We arrived at midnight and next morning my boat had the air of being pillaged.  A crowd of laughing, chattering fellows ran off to the house laden with loose articles snatched up at random, loaves of sugar, pots and pans, books, cushions, all helter-skelter.  I feared breakages, but all was housed safe and sound.  The small boys of an age licensed to penetrate into the cabin, went off with the oddest cargoes of dressing things and the like—­of backsheesh not one word. Alhamdulillah salaameh!  ‘Thank God thou art in peace,’ and Ya Sitt, Ya Emeereh, till my head went round.  Old Ismaeen fairly hugged me and little Achmet hung close to my side.  I went up to Mustapha’s house while the unpacking took place and breakfasted there, and found letters from all of you, from you to darling Rainie, Sheykh Yussuf was charmed with her big writing and said he thought the news in that was the best of all.

The weather was intensely hot the first two days.  Now it is heavenly, a fresh breeze and gorgeous sunshine.  I brought two common Arab lanterns for the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj and his moolid is now going on.  Omar took them and lighted them up and told me he found several people who called on the rest to say the Fathah for me.  I was sitting out yesterday with the people on the sand looking at the men doing fantasia on horseback for the Sheykh, and a clever dragoman of the party was relating about the death of a young English girl whom he had served, and so de fil en aiguille we talked about the strangers buried here and how the bishop had extorted 100 pounds.  I said, ’Maleysh (never mind) the people have been hospitable to me alive and they will not cease if I die, but give me a tomb among the Arabs.’  One old man said, ’May I not see thy day, oh Lady, and indeed thou shouldest be buried as a daughter of the Arabs, but we should fear the anger of thy Consul and thy family, but thou knowest that wherever thou art buried thou wilt assuredly lie in a Muslim grave.’  ‘How so?’ said I.  ’Why, when a bad Muslim dies the angels take him out of his tomb and put in one of the good from among the Christians in his place.’  This is the popular expression of the doctrine that the good are sure of salvation.  Omar chimed in at once, ’Certainly there is no doubt of it, and I know a story that happened in the days of Mahommed Ali Pasha which proves it.’  We demanded the story and Omar began.  ’There was once a very rich man of the Muslims so stingy that he grudged everybody even so much as a “bit of the paper inside the date” (Koran).  When he was dying he said to his wife, “Go out and buy me a lump of pressed dates,” and when she had brought it he bade her leave him alone.  Thereupon he took all his gold out of his sash and spread it before him, and rolled it up two or three pieces at a time in the dates, and swallowed it piece after piece until only three were left, when his wife came in and saw