When I finally forsook Australia, near the close of 1889, accompanied by Leigh and Wilson, who had paid a penitentiary penalty for my revengeful ambition and their own carelessness, I was in no particular hurry to get anywhere, but had no thought of stopping off at any point short of London until we reached Alexandria. Immediately on our arrival there I was suddenly seized with a freak of fancy, as we nonchalantly speak of the immutable decrees of Fate when we wish to show an independence of action we do not feel, to visit Cairo, and without waste of time and energy in mental argument I sent my dunnage ashore by one of the thousand or more small boats which viciously assaulted the ship from all sides. My two companions, after their trying times in Melbourne, were anxious to get back among their own people, so they went on to London, which decision was reached without the slightest effort to conceal their comments on my erratic disposition, while I proceeded to the ancient capital of the Kings of Egypt--those glorious old marauding monarchs who made despotism a fine art and graft a religion. There I was projected into a most alluringly adventurous undertaking. Though failing utterly of its high purpose, it was by no means devoid of compensations, for it initiated me far enough into the mysteries of departed days so that I considered myself at least an entered apprentice, and, furthermore, it carried me into close relationship with an exquisitely beautiful woman, which, next to plotting against peace and fighting out the plan, is always the thing most to be desired. As a matter of fact it is the rule in the Orient, where man is less virile and more devious and discreet than in the newer world, that a handsome woman is a part of every properly promoted plot, and this one was no exception.