on deck, but the Pasha’s Arnouts were too bad company, and the captain begged me to ‘cover my face’ and let my servant sleep at my feet.  Besides, there was a poor old asthmatic Turkish Effendi going to collect the taxes, and a lot of women in the engine-room, and children also.  It would have been insupportable but for the hearty politeness of the Arab captain, a regular ‘old salt,’ and owing to his attention and care it was only very amusing.

At Benisouef, the first town above Cairo (seventy miles), we found no coals:  the Pasha had been up and taken them all.  So we kicked our heels on the bank all day, with the prospect of doing so for a week.  The captain brought H.R.H. of Darfoor to visit me, and to beg me to make him hear reason about the delay, as I, being English, must know that a steamer could not go without coals.  H.R.H. was a pretty imperious little nigger about eleven or twelve, dressed in a yellow silk kuftan and a scarlet burnous, who cut the good old captain short by saying, ’Why, she is a woman; she can’t talk to me.’  ’Wallah! wallah! what a way to talk to English Hareem!’ shrieked the captain, who was about to lose his temper; but I had a happy idea and produced a box of French sweetmeats, which altered the young Prince’s views at once.  I asked if he had brothers.  ‘Who can count them? they are like mice.’  He said that the Pasha had given him only a few presents, and was evidently not pleased.  Some of his suite are the most formidable-looking wild beasts in human shape I ever beheld—­bulldogs and wild-boars black as ink, red-eyed, and, ye gods! such jowls and throats and teeth!—­others like monkeys, with arms down to their knees.

The Illyrian Arnouts on board our boat are revoltingly white—­like fish or drowned people, no pink in the tallowy skin at all.  There were Greeks also who left us at Minieh (second large town), and the old Pasha left this morning at Rodah.  The captain at once ordered all my goods into the cabin he had left and turned out the Turkish Effendi, who wanted to stay and sleep with us.  No impropriety! he said he was an old man and sick, and my company would be agreeable to him; then he said he was ashamed before the people to be turned out by an English woman.  So I was civil and begged him to pass the day and to dine with me, and that set all right, and now after dinner he has gone off quite pleasantly to the fore-cabin and left me here.  I have a stern-cabin, a saloon and an anteroom here, so we are comfortable enough—­only the fleas!  Never till now did I know what fleas could be; even Omar groaned and tossed in his sleep, and Sally and I woke every ten minutes.  Perhaps this cabin may be better, some fleas may have landed in the beds of the Turks.  I send a dish from my table every day henceforth to the captain; as I take the place of a Pasha it is part of my dignity to do so; and as I occupy the kitchen and burn the ship’s coals, I may as well let the captain dine