ally has jumped his contract?" asked Burkett.

"I don't know," replied Iredell dubiously.

"He's got me guessing," muttered Curry.

And the trio were still guessing when several weeks later the party
reached Egyptian soil, prepared to play the most modern of games before
the most ancient of monuments--baseball in the very shadow of the
Pyramids!

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SIGNED CONTRACT

"If old Pharaoh could only see us now!" chortled Jim, as the teams lined
up for their first game.

"He'd probably throw a fit," grinned Denton.

"Not a bit of it," said Joe. "He'd probably be up in the grandstand,
eating peanuts and singing out once in a while to 'kill the umpire.'"

"And he'd do it too," laughed Jim. "I'll bet an umpire in those days would
have had a hard job to get life insurance. It would have been good dope to
get a tip before the game as to just what team Pharaoh wanted to win."

"I think you men are awfully irreverent," reproved Mabel, who, with Clara,
was seated in the first row in the stand right behind the players' bench
and had overheard the conversation.

"Not at all," laughed Jim. "It's a big compliment to Pharaoh to suggest
that he would have been a baseball fan if he hadn't been born too soon. It
puts him on a level with the President of the United States."

The teams were playing on the cricket field used by the English residents,
and not far off the Pyramids reared their stately heads toward the sky. It
was a strange conjunction of the past and the present, and all were more
or less impressed by it.

"Well, I must confess that in my wildest dreams of seasons gone by, I
never supposed that I would be pitching here in Egypt in the shadow of the
pyramids," remarked Joe.

"It certainly takes a fellow back to ancient days," put in Jim. "Just
imagine playing before a crowd of those old Egyptians!"

"Well, they had fun in their day just as well as we have," said McRae.
"Just the same, they didn't know how good baseball is."

"They didn't even know anything about yelling to kill the umpire when a
wrong decision was given," remarked Joe, with a grin, and at this there
was a general laugh.

There was a big outpouring of Europeans and visiting Americans, and under
the inspiration of their interest and applause both teams played
brilliantly. It was a hammer-and-tongs contest from start to finish, and
resulted in the first tie of the trip, neither team being able to score,
although the game wen