"All right, old chap, I will go with you. Wait until I get my wife and daughter," said the acrobat as he stepped around the corner of the station for his family.
In a minute he returned with his wife, a London cockney type, whose general appearance indicated that she had seen chiefly the rough spots of this earth. She wore a dress of many colours and a hat which looked like a vegetable salad. Clinging to her skirt was a frail little girl who showed the effects of her wandering life. The four of us, with our luggage, crossed the tracks and tried the doors of several cars but all were locked. At this moment, a large greedy-looking Arab appeared out of the darkness and asked what we wanted.
"A place to sleep," I replied.
"Come with me," blurted the man.
We were so tired that if the devil himself had appeared on the scene and offered us a bed and shelter we would have eagerly accepted. We followed this burly human being and he led us to a small shed about ten by twelve feet. He opened the door and ushered us in and immediately left, stating that he would call us at six o'clock. This shack was certainly a beautiful bedroom for our homeless little band—nothing but a barren wooden house with the earth for the floor and cracks in the walls through which the cold wind rushed in torrents.
The acrobat's wife coiled up in one corner with the little girl on her lap, the man nestled in another and I stretched myself diagonally across a third. Sleep was impossible. We all were nearly petrified with the cold. The Englishman took to his feet and began walking the floor in silence. I soon followed his example. We paced and repaced that ten by twelve compartment for an hour, as speechless as two ghosts. Finally, into the tomb-like silence, the Englishman thrust these words, "Feed the animals." A few seconds' laughter at this remark and silence reigned again. At the end of the second hour the woman, whom we supposed had dozed off to sleep, murmured, "If my mother could see me now." In this way the night crept on and we ignored our hardships.
The Arab appeared at six o'clock and after paying him an exorbitant fee, which he exacted, we boarded a third-class coach of an Egyptian train and, surrounded by a curious lot of natives, started towards Cairo. I have been told that Egypt was the most expensive country in the world in which to travel and that it would be impossible for me to live on less than several dollars a day. Such information had been given me about so many countries and cities that it was a joke. Egypt turned out to be one of the cheapest sections of the globe I ever encountered.
After nearly a day's journey across the desert the train drew into the huge station at Cairo and in a few minutes I was flowing with the crowds towards the street. I stood for an instant on the sidewalk and surveyed the swarms of people who roamed the large plaza in front of the station. I pulled my hat down securely on my head and dived into this sea of humanity and in a second was lost in the million or more inhabitants of that city—of whom I knew not a single soul.
I was on my way to the Hotel Des Princes, a hostelry recommended to me by my English acrobat friend. By enquiring of every person who gave any indication that he might speak English, I found the hotel. It was a two-story structure operated by a middle-class native. I soon made a deal with him by which I got a room with a double bed for twenty-five cents a day, with the promise of a rate of forty cents for two when Richardson arrived. This was surely cheap enough and I thought it was ridiculously so when I recalled the statements made to me concerning the high cost of living in Cairo.