August 27, 1866:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  OFF BOULAK August 27, 1866.

Dearest Alick,

Your letter of the 18th has this moment arrived.  I am very glad to hear you are so much better.  I am still seedy-ish, but no worse.  Everybody is liver-sick this year, I give calomel and jalep all round—­except to myself.

The last two or three days we have been in great tribulation about the boat.  On Saturday all her ribs were finished, and the planking and caulking ready to be put on, when in the night up came the old Nile with a rush, and threatened to carry her off; but by the favour of Abu-l-Hajjaj and Sheykh el-Bostawee she was saved in this wise.  You remember the tall old steersman who went with us to Bedreeshayn, and whom we thought so ill-conditioned; well, he was in charge of a dahabieh close by, and he called up all the Reises and steermen to help.  ’Oh men of el-Bostawee, this is our boat (i.e. we are the servants of her owner) and she is in our faces;’ and then he set the example, stripped and carried dust and hammered in piles all night, and by the morning she was surrounded by a dyke breast-high.  The ‘long-shore’ men of Boulak were not a little surprised to see dignified Reises working for nothing like fellaheen.  Meanwhile my three Ma-allimeen, the chief builder, caulker and foreman, had also stayed all night with Omar and my Reis, who worked like the rest, and the Sheykh of all the boat-builders went to visit one of my Ma-allimeen, who is his nephew, and hearing the case came down too at one in the morning and stayed till dawn.  Then as the workmen passed, going to their respective jobs, he called them, and said, ’Come and finish this boat; it must be done by to-morrow night.’  Some men who objected and said they were going to the Pasha’s dockyard, got a beating pro forma and the end of it was that I found forty-six men under my boat working ‘like Afreets and Shaitans,’ when I went to see how all was going in the morning.  The old Sheykh marked out a piece to each four men, and then said, ’If that is not done to-night, Oh dogs! to-morrow I’ll put on the hat’—­i.e.  ’To-day I have beaten moderately, like an Arab, but to-morrow, please God, I’ll beat like a Frank, and be mad with the stick.’ Kurz und gut, the boat which yesterday morning was a skeleton, is now, at four p.m. to-day, finished, caulked, pitched and all capitally done; if the Nile carries off the dyke, she will float safe.  The shore is covered with debris of other people’s half-finished boats I believe.  I owe the ardour of the Ma-allims and of the Sheykh of the builders to one of my absurd pieces of Arab civility.  On the day when Omar killed poor Ablook, my black sheep, over the bows and ‘straked’ his blood upon them, the three Ma-allimeen came on board this boat to eat their dish, and I followed the old Arab fashion and ate out of the wooden dish with them and the Reis ‘for luck,’ or rather ‘for a blessing’ as we say here; and it seems that this gave immense satisfaction.