"'After Al-Ghada, rest, if it be but for two moments;
After Al-Asha, walk, if it be but two steps,'"
said Mustapha, quoting one of their proverbs as he stretched himself on a rug for a nap after dinner. Al-Ghada is dinner and Al-Asha is supper.
"Nabul, what is in that bag?" asked George, pointing to a big brown bag which hung on the side of the mast of the dahabeah, and which one of the men was just taking down.
"It is the food of the crew. They put it there so that all can see it and no one can steal any of it without his fellows seeing him. The crew are going to eat their dinner now," explained Nabul, "and that fellow there has just climbed up and unhooked it."
By this time the sun was beating down hotly on the canvas awning over the deck, and one by one everybody followed Mustapha's advice, except the men on duty. The little Egyptian children, curled up on their mats, were soon sound asleep. George stoutly declared that he was not going to miss anything by sleeping. Mr. Winthrop had brought a book that told all about Egypt, and George listened while his uncle read aloud about Memphis, which they would soon pass. Thousands of years ago it had been another burial-place, when the haughty Pharaohs reigned in Egypt. But the first thing that George knew, he had forgotten all about the Pharaohs, and woke with a start in his big chair by the rattle of the sails as they were dropped, while the dahabeah gently glided to the landing-place, where the reis was to deliver some merchandise which he had brought up to a dweller on the bank from a Cairo dealer in ironware.
From the landing-place on the river the party had time to take a ride inland, and Nabul and Abdal had the donkeys all ready as soon as the gangplank was pushed out. There was no trouble in getting the little donkeys off the boat. The minute they saw the dry land they made a dash for the shore. And weren't the donkey boys on the landing mad when they saw that the strangers had brought their own donkeys. They howled and shouted, and wanted to know how the Cairo donkeys could be expected to carry the visitors through the sand and rough soil hereabouts.
However, they felt better when Mustapha picked out two of their donkeys,—one for himself and the other for the two little girls,—grumbling at the same time something about "too many children," but as Nabul whispered to Abdal, "Mustapha was like an old camel with a hard mouth and a soft heart."
The little girls were wild with delight that they were going, too. Menah sat with her feet hanging over one side and Zaida behind her with her feet dangling down the other side of the little donkey.
Away went the little procession, the donkeys kicking up a cloud of dust. The road wound through fields of grain, and along the roadside were to be seen children guarding cows and goats and other animals, who shouted merry greetings to our little friends as they passed by.
It was not long before Mustapha, who was riding ahead, called out, "Now you can see the village, there between the palms," at the same time pointing with his cane—which a dragoman is never without—to a large grove of palm-trees they were approaching and amongst which were huddled a lot of queer flat-roofed houses.