of her indifference. "For five
days! What did you do?"

"Fifty-five of the boats flew the English flag. Their passengers amused
themselves playing cricket and polo in the desert. The others--swore!"

"But--" Katrine looked blank, "it might have been dreadful! Suppose
there had been a war! What would they have done then?"

Captain Bedford smiled, but with a slight curl of the lip.

"Played cricket still, and--muddled through! When do we do anything
else! In 1882, when Arabi was upsetting things in Egypt we sent a
string of gunboats and transports along the canal and one ran aground.
If she had lain in the middle of the channel instead of at the side--
well! Wolseley's plans might not have come off. As it was, she lay
near enough to the bank to allow the others to be towed past with
ropes."

"Really? Yes. How interesting!" murmured Katrine vaguely. In the
pause which followed she was conscious of a sound like that of a
suppressed laugh, and turning round beheld her companion's eyes
twinkling with an amusement so infectious that she laughed in sympathy.

"Well, but I'm _not_ interested!" she confessed boldly. "There is so
much else... Now that we have passed Port Said, I feel quite near to
India, and there are so many personal things that I am longing to ask.--
It is months since you have seen them all, but for me it has been years.
Five years since Dorothea sailed, and she is my nearest friend. You
know her intimately, of course. And Jack! Shall I find them changed?"

"In outward appearance? Yes! India ages; but they are the sort that
keep young at heart. Jack wears well; growing a trifle grey perhaps;
she is too thin, and the boy is like her,--all spirit, too little flesh.
Amusing little rascal!"

"Yes." Katrine resumed her former position, arms resting on the rail,
head turned aside. The Lake of Menzaleh stretched to the western
horizon, its surface dotted with fishing boats, and covered with vast
flocks of pelicans, flamingoes, and duck, which, unlike the fishermen,
had caught all the fish they desired, and were now settling for the
night. There was a strangeness, an unreality about the scene, which
gave it the substance of a dream.

"And--Captain Blair?" Katrine queried softly.

It was an effort to introduce the name, but she was determined to do so;
nay, more, a mysterious impulse seemed to urge her to intimate something
of the true position, to let this man realise that she and J