“But I want a pass for this evening’s steamer.”
“We cannot wake the colonel.”
“Is there no one else who can sign the order?”
“Only the colonel. Come this evening.”
Order or no order, I would not be red-taped out of a journey into the Soudan. I readjusted my knapsack and pranced off for the third time on the ten-mile course between Assuan and Shellal. Night was falling as I sped through the larger village. When I stepped aside for the down-train, my legs wobbled under me like two pneumatic supports from which half the air had escaped. The screech of a steamboat whistle resounded through the Nile valley as I came in sight of the lights of Shellal. I broke into a run, falling, now and then, on the uneven ground. The sky was clear, but there was no moon and the night was black despite the stars. The deck hands were already casting off the shore lines of the barge, and the steamer was churning the shallow water. I pulled off my coat, threw it over my head, after the fashion in which the fellah wears his gown after nightfall, and, thus slightly disguised, dashed towards the ticket office.
“A ticket to Wady Haifa,” I gasped in Arabic, striving to imitate the apologetic tone of an Egyptian peasant. For once I saw a native move with something like haste. The agent glanced at the money, snatched a ticket, and thrust it through the bars, crying: “Hurry up, the boat is go—” but the white hand that clutched the ticket betrayed me. The agent sprang to the door with a howl, “Stop! It’s the faranchee! Come back—”
I caught up my knapsack as I ran, made a flying leap at the slowly receding barge, and landed on all fours under the feet of a troop of horses.
The Arab who stood grinning at me as I picked myself up was evidently the only man on the craft who had witnessed my hurried embarkation. He was dressed in native garb, save for a tightly buttoned khaki jacket. His legs were bare, his feet thrust into low, red slippers. About his head was wound an ample turban of red and white checks, on either cheek were the scars of three long parallel gashes, and in the top of his right ear hung a large silver ring.
The Egyptian fellah dwells in a hut of reeds and mud