And he had been
sufficiently enraptured in rushing after it, and riding away upon
that fairy ship.
IV. THE BOTTOMLESS WELL
In an oasis, or green island, in the red and yellow seas of sand
that stretch beyond Europe toward the sunrise, there can be found a
rather fantastic contrast, which is none the less typical of such a
place, since international treaties have made it an outpost of the
British occupation. The site is famous among archaeologists for
something that is hardly a monument, but merely a hole in the
ground. But it is a round shaft, like that of a well, and probably a
part of some great irrigation works of remote and disputed date,
perhaps more ancient than anything in that ancient land. There is a
green fringe of palm and prickly pear round the black mouth of the
well; but nothing of the upper masonry remains except two bulky and
battered stones standing like the pillars of a gateway of nowhere,
in which some of the more transcendental archaeologists, in certain
moods at moonrise or sunset, think they can trace the faint lines of
figures or features of more than Babylonian monstrosity; while the
more rationalistic archaeologists, in the more rational hours of
daylight, see nothing but two shapeless rocks. It may have been
noticed, however, that all Englishmen are not archaeologists.
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