“Cabin!” echoed Demetri. “Does your excellency think that a son of the desert like him would go into a cabin? No, no. With his bornoos [cloak] over him, and his khordj [saddle-bags] under his head, he will sleep like a prince on any part of the deck.”
Mr Thorpe having no other objection to make, and the ladies being curious to see the hero of Foyster’s narrative, no further persuasion was requisite, and Hadji Ismael, on his part, was heartily glad that his young protégé had found so convenient and easy a conveyance to Cairo.
It was with sincere and mutual regret that Hassan parted with Mohammed Aga and his son Ahmed, who had shown him such invariable kindness during the three or four years that he had spent in Alexandria. But “destiny had written it,” and it is wonderful to see the composure with which good Mussulmans resign themselves even to the heaviest misfortunes with that phrase on their tongue.
The chief clerk, in bidding adieu to Hassan, put a letter into his hand. “Take this, my son,” he said. “It is addressed to Ahmed Aga, the mirakhor[[30]], and favourite Mameluke of Delì Pasha. I have known him long, and I trust he will be a good friend to you.”
Hassan in quitting the merchant’s house left universal regret behind him. Even the old Berber bowàb [porter] said, “Allah preserve him. He was a good youth. Every Bairam he gave me a dollar, and if I was half asleep and kept him at the door, he never cursed my father.”
On a fine autumnal day, about the middle of October, the Thorpe party embarked on the dahabiahs destined to convey them on their Nile expedition. The boats were moored to the banks of the Mahmoudiah canal, just opposite the pleasant and shady garden then occupied by Moharrem Bey, a relation of the Viceroy’s by marriage.
As donkey followed donkey, and porter followed porter to the place of embarkation, the active Greek distributed the packages in their several places; but the space and his patience were wellnigh exhausted by their variety and multitude. There were Mr Thorpe’s clothes and books and measuring instruments, and a box of tools for excavation. Then endless boxes and books and other sundries, the greater part of which Demetri considered as useless, were all to be added to the well-filled hampers of wine, spirits, tea, sugar, preserves, pickles, and a thousand other things with which his assiduity and Mr Thorpe’s guineas had filled every available bunker and corner of the boats.
Hassan had gone down early to the place of embarkation, not knowing the hour at which the start was to take place; so Demetri availed himself of this circumstance to make him his lieutenant, in urging the porters and the sailors to hasten the stowage of the multifarious baggage.
“By your head, Hassan, you are welcome!” cried the busy Greek; “had you not come, we should not have finished this work to-day, for these fellows are asses and the sons and grandsons of asses. Here—here, you blind dog!” shouted he to a sturdy fellow who was carrying a hamper into the smaller dahabiah, “did I not tell you to put that in the large boat?”
Here he paused, and said in an undertone to Hassan—