A Desert Drama | Page 2

off the wild and predatory men of the south.
But whatever be their explanation, be it a fierce neighbour, or be it a

climatic change, there they stand, these grim and silent cities, and up on
the hills you can see the graves of their people, like the port-holes of a
man-of-war. It is through this weird, dead country that the tourists
smoke and gossip and flirt as they pass up to the Egyptian frontier.
The passengers of the Korosko formed a merry party, for most of them
had travelled up together from Cairo to Assouan, and even
Anglo-Saxon ice thaws rapidly upon the Nile. They were fortunate in
being without the single disagreeable person who in these small boats
is sufficient to mar the enjoyment of the whole party. On a vessel
which is little more than a large steam launch, the bore, the cynic, or
the grumbler holds the company at his mercy. But the Korosko was free
from anything of the kind. Colonel Cochrane Cochrane was one of
those officers whom the British Government, acting upon a large
system of averages, declares at a certain age to be incapable of further
service, and who demonstrate the worth of such a system by spending
their declining years in exploring Morocco, or shooting lions in
Somaliland. He was a dark, straight, aquiline man, with a courteously
deferential manner, but a steady, questioning eye; very neat in his dress
and precise in his habits, a gentleman to the tips of his trim fingernails.
In his Anglo-Saxon dislike to effusiveness he had cultivated a
self-contained manner which was apt at first acquaintance to be
repellant, and he seemed to those who really knew him to be at some
pains to conceal the kind heart and human emotions which influenced
his actions. It was respect rather than affection which he inspired
among his fellow-travellers, for they felt, like all who had ever met him,
that he was a man with whom acquaintance was unlikely to ripen into a
friendship, though a friendship when once attained would be an
unchanging and inseparable part of himself. He wore a grizzled military
moustache, but his hair was singularly black for a man of his years. He
made no allusion in his conversation to the numerous campaigns in
which he had distinguished himself, and the reason usually given for
his reticence was that they dated back to such early Victorian days that
he had to sacrifice his military glory at the shrine of his perennial
youth.
Mr. Cecil Brown--to take the names in the chance order in which they

appear upon the passenger list--was a young diplomatist from a
Continental Embassy, a man slightly tainted with the Oxford manner,
and erring upon the side of unnatural and inhuman refinement, but full
of interesting talk and cultured thought. He had a sad, handsome face, a
small wax-tipped moustache, a low voice and a listless manner, which
was relieved by a charming habit of suddenly lighting up into a rapid
smile and gleam when anything caught his fancy. An acquired
cynicism was eternally crushing and overlying his natural youthful
enthusiasms, and he ignored what was obvious while expressing keen
appreciation for what seemed to the average man to be either trivial or
unhealthy. He chose Walter Pater for his travelling author, and sat all
day, reserved but affable, under the awning, with his novel and his
sketch-book upon a campstool beside him. His personal dignity
prevented him from making advances to others, but if they chose to
address him, they found him a courteous and amiable companion.
The Americans formed a group by themselves. John H. Headingly was
a New Englander, a graduate of Harvard, who was completing his
education by a tour round the world. He stood for the best type of
young American,--quick, observant, serious, eager for knowledge, and
fairly free from prejudice, with a fine ballast of unsectarian but earnest
religious feeling, which held him steady amid all the sudden gusts of
youth. He had less of the appearance and more of the reality of culture
than the young Oxford diplomatist, for he had keener emotions though
less exact knowledge. Miss Adams and Miss Sadie Adams were aunt
and niece, the former a little, energetic, hard-featured Bostonian
old-maid, with a huge surplus of unused love behind her stern and
swarthy features. She had never been from home before, and she was
now busy upon the self-imposed task of bringing the East up to the
standard of Massachusetts. She had hardly landed in Egypt before she
realised that the country needed putting to rights, and since the
conviction struck her she had been very fully occupied. The
saddle-galled donkeys, the starved pariah dogs, the flies round the eyes
of the babies, the naked children, the importunate begging, the