"No, Pat, I could not afford it. I'm an Irishman as well as yourself, and dull people would think it was a blunder." "That's a true word," said Grady. "And have you not noticed now, when folks laugh at an Irishman, he is mostly quite right if they had the understanding? Now you have observed, and heard, what a bad country Egypt is for the eyes. Sure they give us green goggles, or we should get the--what do you call it, Mr Corporal, sir, if you plaze?" "The hop-fallimy," replied Corporal Adams, proud of being appealed to. "Thank you; the hop-family, what with the sun, and the sand, and the flies. And if you get the hop-family you are likely to go blind, and that is a bad thing. Is it not curious that the great river of a country that is so bad for the eyes should have cataracts itself in it? Now that would sound foolish to many people, but you, who are an Irishman, see the bearings of it, don't you now?" "But," observed Macintosh, "a cataract in the eye is a skin, or something growing over it, and a cataract in the river is a kind of waterfall. They are not the same sort of thing at all." "And is that so? To be sure, now, what a stupid mistake then I made. And did you ever undergo the operation, now, Macintosh?" "Well, beyond vaccination and the lugging out of a broken tooth, I don't call to mind that I have been in the surgeon's hands; and if ye want to know the truth, I don't care if I never am. Eh, but that tooth now, it took a tug!" "I thought you had never had it done," said Grady. "It's a pity, sure. And what do you say makes a cataract in the Nile?" "Surely you have seen enough of them for yersel'. It's a rapid where the water comes down a steep part with great vehemence. But what operation are ye talking of? I expect ye mean some sauce or other." "Sure, no; it's only that which they say a Scotchman must have done before a joke can be got into his head. But I don't belave it at all; folks are such liars!" said Grady. "I would have ye to know," said Macintosh, when the others had stopped laughing, "that a Scotchman is not deficient in wut, but he can't see it in mere nonsense." All this talk was not spoken right off the reel, as it reads, but at intervals, during pauses in the harder part of the work, and rests. And it was lucky they could keep their spirits up; there is health and vigour in that: "The merry heart goes all the day; The heavy tires in a mile--a!" Shakespeare is always right. But the sergeant was better than his word, and that was their last afternoon of rowing or towing, for they reached the place where the camels were collected that evening before sun-down. On the very next day the new drill commenced, for there was not an hour to be lost.