Meanwhile the deck must be cleared of the new luggage that has come on board and the day passes in a confusion of unpacking, arranging and putting away. Such running to and fro as there is down below; such turning-out of boxes and knocking-up of temporary shelves; such talking, and laughing, and hammering! Nor is the bustle confined to down-stairs. Talhamy and the waiters are just as busy above, adorning the upper deck with palm branches and hanging the boat all round with rows of colored lanterns. One can hardly believe, however, that it is Christmas day--that there are fires blazing at home in every room; that the church field, perhaps, is white with snow; and that familiar bells are ringing merrily across the frosty air. Here at midday it is already too hot on deck without the awning, and when we moor toward sunset near a riverside village in a grove of palms, the cooler air of evening is delicious. There is novelty in even such a commonplace matter as dining out, on the Nile. You go and return in your felucca, as if it were a carriage; and your entertainers summon you by firing a dinner gun, instead of sounding a gong. Wise people who respect the feelings of their cooks fire a dressing gun as well; for watches soon differ in a hopeless way for want of the church clock to set them by, and it is always possible that host and guest may be an hour or two apart in their reckoning. The customary guns having therefore been fired and the party assembled, we sat down to one of cook Bedawee’s prodigious banquets. Not, however, till the plum-pudding, blazing demoniacally, appeared upon the scene, did any of us succeed in believing that it was really Christmas day. Nothing could be prettier or gayer than the spectacle that awaited us when we rose from table. A hundred and fifty colored lanterns outlined the boat from end to end, sparkled up the masts, and cast broken reflections in the moving current. The upper-deck, hung with flags and partly closed in with awnings, looked like a bower of palms. The stars and the crescent moon shone overhead. Dim outlines of trees and headlands, and a vague perspective of gleaming river, were visible in the distance; while a light gleamed now and then in the direction of the village, or a dusky figure flitted along the bank. Meanwhile, there was a sound of revelry by night; for our sailors had invited the Bagstones’ crew to unlimited coffee and tobacco, and had quite a large party on the lower deck. They drummed, they sang, they danced, they dressed up, improvised a comic scene, and kept their audience in a roar. Reïs Hassan did the honors. George, Talhamy and the maids sat apart at the second table and sipped their coffee genteelly. We looked on and applauded. At ten o’clock a pan of magnesium powder was burned, and our fantasia ended with a blaze of light, like a pantomime. In Egypt, by the way, any entertainment which is enlivened by music, dancing, or fire-works is called a fantasia.