The further we got away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the
Sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a dome, as you might
say. That's the way perspective brings out the correct proportions, Tom
said; he said Julus Cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was
too close to him.
Then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see Jim at all
any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out
over the Nile Valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little
shabby huts and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and
gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet,
which was the sand.
That was the right place to stop, and we done it. We set there a-looking
and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made
us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over
that valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to
itself for thousands of years, and nobody can't find out what they are to
this day.
At last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering
around on that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's
back, and then I see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told Tom
to look. He done it, and says:
"They're bugs. No--hold on; they--why, I believe they're men. Yes, it's
men--men and horses both.
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