Many
of those assembled in such a place for official and military
purposes have hobbies other than archaeology. And it is a solemn
fact that the English in this Eastern exile have contrived to make a
small golf links out of the green scrub and sand; with a comfortable
clubhouse at one end of it and this primeval monument at the other.
They did not actually use this archaic abyss as a bunker, because it
was by tradition unfathomable, and even for practical purposes
unfathomed. Any sporting projectile sent into it might be counted
most literally as a lost ball. But they often sauntered round it in
their interludes of talking and smoking cigarettes, and one of them
had just come down from the clubhouse to find another gazing
somewhat moodily into the well.
Both the Englishmen wore light clothes and white pith helmets and
puggrees, but there, for the most part, their resemblance ended. And
they both almost simultaneously said the same word, but they said it
on two totally different notes of the voice.
"Have you heard the news?" asked the man from the club. "Splendid."
"Splendid," replied the man by the well. But the first man
pronounced the word as a young man might say it about a woman, and
the second as an old man might say it about the weather, not without
sincerity, but certainly without fervor.
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