Mr. Rawlison, a director of the Suez Canal Company, and Vladislaw Tarkowski, chief engineer of the same company, had been very intimate for many years. Both were widowers. Mrs. Tarkowski, a French lady, had died giving birth to Stasch thirteen years before. Nell’s mother had died of consumption in Heluan when her little girl was three years old. The two widowers lived close by each other, and their business in Port Said brought them in daily contact. Their mutual sorrows also cemented their old friendship. Mr. Rawlison loved Stasch as though he had been his own son, and Mr. Tarkowski would have gone through fire and water for little Nell. After their day’s work was done their greatest pleasure was to talk about the education and the future of their children. While they were conversing thus Mr. Rawlison would praise the capability, energy, and precocity of Stasch, and Mr. Tarkowski express himself enthusiastically about Nell’s charm and her little angel face.
Both were correct in their views. Stasch was somewhat conceited and boastful, but quick in his studies, and the teachers of the English school in Port Said prophesied a great future for him. He had inherited aptitude and courage from his father, for Mr. Tarkowski possessed these qualities in a marked degree, and to them he owed his present high position. He had taken an active part in the Polish revolution for eleven months, then, being wounded and taken prisoner, he was banished to Siberia, from which he escaped and fled to a foreign country.
Before joining the insurrectionists he was graduated as an engineer. A year after his escape he spent all his time studying hydraulics; then he obtained a position on the canal, and after several years, when his thorough knowledge, energy, and industry had become known, he was promoted to the position of chief engineer.
Stasch was born at Port Said, on the banks of the canal, was brought up there, and had now attained his fourteenth year. For this reason the engineers and his father’s colleague called him “The Child of the Desert.” Later, in his school life, at vacation time, he often accompanied his father and Mr. Rawlison when they went on short business trips from Port Said to Suez, which they were obliged to do in order to superintend the workmen on the dam and to direct the excavation of the canal bed. He knew all the engineers and the custom-house officers, as well as the workmen, the Arabs, and the negroes.
He went everywhere, even where no one would think of looking for him; he made long excursions on the embankments, rowed his small boat on Lake Menzaleh, and often wandered far away. He would row across to the Arabian shore and catch a horse, or not finding one, he would take a camel, or even a donkey, to aid him in playing the fakir in the desert. In a word, as Mr. Tarkowski would say, he ferreted into everything, and every moment he had free from his studies he spent on the water. His father did not remonstrate with him, for he knew that rowing, riding, and outdoor life would make the boy more robust and develop his energies. Stasch was taller and stronger than most boys of his age. One glance at his eyes was enough to convince any one that he was more courageous than cowardly.
In his fourteenth year he was the best swimmer in Port Said, which is saying a great deal, for the Arabs and the negroes swim like fish. In shooting wild ducks and Egyptian geese with his small gun he had acquired a steady hand and a true eye.
His ambition was to shoot big game in Central Africa, and he listened eagerly to the tales told by the Sudanese working on the canal, who hunted wild beasts in their native country. This intermingling with the Sudanese gave him the advantage of learning their languages.
The Suez Canal had not only to be dug, but also to be constantly watched; otherwise the sand on either shore would fill it up within a year. Lesseps’ great work demands continual vigilance and care, and therefore powerful machines and thousands of men under the supervision of skilful engineers are still laboring daily, deepening its bed.
In excavating the canal twenty-five thousand workmen were employed, but now that it is completed and machinery is so much improved, fewer men are necessary. There are, however, a considerable number still employed, chiefly natives, including Nubians, Sudanese, Somalis, and negroes of different tribes living on the White and Blue Nile, over whom the Egyptian Government had ruled before the revolt of the Mahdi. Stasch lived on friendly terms with all of them, and, as is usually the case with the Poles, he had a great gift for languages; thus he had picked up many of their dialects without knowing when and where. Born in Egypt, he spoke Arabian like an Arab. From the natives of Zanzibar, who served as firemen on the engines, he had learned the language which is spoken throughout the greater part of Africa—the Ki-swahili dialect—and he could make himself understood by the negroes of the Dinka and Schilluk tribes, who inhabit the upper half of Fashoda, on the Nile. He also spoke English, French, and Polish fluently; his father, an ardent patriot, had taken great care that his boy should be familiar with his own tongue. Stasch also considered this the most beautiful of all languages, and he was successful in teaching it to little Nell. But he was never able to make her pronounce his name correctly. She would always say “Stes” instead of Stasch, and this often caused a misunderstanding, which only lasted until the little girl’s eyes filled with tears, then “Stes” would ask her forgiveness, and was usually very angry with himself. But he had a disagreeable habit of referring disdainfully to her eight years, and of contrasting his age and experience with her youth. He asserted that a boy who had completed his thirteenth year, even if he were not entirely grown up, was at least no longer a child, that he was capable of accomplishing all kinds of heroic exploits, especially if he had Polish and French blood in his veins, and that he ardently wished for an opportunity to do such deeds, especially in Nell’s defense. Both children imagined all sorts of dangers, and Stasch always knew how to meet her difficulties. For instance, what he would do were a crocodile a dozen yards long, or a scorpion as large as a dog, to creep into the house through the window. Neither of them had the least idea that the terrible reality was soon to exceed their most fantastic conjectures.