"By it I nearly lost Jock Pentland, my servant. I discovered the poor chield lying, half dead, at the base of Cleopatra's needle, and had him looked to in time to save his life. Many of our men were dangerously affected by it; but when it passed away, all was right again,—and I remember how pleased Fassifern and I were, when, for the first time after the kamsin, we sallied forth on our daily visit to our friend Mohammed Djedda, a Turkish captain, with whom we had become acquainted in the course of garrison-duty, and who had a very handsome house of his own within the walls of Alexandria.
"Cameron and I had become close comrades, then being only a couple of jovial subs. He was senior, and has got in advance of me; but since he has obtained command of the corps he keeps us all at the staff's end, and acts the Highland chief on too extended a scale. Yet Jock (we called him Jock then, for shortness, but it would be mutiny to do so now,) is a fine fellow, and a brave officer, and I pledge him heartily in Senor Raphael's sherry.
"To a stranger the appearance of Alexandria is certainly striking. The gigantic ruins of a people whose power has passed away, overtop the terraced roofs of the moderns. The embattled towers, the shining domes, the tall and slender minarets rise on every side among groves of the graceful palm and spreading fig-tree, intermingled with the sad remains of the years that are gone, the crumbling temple, the prostrate pillar, and the mouldering archway! Friezes and pedestals, rich with carving and hieroglyphics, lie piled in shapeless masses, covered with moss and corroded with saltpetre, meeting the view on every side, and striking the stranger with veneration and awe, while his heart is filled with sadness and sublimity. The ruins of these vast palaces which the great genius of Dinocrates designed, and which the immense wealth of Alexander erected, are now the dwelling-place of the owl and the jackal, the serpent, the asp, and the scorpion. The inhabitants of the modern city are indeed strange-looking beings, with brown faces, bushy black beards, and wearing large turbans of linen on their bald pates. Their dress appears like a shapeless gown of divers colours, enveloping them from chin to heel; a cimetar and poniard in the sash, slippers on the feet, and a pipe six feet long in the hand, completes their costume. Their women are muffled up to the eyes, which are the only parts of them visible; and then the shaggy camels and hideous asses with which every thoroughfare is crowded—"
"Well, major, but the mummies; you have not told us of them yet," said Ronald, becoming impatient.
"I am coming to the point," replied the major, not in the least displeased at the interruption, abrupt though it was; "but you must permit me to tell a story in my own rambling way. To continue,—
"The redoubtable captain, Mohammed Djedda, had become a very great friend of ours; we used to visit him daily, in the cool part of the evening, pretending that we came to enjoy a pipe of opium with him, under the huge nopal or cochineal tree which flourished before his door. He knew no English, I very little Turkish, and Cameron none at all; consequently our conversation was never very spirited or interesting, and we have sat, for four consecutive hours, pulling assiduously, or pretending to do so, at our long pipes, without uttering a syllable, staring hard at each other the while with a gravity truly oriental, until we scarcely knew whether our heads or heels were uppermost. We took great credit to ourselves for never laughing outright at the strange figure of the Capitan Djedda, as he sat opposite to us, squatted on a rich carpet, and garbed in his silken vest, gown, wide cotton pantaloons, and heavy turban, looking like Blue Beard in the story-book. You may wonder what pleasure we found in this sort of work, but the secret was this: Mohammed was one of the most fashionable old bucks in the Turkish service, and of course could not do without four wives,—no Turk of any pretensions to rank being without that number. These he kept in most excellent order and constant attendance upon his own lazy person, although he had a score of wretched slaves,—poor barefooted devils, who wore nought to hide their brown skins but a blue shirt, girt about their waist with a leather belt, and a red kerchief twisted round their crowns.
"But Mohammed's veiled and draperied spouses were the gentlest creatures I ever beheld, and not in the least jealous, because he entertained for them all the same degree of cool contempt; and often he told us, that 'women were mere animals, without souls, and only good for breeding children and mischief.' One brought his pipe and lit it, a second spread his carpet under the nopal, a third arranged his turban, and a fourth put on his slippers; but he would scorn to thank any with a glance, and kept his round eyes obstinately fixed on the ground, as became a Turk and superior being. This strange old gentleman had two daughters; perfect angels they were,—seraphs or houri. We could not see their faces, all of which, with the exception of the eyes, were concealed by an abominable cloth veil, which it was almost incurring death to remove before such an infidel as me. But their eyes! By heavens such were never beheld, not even in the land of sunny eyes—so large and black, so liquid and sparkling! No other parts were visible except their hands and ankles, which were bare and white, small and beautiful enough to turn the heads of a whole regiment. The expression of their lustrous eyes, the goddess-like outline of their thinly clad forms, made Cameron and me imagine their faces to be possessed of that sublime degree of dazzling beauty which it is seldom the lot of mortals to—"
"Excellent, major," exclaimed Alister; "of all your Egyptian stories, this is the best. Then it was the daughters you went to see?"
"To be sure it was! and for the pleasure of beholding them, endured every evening the staring and smoking with their ferocious old dog of a papa, who, could he have divined what the two giaours were after, would soon have employed some of his followers to deprive us of our heads. I am sure, by the pleased and melting expression of their eyes, that the girls knew what we came about, and we would certainly have opened a correspondence with them by some means, could we have done so; but as they were kept almost continually under lock and key, we never found an opportunity to see them alone, and letters—if we could have written them—would have been useless, as they could neither read nor write a word of any known language, their education being entirely confined to dancing, singing, and playing on the 'o-ód, a kind of guitar used in Egypt: it is a plano-convex affair, which you may often see introduced in eastern views and paintings.
"Well, as I related before, on the evening after the blowing of the kamsin, Fassifern and I departed on our daily visit, eagerly hoping that we might have an opportunity to see Zela and Azri, the two daughters, alone, as we marched the next day en route for that great city of the genii and the fairies, Grand Cairo, and might never again be at Alexandria. We were confoundedly smitten, I assure you, though we have often laughed at it since. We were as much in love as two very romantic young subalterns could be, and very earnest—hoping, fearing, trembling, and all that—we were in the matter."