“At ze sunset, mees,” was the dragoman’s smiling reply. “To-morrow morning, at haf-pas tree we land, and we watch ze sun rise from inside ze gr-reat Tem-pel of Rameses.” Then raising his voice, so that all could hear, as is the habit of dragomans: “Ze gr-reat Tem-pel is cut in ze rock and made by Rameses to hees gr-reat gawd, Ra, gawd of ze sun. In ze front are fo-our colossi—gr-reat carved statues of Rameses seated. Zees, la-dees and gen’lemens, you will be able to see first as we come round ze bend of ze Nile about seex o’clock. To-morrow morning we land at haf-pas tree, and ze sight is one of ze grandest in all our Egypt.”
“Half-past three!” echoed Chester Dawson, who was sitting in a deck-chair at Edna’s side. “I shall still be in my berth, I hope. No Temple of Rameses would get me up before sunrise.”
“Say, you’re real lazy,” declared the buxom American girl. “I’ll be right there—you bet.”
“But is the old ruin worth it? We’ve seen the wonderful works of Rameses all up the Nile.”
“Waal—is it worth coming to Egypt at all?” she asked in her native drawl. “Guess it is—better than Eu-rope—even if you’re fed up by it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. This beastly heat makes me sick,” and he gave a vigorous stroke with his horsehair fly-whisk with which each traveller was provided. Beelzebub assuredly lived in Egypt, for was he not the god of flies. Everything has a god in Egypt.
Boulos had resumed his comfortable chat with Melek, the reis. His thousand piastre deal of that morning had fully satisfied him. Not that he ever overcharged the travellers for any antiques which he sold them. As everyone on the Nile knows—from Cairo to far Khartoum—Boulos the laughing, easy-going though gorgeously attired dragoman, is a scrupulously honest dealer. He is a friend of the greatest Egyptologists in the world and, unlike the common run of dragomans, has studied Egyptian history, and possesses quite a remarkable knowledge of hieroglyphics. Many a well-known European professor has sat at the knee of Boulos, and many an antique is now in one or other of the European national collections which originally passed through the hands of the ever-faithful Boulos.
Waldron was sipping an innocuous drink composed of Evian water with a lime squeezed into it, and chatting in French with old Jules Gigleux, passing one of those usual mornings of laziness, away from the worries of letters and newspapers, which are so delightful up the Nile.
Beneath the wide awning the soft, hot breeze pleasantly fanned them, while away on the banks rose the feathery palms on the tiny green strip of cultivated mud, sometimes only a few feet in width, and then the desert—that great glaring waste of brown sand—stretching away to the horizon where the sky shone like burnished copper.
Mademoiselle, as full of mischief as ever, was the very life and soul of that smart party of moneyed folk which included two English peers, three American millionaires, an Austrian banker, a wealthy Russian prince, and two Members of Parliament who had paired. It had been whispered that she was daughter of Duprez, the millionaire sugar-refiner of Lyons; and, as everyone knows, the sugar of the Maison Duprez is used in nearly every household throughout France.