“Well, but don’t you feel it yourself, Auntie? Look at that great desert stretching away and away until it is lost in the shadows. Hear the sad whisper of the wind across it! It’s just the most solemn thing that ever I saw in my life.” “I’m glad we’ve found something that will make you solemn, my dear,” said her Aunt. “I’ve sometimes thought--Sakes alive, what’s that?” From somewhere amongst the hill shadows upon the other side of the river there had risen a high shrill whimpering, rising and swelling, to end in a long weary wail. “It’s only a jackal, Miss Adams,” said Stephens. “I heard one when we went out to see the Sphinx by moonlight.” But the American lady had risen, and her face showed that her nerves had been ruffled. “If I had my time over again I wouldn’t have come past Assouan,” said she. “I can’t think what possessed me to bring you all the way up here, Sadie. Your mother will think that I am clean crazy, and I’d never dare to look her in the eye if anything went wrong with us. I’ve seen all I want to see of this river, and all I ask now is to be back at Cairo again.” “Why, Auntie,” cried the girl, “it isn’t like you to be faint-hearted.” “Well, I don’t know how it is, Sadie, but I feel a bit unstrung, and that beast caterwauling over yonder was just more than I could put up with. There’s one consolation, we are scheduled to be on our way home to-morrow, after we’ve seen this one rock or temple, or whatever it is. I’m full up of rocks and temples, Mr. Stephens. I shouldn’t mope if I never saw another. Come, Sadie! Good-night!” “Good-night! Good-night, Miss Adams!” And the two ladies passed down to their cabins. Monsieur Fardet was chatting, in a subdued voice, with Headingly, the young Harvard graduate, bending forward confidentially between the whiffs of his cigarette. “Dervishes, Mister Headingly!” said he, speaking excellent English, but separating his syllables as a Frenchman will. “There are no Dervishes. They do not exist.” “Why, I thought the woods were full of them,” said the American. Monsieur Fardet glanced across to where the red core of Colonel Cochrane’s cigar was glowing through the darkness. “You are an American, and you do not like the English,” he whispered. “It is perfectly comprehended upon the Continent that the Americans are opposed to the English.” “Well,” said Headingly, with his slow, deliberate manner, “I won’t say that we have not our tiffs, and there are some of our people--mostly of Irish stock--who are always mad with England; but the most of us have a kindly thought for the mother country. You see they may be aggravating folk sometimes, but after all they are our _own_ folk, and we can’t wipe that off the slate.” “_Eh bien!_” said the Frenchman. “At least I can say to you what I could not without offence say to these others. And I repeat that there _are_ no Dervishes. They were an invention of Lord Cromer in the year 1885.” “You don’t say!” cried Headingly.