oorway.

And there was another mosque, sumptuously carpeted and lighted (which
the Prophet does not approve of), where men prayed in the dull mutter
that, at times, mounts and increases under the domes like the boom of
drums or the surge of a hot hive before the swarm flings out. And round
the corner of it, one almost ran into Our inconspicuous and wholly
detached Private of Infantry, his tunic open, his cigarette alight,
leaning against some railings and considering the city below. Men in
forts and citadels and garrisons all the world over go up at twilight as
automatically as sheep at sundown, to have a last look round. They say
little and return as silently across the crunching gravel, detested by
bare feet, to their whitewashed rooms and regulated lives. One of the
men told me he thought well of Cairo. It was interesting. 'Take it from
me,' he said, 'there's a lot in seeing places, because you can remember
'em afterward.'

He was very right. The purple and lemon-coloured hazes of dusk and
reflected day spread over the throbbing, twinkling streets, masked the
great outline of the citadel and the desert hills, and conspired to
confuse and suggest and evoke memories, till Cairo the Sorceress cast
her proper shape and danced before me in the heartbreaking likeness of
every city I had known and loved, a little farther up the road.

It was a cruel double-magic. For in the very hour that my homesick soul
had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back
on the dial, I realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all
the men penned in far-off places among strange sounds and smells.

IV

UP THE RIVER

Once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence.
What impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank
boredom of all who took part in the ritual.

'It was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '_You_
come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's
only part of their daily work to _them_. I expect,' he added, 'I should
have found it the same if--er--I'd gone on to the finish.'

He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at
its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance.

For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks,
carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt,
under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thri