Moreover Bes was Bes and an Ethiopian and I was I and an Egyptian, and therefore notwithstanding our love and brotherhood, we could never be like men of the same blood and country.
I grew weary of Ethiopia with its useless gold and damp eternal green and heat, and longed for the sand and the keen desert air.

Bes noted it and offered me wives, but I shrank from these black women however buxom and kindly, and wished for no offspring of their race whom afterwards I could never leave.

To Egypt I had sworn not to return unless one voice called me and it remained silent.

What then was I to do, being no longer content to discipline and command an army that I might not lead into battle?
At length I made up my mind.

By nature I was a hunter as much as a soldier; I would beg from Bes a band of brave men whom I knew, lovers of adventure who sought new things, and with them strike down south, following the path of the elephants to wherever the gods might lead us.
Doubtless in the end it would be to death, but what matter when there is nothing for which one cares to live?
While I was brooding over these plans Karema read my mind, perhaps because it was her own, perhaps by help of her strange arts, which I do not know.