Since then I have found that all travelers on the Nile are likely to have this same experience. We were proof against the “Dhabir Devil” that the guide-books had warned us against, but Baedeker had made no mention of the possibility of this entertainment happening to us; still, the crew went at it as though it was an old story with them, and as I write this there may be some unsuspecting tourist about to go through with it. It sounds very good-natured on the part of the crew; and if the entertainment had stopped when the mate had finished the dance, it would have been well enough; but the dance was only to hold our attention while the others were getting ready, and then the dreary horse-play began. There was a barber-shop scene, in which flour paste was used and a door-mat acted as a towel. A crew that mutinies is tame compared with an Egyptian crew that acts. We stopped them as soon as we could without hurting their feelings, and they subsided and formed a circle back of the smoke-stack. The rest of the evening was spent in entertainment of our own choice, and by midnight all was still but the river, which never rests. [Illustration] CHAPTER THREE [Illustration: His Highness Prince Mahomet Ali, Cairo, February 14, 1898.] [Illustration: On the Bank.] CHAPTER THIRD THE starting of the engines had us up fairly early the next morning, and we found the country very much changed. The desert now came to the river’s edge, and granite had taken the place of limestone; it seemed as though we had come to the end of fertile Egypt. Two white vultures were the only living things in sight. Then we came to some wonderful bends in the river, and the sakiehs once more began to dip up the muddy water; but the skins of the men who worked them had changed: they glistened like coal in the sunlight. By two o’clock we reached Assuan, and moored to the island of Elephantine, just opposite the town, from which any number of little bright-painted ferry-boats rowed toward us; and in a few minutes some thin-legged Egyptian policemen and a few natives were on the bank, and a small boy with a stick had been selected to mind the turkeys that we had brought from Esneh. Some of the poor birds were very weak on their legs, and where they ought to have been red they were only a pale salmon-color; but the little cook promised that they would be all right in a day or two. Some of the crew had homes on the island, and they all put on their best clothes and were met by friends. They immediately established a laundry on shore, and the building of an oven proved that we were to be there for some time.