“Even as he was speaking, the man in the blue coat, who seemed to be in a perfect fury, and to be urging his men to board our boat and beat our crew, caught up a stone or brick, which happened to come within his reach. Whether he aimed it at Hassan, or the rais, or me, I know not, but it just grazed my head, drawing a little blood from the upper part of my cheek.
“Hassan’s countenance changed in a moment; his eyes shone like lightning; it was terrible to see such concentrated fury in that young face, so gentle in its habitual expression. Calling the rais to hold up his large cloak before me to shield me from further harm, he sprang to the lower deck, and ran forward to the prow where the boat had been entangled. Before he reached the spot they had become disengaged, I know not how, and ours was beginning slowly to resume its course; clearing the intervening space at a bound, he leapt alone upon the deck of the other boat. There he was met and attacked by a man with what they call here a naboot, a thick heavy stick. Hassan wrenched it from the man’s grasp, and whirling it round his head, and calling on the others to stand back, he forced his way to the spot where stood the kawàss who had thrown the stone; the latter drew his sword, but Hassan’s blow fell with such terrific force that the sword was shivered, and the man fell senseless on the deck.
“We could see that four or five of the boat’s crew struck at Hassan and grappled with him, endeavouring to throw him down and bind him, but he shook them off by the exertion of his tremendous strength, and plunging overboard into the canal swam to the opposite bank; two of the boat’s crew jumped in and swam after him, but he reached the shore before them. He then ran along the bank till he overtook our boat, which was now going steadily through the water with a fair wind, and plunging into the canal again, caught a rope thrown to him by our rais, and in a minute was safely on board.”
The two dahabiahs had passed through the locks of Atfeh, and were just about to commence their course up the broad stream of the Nile when a kawàss from the Governor of the town came to the water’s edge and desired the rais of the larger boat to stay a few minutes, as he had a message to deliver to the English traveller.
On being presented to Mr Thorpe, at whose side stood Demetri as interpreter, the kawàss said he was instructed by the Governor to desire that an Arab on board, charged with assaulting and beating one of the servants of the Viceroy, might be given up to him.
Mr Thorpe, whose experience of Eastern travel was small, but who was at the same time too humane to think of giving up Hassan to the tender mercies of the Atfeh authorities, consulted apart with Demetri, and then replied—
“Tell the Governor that I have a complaint to make against the captain and crew of the boat which ran into and damaged mine; and also against that servant of the Viceroy who, without any right or provocation, threw a brick at my daughter, which struck her, and might have killed her. I am now on my way to Cairo, where the rights of the case will be examined by the English Consul and the Egyptian Government: then if any person in this boat shall be judged to be in fault he can be punished.”
The kawàss, not having any reply ready to meet this reasonable proposal, permitted the boats to proceed on their way, and retired to deliver the message to his principal.
Unlike the Rhine, the Rhone, and other great rivers in Europe, which are, as it were, merely beneficial accidents in the countries through which they flow, the Nile is the creator and perpetuator, as well as the fertiliser, of the whole soil of Egypt. Wherever its prolific waters annually irrigate and subside, there spring up in exuberant abundance the grains and herbs of the field, the flowers and fruits of the garden, the almond and pomegranate, the fruitful palm, the fragrant orange and lemon, the cotton-plant and the sugar-cane, and, more frequent than all, the widespread shade of the sycomore.[[31]] In Egypt it is unnecessary to inquire where vegetation ceases and the desert begins: from the Cataracts to the Mediterranean the answer would be always the same—whatever spot or line the waters of the Nile can reach there is, or may be, cultivation; all beyond that line is desert. The feelings of the party on attaining the fine view of this glorious river were various as their habits and characters.
Hassan reclined near the rais, reading snatches of his ‘Arabian Nights,’ and occasionally casting his eyes over the desert sandhills to the west, endeavouring to recognise among them some spot which he had passed in his expeditions with the Oulâd-Ali. The boats glided swiftly forward through the turbid stream under the impulse of a fair and fresh breeze, their crews seated lazily round the mast, passing their pipe from mouth to mouth, when Demetri, to whom everything like silence or quiet was naturally repugnant, came aft and asked Mr Thorpe whether he would like to hear the crew sing an Arab boat-song.