The sky smoked with heat-haze and the sun beat down upon it all with the strokes of a coppersmith’s hammer. In the mirage the gaunt hills flanking the Nile seemed to tremble to the blows. Our boat sped close in beside the papyrus beds; near enough for the creaking of the water buckets of the shadoof, on their long, counter-balanced arms, to carry from the fields across the water. The sound harmonized with the singing of the girl in the bows. Lostris was fourteen years of age. The Nile had begun its latest flood on the very day that her red woman’s moon had flowered for the first time, a coincidence that the priests of Hapi had viewed as highly propitious. Lostris, the woman’s name that they had then chosen to replace her discarded baby-name, meant ‘Daughter of the Waters’. I remember her so vividly on that day. She would grow more beautiful as the years passed, become more poised and regal, but never again would that glow of virgin womanhood radiate from her so overpoweringly.
