Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 56: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

54 BILL BARNES sunlight. All the houses and trees were powdered in gold dust. Bill Barnes flipped the switch on the radiophone and roared into it. “They're opening the doors of the hangars. Get back inside!” Even as he spoke the sobbing and sighing of winds—winds from the re- cesses of the farthest deserts—rose. Al- most instantly they were in the midst of a shrieking sandstorm. The world was alive with sand. They ran their ships back into the hangers. Both they and their engines were half stifled. After the hangar doors were closed the dust penetrated through cracks and crannies and filled the hangar. It got into their hair and lungs and penetrated the cockpits of their planes. They gasped and choked for breath, feeling, half strangled. “It’s a good thing that broke before we got into the air. That sand pene- trates anything. We'll have to clean our motors before we start out again,” Bill said, trying to wipe the sand out of his eyes. THREE HOURS LATER, after the storm had passed, Bill was pointing out the pyramids to Sandy from the air. Far off to the left the dim outline of the broad Suez Canal joined the Gulf of Suez, while the yellow desert sands stretched away on either side to meet the sky. Tiny dots that were camels formed a long caravan toward the city from across the Libyan Desert and Arabia. In the city below great masses of people were congregated on the steps of the mosques to observe the Holy Carpet’s return from Mecca and its re- ception by the Khedive. Bands playing European martial mu- sic led the lancers in blue and white and a khaki regiment wearing the scarlet tar- boosh on the streets below. Heralded by mounted soldiers and the royal salute, the Khedive rode in a barouche drawn by four matched bays in gorgeous har- ness. Bugles blew; the rattle and noise from the city was tremendous. They were glad to turn the noses of their ships down the green valley of the Nile. Two hours later as they flashed above the first cataract at Aswan the whole character of the Nile changed. The wide green valleys and distant moun- tains and deserts disappeared. From where the cataract gripped the Nile at Aswan the land southward became bar- ren hills, all black and yellow, with only a patch here and there of vivid green. In those green patches could be seen a white house or the glistening dome of a sheik’s tomb, but more often the low mud hut of a native near which a camel was tethered, or a donkey asleep. Date palms waved majestically back and forth along the banks of the twisting silver ribbon that was the Nile. The morning sun sparkled brilliantly on the pale-green waters of the river where it washed against the base of the temp!e Abu-Simbel, built by Rameses IT, more than three thousand years ago. At the base sat four great seated colossi and above the statue of the wife of Rameses, watching the approach of the three thundering airplanes with the same expression of tranquillity they had watched the boats of Greeks and Ro- mans, Saracens and Turks through thirty-three centuries from their temple of solid stone. The boats on the river beneath them were of the same shape as those of the twelfth dynasty and the clothes of the people in Wady-Halfa were the same as then. Flying low they circled the city of Wady-Halfa spread along the eastern bank of the river in the Sudan. A min- aret pierced the blue sky among the mud houses of blue, yellow and pink em- bowered in acacia trees. The air from the broad river blew cool and fresh while that from the Nubian Desert to the east came at them like blasts from a fiery furnace as they altered their course southeast. CO Elo@olx< CO