detachment of British soldiers getting
ready to start en route for Suez were urging, coaxing, striving to make
that most obstinate of animals, the camel, get to its feet some time
before midnight.

From them she looked at a group of native dwellings made of sunbaked
clay. Small square buildings, looking in the distance like out-houses,
with scarcely perceptible windows, and flat roofs given over to
poultry. Near them the patient bullock did its monotonous round,
drawing the precious water from the well with which to moisten the arid
little patch of earth from which the fellah extracts the so very little
necessary to him in his life.

A clump of slender palms, like forgotten scaffolding, stood out clear
against the intense blue of the sky; the desert, that wonderful
magnetic plain, stretched away in mile upon mile of yellow nothingness,
until as minute as flies on a yellow floor, growing more distinct at
every step, with solemn and exceeding great dignity stalked a string of
camels, each animal fastened by a rope to the saddle of the one in
front, each apparently unconscious of its seemingly overwhelming
burden, as with heads swaying slightly from side to side with that air
of disdain which the dame of Belgravia unsuccessfully tries to imitate
when essaying to crush the inhabitant of Suburbia by means of
long-handled lorgnettes resting on the shiny arch of her aristocratic
nose, they responded without fail to the soft musical voice of the Arab
seated cross-legged on the leader.

Then her eyes turned to the West.

To the mixed mob which had rushed from the _Norddeutscher Lloyd_ at
Suez, leaving the great liner to the wise few, while perspiring and
querulous, and altogether unpleasant, they had filled the little train
which chuffs its way along the edge of the canal to Ismailiah, and
through the dust and fly-laden miles to Cairo, where it turns its
burden out to clamour and argue vociferously with the wily dragoman who
would take a herd of elephants to "do" the Pyramids in one hour if the
backsheesh proved substantial enough.

With absolute loathing she gazed at those with whom she had passed so
many weary days on the return journey from Australia.

There were of a certain type of English women not a few, sunburnt, loud
of voice, lean of breast and narrow of hip.

Their sisters, wiser and better endowed by nature, had remained on the
liner, taking advantage of the empty conditions of the boat to repair
the rava