“Have you been to Berber lately? Are my people there well?”
“I was there less than a year ago, and all was well with them. You are journeying there now?” said Reouf.
“I am,” replied Daireh. “I returned from the land of exile to visit my home, hoping to share my hard-earned gains with my own people, when what did I find? Ruins in the place of my home, my family dispersed, my father slain by the English.”
“Not so,” said Hassib. “I heard of the misfortune; but it was by the hand of Arabi’s soldiers that he fell; not that of the English. Arabi’s soldiers, or plunderers who called themselves such. The English sailors caught them red-handed, and hung them up for it then and there.”
“May their graves be defiled, whoever they were,” said Daireh. “I have no friends now except at Berber.”
Harry made out a good deal of this, and his heart bled for the Egyptian, coming back as he thought to a home, to find nothing but desolation, and to be driven out again from his native land. For there is nothing in common between the Egyptian and the Nubian but religion. The former race affects to despise the latter, and the latter really despises the former. And with reason.
So when he rose to go back to his diabeheeh (Nile boat), he bade him good-night in English, and expressed regret for the grievous disappointment and sorrow he had experienced. And Daireh said of course it was a great affliction, but he hoped to make a new home in the Soudan. And so they parted, courteously enough.
The diabeheeh Daireh was travelling by had sustained some injury from a sharp rock during the process of being hauled up the cataract, and the crew were going to remain where they were for the purpose of repairs. So when a sudden red flush burst on the eastern horizon, and spread and deepened till it seemed as if a large city was on fire, and Hassib, recognising this as the dawn, began kicking his lazy sailors into wakefulness, the down-stream boat was the only one which made preparations for a start.
By the time the anchor was up and the sails hoisted, however, there was some movement on board the other diabeheeh, and parting greetings were exchanged. Harry Forsyth, seeing the man who had excited his compassion the night before on deck, waved his hand to him and shouted good-bye! And the other returned the salutation. And the local pilot for the second cataract took the helm, and the vessel entered the boiling waters, and was whirled in apparent helplessness, though really guided with great skill amidst innumerable rocks, any one of which would have crushed her like an egg-shell.
And Harry, in the excitement and anxiety of the passage, forgot all about the casual traveller from whom he had just parted. Little did he dream that that man carried in his breast the document upon which his fortune depended, and the obtaining of which would establish his mother and sister in comfort, besides changing all the future prospects of his old friend Kavanagh. And Daireh, had he but known that the Englishman he had just parted from was Harry Forsyth, what a lucky opportunity he would have esteemed it for making a bargain, and securing at least some profit out of what threatened to be the barren crime he had committed.