We were smoking Egyptian cigarettes, a box of which we numbered among our most precious possessions, and it was rather a nuisance to have to pass a freshly lighted cigarette round the circle of natives squatted in front of El Hakim’s tent for each to take a whiff. They could not properly appreciate them, and it seemed to me very much like casting pearls before swine. In addition, when the cigarette was returned, the end was chewed about, and a good smoke thereby spoiled. If we lit another, the same process was repeated. The native gentlemen called it etiquette. I considered it downright sinful waste, an opinion in which El Hakim evidently concurred, as, after we had had several cigarettes spoiled in this provoking manner, he turned to me and said, “Get out your box of ‘stinkers,’ Hardwick, and let’s try the old gentlemen with those.” I thought it was a splendid idea, so I brought out two of them, and, lighting one myself, handed the other to old Manga. He glanced at it suspiciously, turning it over and over in his grimy paws. He had apparently never seen a cigar before, but seeing me smoking a similar specimen, he at last ventured to light it. It seemed to grate on him a little, but he said nothing, and puffed stolidly away for a moment or two, though I could see his powers of self-control were being exerted to the utmost. After a game struggle the cigar scored a distinct success, and Manga, deliberately passing it on to the elder on his right, rose slowly, and, stalking with great dignity out of camp, disappeared behind a clump of bushes. The old man to whom he handed it gazed wonderingly after him for a moment, then, placing the fatal weed between his aged lips, he took a long pull and inhaled the smoke. A startled look appeared in his dim old eyes, and he threw a quick glance in my direction; but I was calmly puffing away at mine, so _he_ said nothing either, and took another whiff. In a few short moments he in his turn was vanquished, and, handing the cigar to his next neighbour, retired with great dignity to the clump of bushes, where he and old Manga offered up sacrifices to the goddess Nicotina with an unanimity that was as surprising as it was novel. It was only with the very greatest difficulty that we managed to control our risible faculties. We were inwardly convulsed with laughter at the facial expressions of the old gentlemen before and after tasting the fearsome weed. The looks of delighted, though timorous, anticipation, the startled realization, and the agonized retrospection, which in turn were portrayed on the usually blank and uninteresting countenances of Manga’s Ministers of State, was a study in expression that was simply killing. One by one they tasted it; one by one they retired to the friendly clump of bushes that concealed their exaltation from prying eyes; and one by one they returned red-eyed and shaky, and resumed their places, inwardly quaking, though outwardly unmoved.