It was the 11th of December when we left Syene; we cannot say sailed, for our mast being down, we went with the current and the oars, when the wind was against us. In our voyage down the Nile we had but very indifferent weather, clear throughout the day, exceedingly cold in the night and morning; but, being better cloathed, better fed than in the desert, and under cover, we were not so sensible of it, though the thermometer shewed the same degrees. Above all, we had a good decent provision of brandy on board, part of which I had procured from the Aga, part from the Schourbatchie my landlord, neither of whom knew the other had given me any, and both of them pretended to each other, and to the world, that they never tasted fermented liquors of any kind, nor kept them in their custody.
I had given to each of my servants, to Soliman and to the Greeks likewise, a common blanket called a barracan, of the warmest and coarsest kind, with a waistcoat and trowsers of the same, and all of us, I believe, had consigned to the Nile the clothes in which we passed the desert. The meanness of our appearance did not at all shock us, since nothing contributes more to safety in a country like this. I passed Shekh Nimmer not without regret, but it was night, and I was very ill.
On the 19th we arrived at How, where the intermitting fever, which I had at Syene, again returned, with unusual violence, and, what was most unlucky, my stock of bark was almost exhausted, and the Rais had business that obliged him to lie by for a day. As we were within a small distance of Furshout, I dispatched one of the Barbarins, with a camel, to the fathers at the monastery of Furshout informing them of my arrival and very bad state of health, and requesting them to send me some wheat bread, as mine was all consumed, and likewise some rice, if they had any. Upon the Arab's first delivering his message the fathers treated him as an impostor, declaring that they knew from good authority that I was drowned in the Red Sea, which another of them contradicted, being equally positive, from the same good authority, that my death had happened from robbers in Abyssinia. The Barbarin (a shrewd fellow) desired the fathers to observe, that, if I had been drowned in the Red Sea, it was not possible I could be slain by robbers on land two years afterwards; therefore, as one report was certainly false, both might be so, and he assured them this was the case, and that I was at How; but they laughed him to scorn, and threatened to carry him to Shekh Hamam to punish him. The poor fellow answered very pertinently, "If I had come in Yagoube's name for gold or silver, then you might have distrusted me; but sure it is not worth my while to hire a camel to come here from How, and go back again to cheat you out of two loaves of bread and a pound of rice, which I never tasted myself till I was with Yagoube, who made us partake of every thing that he ate as long as it lasted, and fasted with us when our meat was exhausted." They continued to ask him, where he had found me? The fellow said, At Ras el Feel; and not being able to describe where that was, a fresh altercation began, in which it was concluded betwixt the two reverend disputants, that I had been drowned three years before in the Red Sea, and therefore all the story of Ras el Feel must be a lie.
It happened, as indeed was often the case in these matters, that my Greek servant Michael had been more provident than I. He had thought something of this kind might be possible, and therefore had desired the Barbarin, if so it happened, to call at Shekh Ismael's at Badjoura, and inquire of him in my name for a loaf or two of wheat bread and some rice. This the Barbarin did with some diffidence, after the refusal received from the fathers, and was very much surprised at the chearful reception Shekh Ismael gave him. The bread and rice were sent; he too had heard of my death, but was much easier convinced that I was still alive than the reverend fathers had been, because more desirous that it should be so.
Next day, the 20th, we arrived at Furshout, though Hagi Ismael's invitation, and the unkindness of the fathers, had strongly tempted me to take up my quarters at Badjoura to guard him against the pleurisy, and the mistaking again the month of Ramadan. Some aukward apologies passed at meeting; and if these fathers, the sole object of whose mission was the conversion of Ethiopia and Nubia, were averse before to the undertaking their mission, they did not seem to increase in keenness from the circumstances which they learned from me.
On the 27th we sailed for Cairo. At a small village before we came to Achmim we were hailed by a person, who, though meanly dressed, spoke with the tone of authority, and asked for a passage to Cairo, which I would have denied him if I could have had my own will; but the Rais readily promised it him upon his first application. He afterwards told me he was a Copht and a Christian, employed to gather the Bey's taxes in such villages as were only inhabited by Christians, to which the Bey did not permit his Turks to go. "I heard, says he, you was coming down the Nile, and I way-laid you for a passage; the Rais knows who I am, and that I shall not be troublesome to you; but I have a large sum of money, and do not chuse to have it known, I hope, however, you will give me your protection for the sake of my master."—"Indeed, friend, said I, I have but seven shillings in the whole world, and my cloaths, I believe, are not worth much above that sum, and it is but a few days ago I was rejoicing at this as one of my greatest securities. But since Providence has, I hope for your good, thrown you and your money in my way, I will do the best for you that is in my power, the same as if it was my own."
On the 10th of January 1773 we arrived at the convent of St George, all of us, as I thought, worse in health and spirits than the day we came out of the desert. Nobody knew us at the convent, either by our face or our language, and it was by a kind of force that we entered. Ismael, and the Copht went straight to the Bey, and I, with great difficulty, had interest enough to send to the patriarch and my merchants at Cairo, by employing the two only piastres I had in my pocket. If the capuchins at Furshout received us coldly, these Caloyeros of St George kept us still at a greater distance. It was half by violence that we got admittance into the convent. But this difficulty was to be but of short duration; the morning was to end it, and give us a sight of our friends, and in the meantime we were to sleep soundly. We had nothing else to do, having no victuals, and the Caloyeros nothing to give us, even if they had been inclined, of which we had not seen yet the smallest token.
This we thought, and this, in the common view of things, we were intitled to think; but we forgot that we were at Cairo, no longer to depend upon the ordinary or rational course of events, but upon the arbitrary, oppressive will of irrational tyrants. Accordingly I had, for about an hour, lost myself in the very uncommon enjoyment of a most profound sleep, when I was awakened by the noise of a a number of strange tongues; and, before I could recollect myself sufficiently to account what this strange tumult might be, eleven or twelve soldiers, very like the worst of banditti, surrounded the carpet whereon I was asleep. I had presence of mind sufficient to recollect this was not a place where people were robbed and murdered without cause; and, convinced in my own mind that I had given none, from that alone I inferred I was not to be robbed or murdered at that instant. Without this, the appearance of the strangers, their dress, language, and behaviour, all joined to persuade me of the contrary. I asked them, with some surprise, "What is the matter, Sirs? What is the meaning of this freedom?" The answer was in Turkish, "Aya! Aya! Get up! the Bey calls you."—"The Bey, says I, certainly calls at a very unseasonable hour." The answer was, "Get up, or we will carry you by force."—"I fancy friends, said I, you have mistaken me for some other person, I have not been here above two hours, and since that time have never been out of the convent. It is impossible the Bey should know that I am here."—"What signifies it to us, says one in lingua Franca, whether he knows you are here or not? he has sent us for you, and we are come, Aya! Aya! get up!" He put his hand forward to take me by the arm. "Keep your distance, you insolent blackguard, said I, remember I am an Englishman; do not lay your hands upon me. If the Bey calls me, he is master in his own country, and I will wait upon him; But hands off: though I have not seen Mahomet Bey these three years, he knows what is owing to his own character better than to suffer a slave like you to lay his filthy hands on a stranger like me."—"No! No! Mallem, says the man that spoke Italian, we will do you no harm. Ismael, that you brought from Habesh, has been with the Bey, and he wants to see you; and that is all."—"Then stay without, said I, till I am ready, and I will come to you presently."
Out they went: I heard them crying to the Caloyeros for drink, but they never in their lives were in a place where they could address themselves worse for either meat or liquors; on the other hand, I did not keep them long in dressing. I had no shirt on, nor had I been master of one for fourteen months past. I had a waistcoat of coarse, brown, woollen blanket, trowsers of the same, and an upper blanket of the same wrapt about me, and in these I was lying. I had cut off my long beard at Furshout, but still wore prodigious mustachoes. I had a thin, white, muslin cloth round a red Turkish cap, which served me for a night-cap, a girdle of coarse woollen cloth that wrapt round my waist eight or ten times, and swaddled me up from the middle to the pit of my stomach, but without either shoes or stockings. In the left of my girdle I had two English pistols mounted with silver, and on the right hand a common crooked Abyssinian knife, with a handle of a rhinoceros horn. Thus equipt, I was ushered by the banditti, in a dark and very windy night, to the door of the convent.
The Sarach, or commander of the party, rode upon a mule, and, as a mark of extreme consideration, he had brought an ass for me, with sods, or a carsaddle upon his back, the only animal that, to the shame of our Christian rulers, any of our faith is suffered to ride on in Cairo. The beast had not a light load, but was strong enough. The difficulty was, his having no saddle, and there were no stirrups, so that my feet would have touched the ground had I not held them up, which I did with the utmost pain and difficulty, as they were all inflamed and sore, and full of holes from the inflammation in the desert. Nobody can ever know, from a more particular description, the hundredth part of the pain I suffered that night. I was happy that it was all external. I had hardened my heart; it was strong, vigorous, and whole, from the near prospect I had of leaving this most accursed country, and being again restored to the conversation of men.