the way.  Then for a mile or more we tramped through sand, till at length, late at night, Martina halted.

“We stand beneath the statues,” she said, “and they are awesome to look on; mighty, seated kings, higher than a tall tree.”

“What lies behind them?” I asked.

“The ruins of a great temple.”

“Lead me to that temple.”

So we passed through a gateway into a court, and there we halted.

“Now tell me what you see,” I said.

“We stand in what has been a hall of many columns,” she answered, “but the most of them are broken.  At our feet is a pool in which there is a little water.  Before us lies the plain on which the statues sit, stretching some miles to the Nile, that is fringed with palms.  Across the broad Nile are the ruins of old Thebes.  Behind us are more ruins and a line of rugged hills of stone, and in them, a little to the north, the mouth of a valley.  The scene is very beautiful beneath the moon, but very sad and desolate.”