years, and all round it the soft yellowish
desert, with a mirage quivering over it in the distance, a mirage of
trees and water and green hills. A caravan lounged its way slowly into
the waste. At the waterside, here and there devout Mahommedans were
saying their prayers, now standing, now bowing towards the east, now
kneeling and touching the ground with the forehead. Then, piercing and
painfully musical, came the call of the Muezzin from the turret of
the mosque a quarter of a mile away. Near by the fellah worked in his
onion-field; and on the khiassas loaded with feddan at the shore, just
out of the current, and tied up for the night, sat the riverine folk
eating their dourha and drinking black coffee. Now Dimsdale noticed
that, nearer still, just below the Sefi, on the shore, sat a
singing-girl, an a'l'meh, with a darkfaced Arab beside her, a kemengeh
in his lap. Looking down, Dimsdale caught their eyes, nodded to them,
and the singing-girl and the kemengeh-player got to their feet and
salaamed. The girl's face was in the light of evening. Her dark skin
took on a curious reddish radiance, her eyes were lustrous and her
figure beautiful. The kemengeh-player stood with his instrument ready,
and he lifted it in a kind of appeal. Dimsdale beckoned them up on deck.
Lighting a cigarette, he asked the a'l'meh to sing. Her voice had
the curious vibrant note of the Arab, and the words were in singular
sympathy with Dimsdale's thoughts:

"I have a journey to make, and perils are in hiding,
Many moons must I travel, many foes meet;
A morsel of bread my food, a goolah of water for drinking,
Desert sand for my bed, the moonlight my sheet....
Come, my love, to the scented palms:
Behold, the hour of remembrance!"

For the moment Dimsdale ceased to be the practical scientist--he was all
sentimentalist. He gave himself the luxury of retrospection, he
enjoyed the languorous moment; the music, the voice, the tinkle of the
tambourine, the girl herself, sinuous, sensuous. It struck him that he
had never seen an a'l'meh so cleanly and so finely dressed, so graceful,
so delicate in manner. It struck him also that the kemengeh-player was
a better-class Arab than he had ever met. The man's face attracted
him, fascinated him. As he looked it seemed familiar. He studied it, he
racked his brain to recall it. Suddenly he remembered that it was
like the face of a servant of Imshi Pasha--a kind of mouffetish of hi