How Reggie Saw the Sphinx

How Reggie Saw the Sphinx by Nina Rhoades

"How Reggie Saw the Sphinx" by Nina Rhoades follows an eight-year-old American boy, Reggie Starr, on a Mediterranean voyage with his parents toward Egypt aboard the Cunard steamer Caronia. When rough seas confine his mother and nurse Ellen to their cabins, Reggie is allowed on deck under his father's care and strikes up a friendship with Phyllis Willoughby, an English girl of nine traveling with her irritable nurse to meet her father, Colonel Willoughby, a decorated soldier stationed in Cairo. Phyllis's aunt Helen, distracted by an invitation to join friends in Greece, has sent the child ahead by telegram without confirming her brother received word in time. The two children's easy camaraderie is repeatedly checked by Phyllis's strict, class-conscious nurse, who forbids further contact after Reggie coaxes Phyllis out on deck against orders. When the ship reaches Alexandria, Colonel Willoughby is nowhere to be found; it emerges he never received the telegram and is off on a desert camping trip, not expected back for another week. Mr. and Mrs. Starr, kind and unflappable, take charge of Phyllis and her fretting nurse, bringing them along first to Cairo and then to a hotel near the Pyramids to await the colonel's return. Left in the care of Nurse and Ellen one afternoon while the Starr parents tour distant pyramids, the children are forbidden further outdoor play in the heat. When both women slip away for tea, leaving Reggie and Phyllis unsupervised, Reggie proposes a quick, forbidden walk to see the Sphinx again. Phyllis, eager to earn her admired friend's approval and emboldened by his confidence, agrees. Their brief excursion turns perilous: after admiring the Sphinx at sunset, they lose the path back through the desert sand, are surrounded by begging and jeering village children, flee in terror after witnessing a man beating a boy, and end up utterly lost as darkness falls. Alone on the desert at night, the children comfort each other-Reggie giving Phyllis his jacket, building a sand "bed," standing watch as a self-appointed sentinel-while both privately fear discovery, cannibals, and their families' distress. Gunfire startles them: it comes from two English sportsmen hunting jackals, one of whom turns out to be Colonel Willoughby himself, returning early from his camping trip with his friend Captain Allerton and an Arab guide, Hassan. Reggie, though terrified, plants himself protectively over the fainted Phyllis and threatens the armed strangers, refusing to let them near her-a moment of instinctive bravery that becomes the story's centerpiece. The joyful, disbelieving reunion between father and daughter follows once identities are revealed, and the party breaks camp by camel to return the children to the hotel that same night. The adventure's aftermath forms the story's closing movement. Reggie falls ill with croup from his night in the cold sand and is confined to bed for days, chafing at being punished while Phyllis, spared any real reprimand, is fêted as the colonel's cherished, recovered daughter. Reggie's resentment-fueled by the unfairness of shared blame but unequal consequence-culminates in a small sulk when Phyllis returns from a motor outing with her father and a gift. The two reconcile, and Reggie learns, through Phyllis's report of what Colonel Willoughby and Captain Allerton have been saying, that his father is quietly, deeply proud of his courage that night on the desert-the boy who once merely imitated grown-up manliness discovers he has actually earned it. Nurse's ill temper and unsuitability are addressed off-page: Colonel Willoughby arranges to send her back to England and find a replacement, closing out the misadventure that set the whole escapade in motion. Threaded through the narrative are recurring themes: the contrast between Reggie's indulgent, trust-based American parenting (his father's "honor bright" code) and the stricter, more anxious English models represented by Nurse and, more gently, Aunt Helen; children's earnest, literal-minded philosophizing about bravery, death, God, and swearing; and the disorienting, sometimes frightening spectacle of a foreign culture (Arab villagers, camels, dragomans, backsheesh) as seen through sheltered young Western eyes. The Sphinx itself functions less as a plot device than as a symbolic waypoint-the object of the children's forbidden curiosity, and the site from which their dangerous, formative night begins-lending the book its title and its central image of a small, ancient watchfulness presiding over the children's very modern misadventure.

By Nina Rhoades · First published 1911 · Genre: Children's Literature, Adventure, Coming-of-Age · 5 chapters · 25,214 words

First lines

The Cunard steamer, _Caronia_, had left Naples, and was making her way through a high sea, across the Mediterranean to Alexandria. It was very rough, and before they had left Naples harbor far behind, most of the passengers who were not proof against seasickness had retired to their cabins. Reggie's mother, who was a very poor sailor indeed, had been one of the first ladies to disappear from the deck, and she had been speedily followed by Reggie's nurse, Ellen. Reggie himself had never felt better in his life, but he had really tried to be sympathetic.

What this Textopian page supports

How Reggie Saw the Sphinx is listed on Textopian as a novella by Nina Rhoades, dated 1911 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Genres

Tags

children's fiction · juvenile literature · adventure story · travel fiction · Egypt · ancient monuments · historical setting · cultural exploration · family reading · early twentieth-century literature · coming-of-age · curiosity

Contents

More by Nina Rhoades