“Ah,” said the skipper, “he’s a true-born Phoenician. ‘Tyre, Tyre for ever! Oh, Tyre rules the waves!’ as the old song says. I’ll go at once, and show him my young barbarians.”
“I should,” said the dye-master. “They are very rum, aren’t they? What frightful clothes, and what a lot of them! Observe the covering of their feet. Hideous indeed.”
Robert could not help thinking how easy, and at the same time pleasant, it would be to catch hold of the dye-master’s feet and tip him backward into the great sunken vat just near him. But if he had, flight would have had to be the next move, so he restrained his impulse.
There was something about this Tyrian adventure that was different from all the others. It was, somehow, calmer. And there was the undoubted fact that the charm was there on the neck of the Egyptian.
So they enjoyed everything to the full, the row from the Island City to the shore, the ride on the donkeys that the skipper hired at the gate of the mainland city, and the pleasant country—palms and figs and cedars all about. It was like a garden—clematis, honeysuckle, and jasmine clung about the olive and mulberry trees, and there were tulips and gladiolus, and clumps of mandrake, which has bell-flowers that look as though they were cut out of dark blue jewels. In the distance were the mountains of Lebanon.
The house they came to at last was rather like a bungalow—long and low, with pillars all along the front. Cedars and sycamores grew near it and sheltered it pleasantly.
Everyone dismounted, and the donkeys were led away.
“Why is this like Rosherville?” whispered Robert, and instantly supplied the answer.
“Because it’s the place to spend a happy day.”
“It’s jolly decent of the skipper to have brought us to such a ripping place,” said Cyril.