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Each band numbered not less than two hundred men, but the storm of sound produced by the bugles, drums, sistra, and tambourines, which would have been deafening within the palace, was in no wise too loud or too tremendous under the vast cupola of the heavens, in the centre of that immense space, amid buzzing multitudes, at the head of an army which baffles enumeration and which was advancing with the roar of great waters.
Then they brought their collars, and their wands, and their sistra in their hands, and displayed them before his majesty; and they sang "May thy hands prosper, O king; May the ornaments of the Lady of Heaven continue. May the goddess Nub give life to thy nostril; May the mistress of the stars favour thee, when thou sailest south and north.
Tanith!" and her voice was lengthened in a plaintive fashion as if calling to some one. "Anaitis! Astarte! Derceto! Astoreth! Mylitta! Athara! Elissa! Tiratha! By the hidden symbols, by the resounding sistra, by the furrows of the earth, by the eternal silence and by the eternal fruitfulness, mistress of the gloomy sea and of the azure shores, O Queen of the watery world, all hail!"
Then he began to glance over the list and read: "Tigellinus, Vatinius, Sextus Africanus, Aquilinus Regulus, Suilius Nerulinus, Eprius Marcellus, and so on! What an assembly of ruffians and scoundrels! And to say that they govern the world! Would it not become them better to exhibit an Egyptian or Syrian divinity through villages, jingle sistra, and earn their bread by telling fortunes or dancing?"
Delegations of priests and deputations of the chief inhabitants of Thebes crossed the parade ground to meet the Pharaoh, and drew up in double line in attitudes of the deepest respect so as to leave a free passage for the procession. The music, which alone might have formed a small army, was composed of drums, tambourines, trumpets, and sistra.
Then the four goddesses changed themselves into the forms of dancing women, and went to the house wherein the lady Rut-tetet lay ill, and finding her husband, the priest of Rā, who was called Rāuser, outside, they clashed their cymbals together, and rattled their sistra, and tried to make him merry.
Then the royal children brought their instruments of music, their menats and their sistra, and they rattled their sistra, and they passed backwards and forwards before His Majesty, saying, "Thy hands perform beneficent acts, O King. Wisdom is stablished in the mouth of Thy Majesty, and health is on thy brow. Thou strikest terror into the miserable wretches who entreat thy mercy.
On they came, nearer and more near, louder and more loud, till they swept past, above, below, around me, swept on rushing pinions, terrifying and enchanting me. They floated by, ever growing fainter, till they died in space. Then others came, and no two were akin. Some rattled as ten thousand sistra shaken all to tune. Some rank from the brazen throats of unnumbered clarions.
And a romantic thread in the narrative would be the story of Sistra Lebideva, the alleged Bolshevik female spy, who was released from prison in Pinega by the American commanding officer and given duty as nurse in the Russian receiving hospital. She was a trained nurse in an apron, and a Russian beauty in her fine clothes.
Faint it was at first, but ever as it came it grew more loud, till the air shivered with the unearthly sound of terror. I said naught, but pointed with my hand toward the sky. And behold! bosomed upon the air, floated a vast veiled Shape that, heralded by the swelling music of the sistra, drew slowly near, till its shadow lay upon us.
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