Where were they taking her?  South to some haunt where she would be farther than ever from the civilization which had flowed so unheedingly past that old palace of darkened windows, south toward the strange native cities and tiny villages and the grain fields and the deserts.  But it was all better than that stifling palace and the absence of the Captain gave her a sense of temporary security.

Sunday had been hot and dry, but this Monday was cooler and the north wind, blowing freshly over the wide Nile, broke the amber-brown of the water into little waves of sparkling blue edged with silver ripples.  The river was beautiful to her, even in her sorry plight, and to-day there were little clouds in the sky, furtive, scuddy little clouds with wind-teased edges, and they cast soft shadows over the river and over the tender green of the fields and the flat, mirroring water standing level in the trenches.  In the fields brown men and women were working, and on the river banks the half-naked figures of fellaheen were ceaselessly bending, ceaselessly straightening, as they dipped up the water from the shadoufs to feed the thirsty land.  Sometimes in the fields Arlee saw the red rusty bulk of the old engines, which the Mad Khedive had tried to install among his people, to do away with this back-breaking work, now lying useless and ignored.  God forbid that we do otherwise than our fathers, said the people.

Across the water came the monotonous chant of their labor song, and sometimes the creak and squeak of some inland well-sweep drawn round and round by some patient camel.  She felt herself to be in another world, as she sat in that boat guarded by that old woman and an eunuch, a world strange and remote, yet desperately real as it enmeshed her in its secret motives, its incalculable forces....

As she watched, as the surface of her mind reflected these sights and was caught in the maze of fresh impressions, the back of that mind was forever at work on her own terrifying problem.  She thought confidently of escape, not able to plan it but waiting intently upon opportunity, upon the passing of a boat perhaps, or the moment of tying to some bank.

There was in her a high spirit of undaunted pluck and an excitement in adventure, which made her heart quicken instead of flag at the odds before her.  Only the thought of the desperate stakes and the reality of her hidden fears would often draw the color from her cheeks and stop an instant the beating of that hurrying heart....  If those hawk-like eyes were watching then they might see the slim hands pressed feverishly together before warning self-control turned them lax again.

So hour after hour the boat went on.  On the left now the long mountain of Gebel-el-Tayr stretched golden and tawny like a lion of stone basking in the sun.  They passed Beni-Hassan, where a Nile steamer lay staked to the shore, the passengers streaming gaily out and starting off on donkeys for an excursion to the tombs.  If only it had been a little nearer, close enough to risk a desperate hail—!  But the very sight of it was comforting.