“Boat wanted by other misters:  let us go back:  take them.  We make much money; come again evening, take you home.”

“But, you young ruffians, what am I to do out here alone?  I don’t know the way, and I want you to carry my things,” expostulated the Englishman, vainly trying to adjust a pair of blue goggles over his eyes, smarting already in the intolerable glare from the sand, while striving not to let drop his camera, fiercely cuddled under one arm, and its tripod of steel legs and an overcoat balanced on the other.

The black remained for a moment impassive, statuesque, wrapped in reflection.  Then he brightened: 

“Me know,” he said, suddenly springing from the boat.  “Me take you my house.  Sister show you the way:  sister carry mister’s things.”

The Englishman stared for a moment into the eager, intelligent face, strangely handsome, though in ebony.  After all, do we not think a well-carved table beautiful, although sometimes, even because, it is in ebony?  Then he brightened: 

“Very good; take me to your house, and let me see your sister,” he said good-humouredly; adding inwardly, “If she’s anything like you, she’ll be the very thing for the camera.”

They turned from the cool, rolling, billowy water inwards towards the desert and the huts of Omdurman, and the heat rose up and struck their cheeks each step they took.

* * * * *

Merla stood that morning at her hut doorway looking out—­out towards the river she could not see, for the banks rise and the desert falls slightly behind them.  She stood on the threshold, and the sun beat on her Eastern face, and showed it was very good.  She was sixteen, and, like her brothers who ran the naphtha launch for the English, she was straight and erect, tall and lithe and supple, with a wonderful stateliness and majesty of carriage, though she had never been taught deportment nor attended physical culture classes.  Merla was beautiful, with the perfect beauty of line that belongs to her race, and possessed the straight, high forehead, the broad, calm brow that tells of its intelligence and nobility.  She knew, however, nothing of her own beauty.  She never cared for staring into the little squares of glass that the girls of the village would buy in the market-place, nor coveted the long strings of blue glass beads that the Bishareens brought in such numbers to sell in Omdurman; nor did it specially please her to lay the beads against her neck, and see them slide up and down on her smooth skin as she breathed, though her companions would thus sit for hours cross-legged before their little mirrors, breathing deep to note how their beads rose and fell and glistened in the light.