Читать книгу With Lawrence in Arabia онлайн

20 страница из 70

“After breakfast we were examining the mosaic floor of the dining-room, a Roman fragment that these men had taken out whole rather than destroy it in their search for the Hittite antiquities hidden below. But just then word came of excitement at the ‘works.’ We hurried over to find the Arabs and Kurds closely packed around a large excavation. The Greek foreman was removing the age-old earth about a dark stone several feet square; and by the time Mr. Woolley had reached his side, he had determined which was the real face of the block. With practised hand, Mr. Woolley began to remove the last crust of soil which covered the treasure underneath. There was no one to command those peasants to go back to their work, for the spiritual fruits of discovery belong to all, to the Englishman no more than to the water-boy who left his donkey to find the Euphrates alone, while he joined the breathless group whose eyes were glued on Woolley’s jack-knife deftly doing its work. A burst of applause greeted the first appearance of something in relief on the hard rock. It was a hand! no—a corner of a building!—a lion!—a camel! Guess and conjecture flew about, to be greeted by approval or derision, always followed by quick, tense silence, while the jack-knife did its work. Soon Woolley’s trained eye revealed to him that it was a large animal standing in a perfect state of preservation and that he was uncovering its head. His feint to begin at the other end of the figure was greeted by a babble of protest from his workmen, not yet sure what the figure was. Woolley’s quick smile acknowledged the reception of his little joke, and back he went to the spot already uncovered. Soon head, chest, legs, body, came to light, and exponents of various theories—cow, horse, sheep—were still backing their claims in musical gutturals when Woolley’s hand returned to the head of the animal and with a few quick motions lifted off the earth which covered the perfect tracery of a magnificent pair of antlers; alive with the undying art of forty centuries, there stood revealed before us a superb stag. Such a discovery was worth a celebration, and unwritten law had ordained the nature of it. For the excavator nodded in response to the Greek’s whispered query; and, as he gave the awaited signal, two hundred boys from fifteen to sixty-five emptied all the chambers of their revolvers in the air. I wonder what the Germans thought as they heard the volley from their bridge; for, as I found out a few weeks later when I had galloped over for another visit with the Englishman, shots at the German place meant something far different. To-day, perspiring as much because of their intense excitement over the discovery of the Hittite stag as from their labors, the Arabs laughingly sat down to smoke the cigarettes which ended these celebrations, while the water-boy started wildly in search of his donkey, followed by the vigorous epithets of his thirsty friends, who knew that the full flavor of a cigarette comes only with a drink of cold water.