to the
nightly custom, to announce the programme for the morrow.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, plunging boldly into the rapid but
broken stream of his English, "to-morrow you will remember not to forget
to rise when the gong strikes you for to compress the journey before
twelve o'clock. Having arrived at the place where the donkeys expect us,
we shall ride five miles over the desert, passing a very fine temple of
Ammon-ra which dates itself from the eighteenth dynasty upon the way,
and so reach the celebrated pulpit rock of Abou-sir. The pulpit rock is
supposed to have been called so because it is a rock like a pulpit.
When you have reached it you will know that you are on the very edge of
civilisation, and that very little more will take you into the country
of the Dervishes, which will be obvious to you at the top. Having passed
the summit, you will perceive the full extremity of the second cataract,
embracing wild natural beauties of the most dreadful variety. Here all
very famous people carve their names,--and so you will carve your names
also."

[Illustration: So you will carve your names also p26]

Mansoor waited expectantly for a titter, and bowed to it when it
arrived. "You will then return to Wady Haifa, and there remain two hours
to suspect (sp.) the Camel Corps, including the grooming of the beasts,
and the bazaar before returning, so I wish you a very happy good-night."
There was a gleam of his white teeth in the lamplight, and then his
long, dark petticoats, his short English cover-coat, and his red
tarboosh vanished successively down the ladder. The low buzz of
conversation which had been suspended by his coming broke out anew.

"I'm relying on you, Mr. Stephens, to tell me all about Abousir," said
Miss Sadie Adams. "I do like to know what I am looking at right there at
the time, and not six hours afterwards in my state-room. I haven't got
Abou-Simbel and the wall pictures straight in my mind yet, though I saw
them yesterday."

"I never hope to keep up with it," said her aunt. "When I am safe back
in Commonwealth Avenue, and there's no dragoman to hustle me around,
I'll have time to read about it all, and then I expect I shall begin
to enthuse and want to come right back again. But it's just too good of
you, Mr. Stephens, to try and keep us informed."

"I thought that you might wish precise information, and so I prepared a
small digest of the matter," said Stephens, handing a slip of paper to
Miss Sadie. She looked at it in the light of the deck lamp, and broke
into her low, hearty laugh.

"_Re_ Abousir," she read; "now, what _do_ you mean by '_re_,' Mr.
Stephens? You put '_re_ Rameses the Second' on the last paper you gave
me."

"It is a habit I have acquired, Miss Sadie," said Stephens; "it is the
custom in the legal profession when they make a memo."

"Make what, Mr. Stephens?"

"A memo a memorandum, you know. We put _re_ so-and-so to show what it is
about."

"I suppose it's a good short way," said Miss Sadie, "but it feels
queer somehow when applied to scenery or to dead Egyptian kings. '_Re_
Cheops,'--doesn't that strike you as funny?"

"No, I can't say that it does," said Stephens.

"I wonder if it is true that the English have less humour than the
Americans, or whether it's just another kind of humour," said the girl.
She had a quiet, abstracted way of talking as if she were thinking
aloud. "I used to imagine they had less, and yet, when you come to
think of it, Dickens and Thackeray and Barrie, and so many other of the
humourists we admire most, are Britishers. Besides, I never in all my
days heard people laugh so hard as in that London theatre. There was a
man behind us, and every time he laughed auntie looked round to see if
a door had opened, he made such a draught. But you have some funny
expressions, Mr. Stephens!"

"What else strikes you as funny, Miss Sadie?"

"Well, when you sent me the temple ticket and the little map,