The crumbling and
ancient walls were surrounded by a moat which a stranger's foot crossed
hardly from moon to moon, which the desert wayfarer sought rarely, since
it was out of the track of caravans, and because food was scant in the
refectory of this Coptic brotherhood. It was scarce five hours' ride from
the Palace of the Prince Pasha: but it might have been a thousand miles
away, so profoundly separate was it from the world of vital things and
deeds of men.
As the chant rang out, confident, majestic, and serene, carried by voices
of power and shrill sweetness, which only the desert can produce, it
might have seemed to any listener that this monastery was all that
remained of some ancient kingdom of brimming, active cities, now lying
beneath the obliterating sand, itself the monument and memorial of a
breath of mercy of the Destroyer, the last refuge of a few surviving
captains of a departed greatness. Hidden by the grey, massive walls,
built as it were to resist the onset of a ravaging foe, the swelling
voices might well have been those of some ancient order of valiant
knights, whose banners hung above them, the 'riclame' of their deeds.
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