of an iron-clad! Is it really yourself?
Give us your flipper, my boy!"

But the flipper was already in that of Willie Armstrong, while the
others crowded round him with congratulations.

"Wot on airth's all the noise about in that there corner?" exclaimed a
Jack-tar, who was trying hard to tell an interminable story to a quiet
shipmate in spite of the din.

"It's only that we've diskivered our captin," cried Molloy, eager to get
any one to sympathise.

"Wot captin's that?" growled the Jack-tar.

"Why, him as led us on the hillock, to be sure, at Suakim."

When acts of heroism and personal prowess are of frequent occurrence,
deeds of daring are not apt to draw general attention, unless they rise
above the average. The "affair of the hillock," however, as it got to
be called, although unnoticed in despatches, or the public prints, was
well-known among the rank and file who did the work in those hot
regions. When, therefore, it became known that the six heroes, who had
distinguished themselves on that hillock, were present, a great deal of
interest was exhibited. This culminated when a little man rushed
suddenly into the room, and, with a wild "hooroo!" seized Molloy round
the waist--he wasn't tall enough to get him comfortably by the neck--and
appeared to wrestle with him.

"It's Corporal Flynn--or his ghost!" exclaimed Molloy.

"Sure an' it's both him an' his ghost togither!" exclaimed the corporal,
shaking hands violently all round.

"I thought ye was sent home," said Moses.

"Niver a bit, man; they tell awful lies where you've come from. I
wouldn't take their consciences as a gift. I'm as well as iver, and
better; but I'm goin' home for all that, to see me owld grandmother. Ye
needn't laugh, you spalpeens. Come, three cheers, boys, for the `heroes
o' the hillock!'"

Most heartily did the men there assembled respond to this call, and then
the entire assembly cleared off to the concert, with the exception of
Miles Milton. "He," as Corporal Flynn knowingly observed, "had other
fish to fry." He fried these fish in company with Mrs and Marion Drew;
but as the details of this culinary proceeding were related to us in
strict confidence, we refuse to divulge them, and now draw the curtain
down on the ancient land of Egypt.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

CONCLUSION.

Once more we return to the embarkation jetty at Portsmouth.

There, as of old, we find a huge, white-painted troop-ship warping
slowly in, he