They look like bells, or gigantic dervish hats placed on pedestals, and those farthest away give the impression of squat, large-headed figures posted there as sentinels, watching the vague horizon of Arabia beyond.
They are the proud tombs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where the Mameluke Sultans, who oppressed Egypt for nearly three hundred years, sleep now in complete abandonment.

Nowadays, it is true, some visits are beginning to be paid to them--on winter nights when the moon is full and they throw on the sands their great clear-cut shadows.

At such times the light is considered favourable, and they rank among the curiosities exploited by the agencies.

Numbers of tourists (who persist in calling them the tombs of the caliphs) betake themselves thither of an evening--a noisy caravan mounted on little donkeys.

But to-night the moon is too pale and uncertain, and we shall no doubt be alone in troubling them in their ghostly communion.
To-night indeed the light is quite unusual.