We jumped ashore and quickly clambered up the bank, and before many minutes elapsed, Gustave and I had secured donkeys and were scampering away in the direction of the fireworks. Gustave was lighter than I, and urged his beast so fast that I could not keep up. I was striving to overtake him, when suddenly I heard a thud in the dust-cloud just ahead of me and a remark that was not altogether evangelical in its character. I had no difficulty in overtaking Gustave then.
He and his donkey were lying all in a heap, and it was difficult to say how much was donkey and how much was Gustave.
Both were covered with dust and looked as if they had been the principal attendants of a country flouring mill, or stevedores engaged in the stowage of a cargo of plaster of Paris.
My tendency to risibility was suddenly terminated by the fall of my donkey, and there we were in an indiscriminate mass, two men and two donkeys. Some rude jester may remark that there were four donkeys and no men in the heap, but I shall take no notice of such impertinence.
We righted ourselves and shook the dust from our feet as a testimony against such accidents. I dusted Gustave with my riding-whip and he dusted me, and we did it so vigorously that a policeman came to arrest us for fighting. An explanation in English, French, and German, which he did not understand, with a small silver coin, which he did, made it all right. He went his way rejoicing and left us to go ours. Our drivers got the donkeys up and put them together; we remounted and proceeded, this time at a more solemn pace. Gustave had suddenly remembered that the show was to last ten days, and there was no occasion for us to be in a hurry. We had no more falls that evening.
Moral: When you ride a donkey in Cairo, take your time and go slow. If you attempt to push things, you will suddenly find yourself a greater ass than the other one.
The fantasia, as the natives call it, was on a large open space where were formerly the plantations of Ibrahim Pasha. It is outside the city, on the road from Cairo to Old Cairo, and is studded with trees that bear many marks of antiquity. The road is broad, macadamized, and modern, and for a mile or more is as straight as a sunbeam. Along this straight portion there was a framework of posts and horizontal planks, hung with Chinese lanterns, in great variety of colors and in number about as countable as a political meeting on election night.
There were thousands of these lights, but whether five, ten, or twenty thousands, I will not pretend to say. There was a four-inch candle in each lantern, and the aggregate of illumination was sufficient to make the way unmistakably clear.