“May it please the King,” answered our guide, knocking his head upon the ground in a very agony of humiliation, “may it please the King——”
“It would please me better, dog, if you answered my question. Who are they?”
“May it please the King, this is the Egyptian hunter and noble, Shabaka.”
“I hear,” said his Majesty with a gleam of interest in his tired eyes, “and what does this Egyptian here?”
“May it please the King, the King bade me bring him to the presence, but now when the chariots halted.”
“I forgot; you are forgiven. But who is that with him? Is it a man or an ape?”
Here I screwed my head round and saw that my slave in his efforts to obey the eunuch’s instructions and hide his feet, had made himself into a kind of ball, much as a hedgehog does, except that his big head appeared in front of the ball.
“O King, that I understand is the Egyptian’s servant and charioteer.”
Again he looked interested, and exclaimed,
“Is it so? Then Egypt must be a stranger country than I thought if such ape-men live there. Stand up, Egyptian, and bid your ape stand up also, for I cannot hear men who speak with their mouths in the dust.”