Tanglewreck [antikvár]

At six forty-five one summer morning, a red London bus was crossing Waterloo Bridge.A group of school children, sitting at the back, were copying each other's homework and fighting, when one of them looked out of the window, across the river to Cleopatra's Needle, and saw something very strange.The boy elbowed his friend. The dark finger of ancient Egypt was pointing towards the sky as it always did, but today the tip of the obelisk was glowing bright red, as it had when it was new and painted and glorious, four thousand years ago, in the Temple of the Sun.'Look,' said the boy, 'look!'Riding the river as though it were a road was a phalanx of chariots and horsemen.The white horses were pulled up on their haunches; the nodding ostrich plumes on their head-collars rose and fell; the fan bearers came forward, the troops stood at ease, and above the kneeling priests was the Pharaoh himself, inspecting his new monument from a burnished car.Other people turned to stare at the mirage, and the bus 13