The loss the most irreparable was that of the medicine chest. Finally, however, everything was arranged. Lady Hester, whose adventurous character accommodated itself to the unexpected, praised the Turks warmly: "I do not know how it is done, but I am always at ease with them and I obtain all that I ask for. As for the Greeks, it is quite different; they are cheats, cheats...." The doctor had made a good recruit.
Lady Hester, who resigned herself to the misadventures of the others as readily as she did to her own, wrote, in speaking of Bruce, Pearce and Meryon, to one of her friends: "They are quite well; they have saved nothing from the wreck; but do not imagine that we are melancholy, at any rate, for we have all danced, myself included, the Pyrrhic dance with the peasants of the villages which were on our way!" What an exceptional character! A woman who has lost all her trunks and who dances the Pyrrhic dance!
The doctor, who had been despatched on a confidential mission to Smyrna, to bring back money, without which one can do nothing in the Orient, and clothes, without which one can go nowhere, returned with boxes and coffers.
Lady Hester, Bruce and Pearce threw themselves upon him like children and arrayed themselves as fancy dictated. They donned magnificent and strange costumes, which seemed to form part of a vast Turkish emporium. The doctor completed his accoutrement by thrusting a yataghan through his girdle.
Lady Hester, finding herself very much at her ease with her Turkish robe, her turban and her burnous, decreed that she should travel thus henceforth. And the wearing of this masculine costume was to remove many difficulties in permitting her to move everywhere with her face uncovered. From his stay in Rhodes the doctor preserved two principal recollections: first, that the English raise the cost of living wherever they go; next, that the women of the island weave very durable silk shirts, which can be worn for three years without tearing them.
Captain Henry Hope, commanding the frigate Salsette, in the harbour of Smyrna, having learned of Lady Hester's shipwreck, came to fetch her to convey her to Egypt. At the beginning of February, 1812, the Salsette entered the port of Alexandria. Colonel Misset, the English Resident, was full of kindness and attentions; he laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the singular costumes of the travellers and gave them advice as to their behaviour. Lady Hester took a violent dislike to the town. "The place is hideous," said she twenty-four hours after her arrival; "and if all Egypt resembles it, I feel that I shall not stay there long."
The French occupation was remembered by everyone, but the Christians of Alexandria had peculiar taste and coldly confessed their preference for Turkish rule. What a difference between the justice meted out by the French and that by the Turks! With the cadi, when a man was accused of murder, the case was not protracted. He was confronted with the witnesses, and then and there he was either released, or imprisoned, or bastinadoed or executed. If he were thrown into prison, the amount of compensation was immediately fixed, at five, ten, one hundred piastres, according to the importance of the victim and the means of the assassin. The latter circumvented influential friends; it was necessary for the friends to be influential.
"Come," said they, "a thousand piastres, between us, if you say a word for him."
They made discreet inquiries of the Governor's mistress for the time being, whom a diamond ring persuaded to intercede for the unfortunate man. Entreated on the right, supplicated on the left, solicited at the baths, tormented in his harem, harpooned by some, harassed by others, the Governor ended by demanding mercy, remitted the fine and released the prisoner. At any rate, they knew what to expect; it was clear, plain, precise, if not just. While with the French—Oh! There now! A poor little crime of no importance at all dragged on for months, for years.... And how could you expect that a lawsuit would not be perpetuated when there were so many notaries, so many attorneys, so many advocates, clerks, registrars and scribes interested in prolonging.
Lady Hester proceeded to Rosetta—town with this charming name, guarded by its ramparts of red bricks and its groves of palm-trees, from where she intended to ascend the course of the Nile so far as Cairo. She hired two boats, and the wonderful voyage began. Wide, powerful, calm, impressive and deep, it was truly the king of rivers, the river which gives life, the river which saves.... Flotillas of earthen jars tied together by branches followed the current of the stream. Kanjes bearing beehives, piled up in the form of pyramids, descended slowly. They were the bees which had flown to meet the spring, and which, having left two months earlier for the plains of Upper Egypt, where the sainfoin and the clover were already ripening, were now returning with their golden booty towards the Delta. The travellers met innumerable barges with curved prows and rafts laden with big restless oxen. At the villages they revictualled in flour, eggs and poultry. They took their meals on board and the days slipped by like hours. Sometimes the banks were high and the water very low, and curious persons landed to get a view of the land. They returned very quickly towards the boat, disappointed by the sadness and the monotony of the immense plains with their trifling undulations, rebuffed by the hostile reception of the hamlets: mass of mud, huts of loam, labyrinth of alleys where the foot slips in dried camel-dung, headlong flight of the women who hide themselves, squalling of children at the maternal heels, grumbling of fellahs suspecting the tax-gatherers, baying of dogs, putrid odour which rises from beings and things which decomposition lies in wait for.