On the evening of the 7th an extraordinary thing happened. It rained hard enough to make a noise on the awning over us, and in the excitement we almost forgot that there were only three more days between us and Cairo. We had begun to count the hours and to dread that fatal bend in the river that would show us the pyramids at Sakkara, where we were to spend our last night. We passed dahabiyehs with American and English flags flying over them, and we were filled with
An Artist in the Mouskie.
envy. Handkerchiefs and parasols were sympathetically waved at us, and at a distance we may have looked cheerful; but it was a forlorn, childish feeling to be taken home because our time was up and our dahabiyeh had another engagement. We felt that all the other boats knew our secret, and we even suspected the crew of having become tired of us and only remaining civil in order to collect the present that they were expecting.
Ghesiri’s suggestion that we spend the night of the 10th at Cairo seemed to prove that they were anxious to have done with us; but we had no inclination to be tied to the bank at Cairo overnight, waiting to be sent away in the morning before a crowd of natives, and among them, possibly, those other people who had chartered our boat. We would wait at Sakkara, and not get to Cairo one minute before our time was up.
On the 8th we visited a sugar-factory at
Our Bisharin Friends, Assuan.
Tel-el-Amarna, and later on the same day passed our first landing-place, Beni-Hassan.