III
The Suez caravan—an immense affair—was formed up in the outskirts of Cairo. In view of the recent murders it included a large guard, and the journey, which took three days, passed off without disaster. Mr. Fay had a horse; Eliza, still panting in her Oriental robes, travelled in a litter insecurely hung between two restive camels. Peeping out through its blinds she could see the sun and the rocks by day, and the stars by night. She notes their beauty, her senses seem sharpened by danger, and she was to look back on the desert with a hint of romance. Above her head, attached to the roof of the litter, were water-bottles, melons, and hard-boiled eggs, her provision for the road, rumbling and crashing together to the grave disturbance of her sleep. “Once I was saluted by a parcel of hard eggs breaking loose from their net and pelting me completely. It was fortunate that they were boiled, or I should have been in a pretty trim.” By her side rode her husband, and near him was a melancholy figure, followed by a sick greyhound, young Mr. Taylor, who became so depressed by the heat that he slid off his horse and asked to be allowed to die. His request was refused, as was his request that she should receive the greyhound into her litter. Eliza was ever sensible. She was not going to be immured with a boiling hot dog which might bite her. “I hope no person will accuse me of inhumanity for refusing to receive an animal in that condition: self-preservation forbade my compliance; I felt that it would be weakness instead of compassion to subject myself to such a risk.” Consequently the greyhound died. An Arab despatched him with his scimitar, Mr. Taylor protested, the Arab ran at Mr. Taylor. “You may judge from this incident what wretches we were cast among.”
They found a boat at Suez and went on board at once. Mr. Fay writes a line to his father-in-law to tell him that they are safe thus far: a grandiose little line:
Some are now very ill, but I stood it as well as any Arabian in the caravan, which consisted of at least five thousand people. My wife insists on taking the pen out of my hands.
She takes it, to the following effect:
My dear Friends—I have not a moment’s time, for the boat is waiting, therefore can only beg that you will unite with me in praising our Heavenly Protector for our escape from the various dangers of our journey. I never could have thought my constitution was so strong. I bore the fatigues of the desert like a lion. We have been pillaged of almost everything by the Arabs. This is the Paradise of thieves, I think the whole population may be divided into two classes of them: those who adopt force and those who effect their purpose by fraud.... I have not another moment. God bless you! Pray for me, my beloved friends.
It is not clear when the Fays had been pillaged, or of what; perhaps they had merely suffered the losses incidental to an Oriental embarkation. The ship herself had been pillaged, and badly. She had been connected with the earlier caravan—the ill-fated one—and the Government had gutted her in its vague embarrassment. Not a chair, not a table was left. Still they were thankful to be on board. Their cabin was good, the captain appeared good-natured and polite, and their fellow-passengers, a Mr. and Mrs. Tulloch, a Mr. Hare, a Mr. Fuller, and a Mr. Manesty, seemed, together with poor Mr. Taylor from the caravan, to promise inoffensive companionship down the Red Sea. Calm was the prospect. But Eliza is Eliza. And we have not yet seen Eliza in close contact with another lady. Nor have we yet seen Mrs. Tulloch.