midday
To English ears his talents as a singer would not have been recognized ; the particular qualities which ensured the approval of his native audience would have caused much laughter in an English music-hall . Freddy Lampton , who knew something of Arab music , was able to recognize the singer 's talents , but he was not near enough to hear the grunts of intense satisfaction and longing which the song was calling forth from the blue-shirted _ fellahin _ . And so the hours of the morning wore on , until the sun was too powerful to allow even the natives to work , and Freddy Lampton wandered off to the tomb in which his friend was painting . The _ fellahin _ instantly untied the bundles which held their simple food and began their midday meal . Many of them prayed before eating ; many of them did not . When the meal was eaten , each man sought some vestige of shade , behind a mound of rock or an ash-heap of debris , or in the excavated channels of the site ; there with full stomach and contented mind he would lay himself down to sleep , amid the heap of ruins which thousands of years ago had been the field of vast numbers of toilers , such as were he and his fellow-toilers , slaving for the glorification of an absolute monarch , whose kingdom was the civilized world . He cared not one jot nor tittle for what he had uncovered or what secrets the valley or hills had hidden from men for countless centuries .