The fellah gave a gasp of delight.
“But it shuts up, like a door,” he cried.
I opened and closed it several times for his edification; then slid down in my seat, my thoughts elsewhere.
“You sell it?” grinned the Arab.
“Eh!” I gasped, straightening up in astonishment, “you—”
“I’ll give you five piastres,” wheedled the peasant, “gkamsa tarifa.”
“Take it!” I cried, and, grasping the coin he held out to me, I dashed away to the station.
A half-hour later I was speeding southward across the fertile delta of the Nile. What a contrast was this land to that I had so lately left behind! Every few miles the train halted at a bustling city; between them mound-like fellaheen villages and well-cultivated fields raced northward. Inside the car—of American pattern—prosperous, well-groomed natives perused the latest newspapers and smoked world-famous cigarettes with the blasé air of Parisian commuters. Even the half-blind victims of ophthalmia leaned back in their seats in the perfect contentment of well-fed creatures. An eyeless pre-adamite in one corner roared with laughter at the sallies of his companions. Far more at ease was he, for all his affliction, than I, with neither friend nor acquaintance in the length and breadth of the continent.
The Oriental panorama grew dim. One could with difficulty distinguish in this ultra-flat country, where every object stood out sharply against the horizon, between a distant village and a reclining water-buffalo, nearer at hand. The western sky turned ruddy a moment, dulled to a brown, and the darkness that falls so quickly in tropical countries left me to stare at my own face beyond the window. An impressive reflection indeed! A figure to inspire prospective employers with confidence! The lights that were springing up across the plain were of no village where inhabitants welcomed strangers with open arms. Every click of the wheels brought me nearer the metropolis of Africa, a great city, of which I knew little more than the name, and where I should soon be set adrift in the darkness with the ludicrous sum of ten cents in my pocket! Perhaps in all Cairo there was not another penniless adventurer of my race? Even if there were, and a “vagabond’s retreat” somewhere among these long rows of streets that flashed by as those of London in approaching St. Pancras, small chance had I of finding it. For, were my Arabic as fluent as my English, no policeman could direct me to so unconventional a quarter.
The train halted in a vast, domed station. A mighty press of humanity swept me through the waiting-rooms and out upon a brightly-lighted square. There the screaming throng of hackmen, porters, donkey boys, and hotel runners drove me to take refuge behind a station pillar. I swung my knapsack over my shoulder and gazed, utterly undecided, across the human sea.