"Don't talk!" said Sime, "you're in hospital! I'll do the talking; you listen. I saw you bolt out of Shepheard's last night--shut up! I followed, but lost you. We got up a search party, and with the aid of the man who had driven you, ran you to earth in a dirty alley behind the mosque of El-Azhar. Four kindly mendicants, who reside upon the steps of the establishment, had been awakened by your blundering in among them. They were holding you--yes, you were raving pretty badly. You are a lucky man, Cairn. You were inoculated before you left home?" Cairn nodded weakly. "Saved you. Be all right in a couple of days. That damned _Khamsin_ has brought a whiff of the plague from somewhere! Curiously enough, over fifty per cent. of the cases spotted so far are people who were at the carnival! Some of them, Cairn--but we won't discuss that now. I was afraid of it, last night. That's why I kept my eye on you. My boy, you were delirious when you bolted out of the hotel!" "Was I?" said Cairn wearily, and lay back on the pillow. "Perhaps I was." CHAPTER XIV DR. CAIRN ARRIVES Dr. Bruce Cairn stepped into the boat which was to take him ashore, and as it swung away from the side of the liner sought to divert his thoughts by a contemplation of the weird scene. Amid the smoky flare of many lights, amid rising clouds of dust, a line of laden toilers was crawling ant-like from the lighters into the bowels of the big ship; and a second line, unladen, was descending by another gangway. Above, the jewelled velvet of the sky swept in a glorious arc; beyond, the lights of Port Said broke through the black curtain of the night, and the moving ray from the lighthouse intermittently swept the harbour waters; whilst, amid the indescribable clamour, the grimily picturesque turmoil, so characteristic of the place, the liner took in coal for her run to Rangoon. Dodging this way and that, rounding the sterns of big ships, and disputing the water-way with lesser craft, the boat made for shore. The usual delay at the Custom House, the usual soothing of the excited officials in the usual way, and his _arabiyeh_ was jolting Dr. Cairn through the noise and the smell of those rambling streets, a noise and a smell entirely peculiar to this clearing-house of the Near East.