"Our dinner is served under a sammor, an immense specimen of the acacia genus, whose branches extend far out and droop downwards in the shape of a parasol. The Commandant, during the evening, thought fit to present to us two Abyssinian ladies, whom a love of travel had brought to the Soudan. They belong to the upper ten. I was on the point of saying that they were women of the world. Their features are delicate, and approach the European type, their lips thick, without, however, reminding one of those of a negress, their teeth brilliantly white, their noses long and thin, and their complexion a golden yellow. Delange will persist in saying that they have lovely figures, but that impressionable young man was so smitten with the bayaderes that he is always thinking he sees replicas, so to speak, of those wonderful beings, who appear to have been an epoch in his life. I am quite content with giving you their portraits, and so I will complete them. They walk bare-footed, according to the custom of their country, where a Princess here and there alone allows herself such a luxury as red leather slippers, and their black hair shines so in the sun that I asked the Commandant to explain the phenomenon to me. He made no scruple about telling me that in order to obtain this sheen, which is quite the fashion, they put a small piece of butter on their heads, and this, melting quickly, anoints their hair from its roots to their shoulders inclusive. "The Doctor who, I thought, would be interested in this little detail, did not seem in the least degree affected by it, and, in spite of the melted butter, to which, in his admiration, he shuts both his eyes and his nose, flirts desperately with both the fair strangers, to the great disgust of Miss Beatrice Poles. * * * * * * "This morning, when we wanted to start from the Wady Kokreb, near which we had passed the night, it was impossible to find Miss Poles. We shouted, we searched, we sent the interpreters out in all directions, but in vain—no one could give us any tidings of her. A camel driver said that he had been awake nearly all night, and that he had not seen her go into her tent. "Has she been carried off by some too inflammable Bedouins? "That would indeed be a misfortune—for them." CHAPTER XXXIII. "We waited one hour more for Miss Beatrice Poles, and then we gave the order to start. "Had she not told us over and over again never to be anxious on her account, that she was not the sort of woman to lose herself, and that, if she did, she would very easily find herself again? However, it was by no means probable that she had retraced her steps. It was far more likely that, under the influences of one of those impulses to which she is subject, or of a locomotive fit which she could not repress, she had set off in the middle of the night, and was now ahead of the caravan. We had, therefore, a much better chance of finding her by continuing our journey than if we remained stationary.