The sun was now very low on the horizon, and would soon take its sand- bath. Hassib laid his hand on Forsyth's arm and ducked behind a mound on the edge of the bank. Harry did the same. "One, two, five, seven," counted Hassib. Harry peeped, and saw that mystic number of grey crocodiles lying on the island where he had been looking for them. The nearest was about two hundred yards off. By stalking him along the bank, as he was not quite opposite, he got perhaps thirty yards nearer. As has been said, he was a really first-rate rifle-shot, and the prospects of that crocodile could not be considered rosy. Scales are hard, but so are conical bullets. Harry took a steady aim at what he had been taught to consider the most vulnerable part get-at- able, and pulled. Crack! Smack! He heard the ball tell as plainly as if it were on an iron target. But the absurd crocodile acted as all the others he had shot at had done: he rolled over into the water and disappeared, and the other six kept him company. "He is killed! Oh, he is killed!" cried the reis, much excited. "He will float soon, you will see. When they are shot dead their bodies soon float." Whether this creature was an exception, or was not shot dead, or was carried down to the cataract before he got to the floating stage, and so came up where no one wanted him, cannot be said. But they saw him no more, and he was numbered among the partridges who have gone away to die, and the rabbits that were hit so hard, but crept away into holes! Going back to where the boat lay they found another lying near her, which had been dragged up the last bit of the cataract and brought up so far since their arrival, while the crew had gone ashore and lit a fire, round which they were gathered. Forsyth and Hassib went up to them for news, but there was not much. Alexandria was being rebuilt after the bombardment; Arabi's insurrection was quite over, and Mohammed Tewfik Pasha firmly established. The English soldiers were leaving, and the country would soon be quit of them entirely. "Not it," said one of the new-comers, who seemed to be a passenger. Certainly not a sailor, for his hands were delicate, and he lacked manliness when compared with the others of the party. "The English will not be so easy to get rid of, make sure of that." And one of the others said to Hassib, alluding to the speaker-- "You knew his father; this is Daireh." "And I knew him as a boy," said Hassib. "It is years since I left," said Daireh. Here Reouf the pilot joined the group, and he, too, was a friend of the family, and was made known. Harry Forsyth, seeing that old acquaintances had met after an absence, kept in the background, and lit his pipe. He listened indeed, but simply to try what words of Arabic, in which the conversation was being held, he could pick up, not from any interest or curiosity which he felt in the subject of their talk.