Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Magicians -- Juvenile fiction; Seven Wonders of the World -- Juvenile fiction
“Yonder is the island of Rhodes,” he answered, turning his head in its
direction. “You can see it, a dim shape on the horizon—not so very
far, as you say, from the city of Halicarnassus.”
“Oh! what is _that_?” exclaimed Diana, suddenly catching sight of
something gleaming white through a grove of trees at a little distance.
[Illustration]
“The very monument I have brought you to behold. A Wonder of the World.
The place where, carved in marble, my image once stood beside the
statues of a king and queen. Come, let us approach it.”
Turning a little aside from the city itself, the horse dropped
gradually lower, and, after just skimming the ground for a moment,
allowed his hoofs to touch it, and finally stood motionless in front of
a lovely building.
A stately flight of steps, whose balustrade was guarded by marble
lions, led up to a square tower, and higher still to a cluster of
beautiful columns. Above this was a sort of pyramid, with steps
mounting yet again to a chariot of marble in which stood two figures,
a man and a woman. The chariot was drawn by magnificent horses, and
as the children looked at these, they cried out together, pointing to
them, eagerly:
“Why, they’re all of them—_you_!” exclaimed Diana. In her excitement
she let herself slip easily to the ground. Rachel followed her example,
and both stared up at the group of horses on the summit of the building.
“What we saw in the Museum before you turned into a real horse is just
one head of you!” cried Rachel. “Then those people in the chariot must
be the broken statues that are also in the Museum—I mean before they
were broken?” she went on.
The steed bowed his head. “You are now beholding the statues of Queen
Artemisia and King Mausolus as they appeared soon after the sculptors
had finished their work. There also you see _my_ image as it, too,
appeared nearly three thousand years ago. Or, rather, my image four
times repeated in each of the four horses.”
The children were at first silent, for amazement and admiration held
them spellbound. The sun was rising, and bathed in its light, the
building was more lovely than tongue can tell.
“It’s like a tower in a fairy tale. The kind of tower a magician
builds, you know!” declared Rachel, at last.
“But what is it for?” added Diana, after a moment.
“It is a tomb, little maid.”
“A tomb?” echoed Diana. “All that great big beautiful place only for a
tomb?”
“The great Pyramid was a tomb,” Rachel told her in an aside, “and
that’s bigger, you know. Whose tomb is it?” she went on.
“Would you hear the whole story? I am here to tell it, if that should
be your wish. Let us then rest in the shade of these cypress trees
while you listen.”
Their guide lay down and stretched his beautiful body at full length on
the soft turf, while the children, with their hands clasped round their
knees, sat facing him, eagerly waiting for him to speak.
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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