ed the sugary juices of the ripe fruit. Flocks of fig-birds
twittered amongst the branches, being like the date-pigeons, almost too
gorged to fly. Half naked, dark or tawny skinned, tattooed native
labourers, hybrids of mingled races, with heads close-shaven save for a
topknot, dwellers in mud-hovels, drudges of the water-wheel, cut down the
heavy grape-clusters with sickle-shaped cooper knives.

"Ebony, woolly-haired negroes in clean white breech-cloths, piled up the
gathered fruit in tall baskets woven of reeds and lined with leaves. Copts
with the rich reddish skins, the long eyes and boldly curving profiles of
Egyptian warriors and monarchs as presented on the walls of ancient
temples of Libya and the Thebaid, moved about in leather-girdled blue
linen tunics and hide sandals, keeping account of the laden panniers,
roped upon the backs of diminutive asses and carried to the winepresses as
fast as they were filled.

"The negroes sang as they set snares for fig-birds, and stuffed themselves
to the throat with grapes and custard-apples. The fat beccaficoes beloved
of the epicurean fell by hundreds into the limed horsehair traps. Greek,
Egyptian and negro girls, laughing under garlands of hibiscus, periwinkle
and tuberoses, coaxed the fat morsels out of the black men to carry home
for a supper treat, while acrobats, comic singers, sellers of cakes,
drinks and sweetmeats, with strolling jugglers and jesters and Jewish
fortune-tellers of both sexes, assailed the workers and the merrymakers
with importunities and made harvest in their own way."

The story is extraordinary. Opening in the Alexandria of the fourth
century, it pictures two men, a Roman official and a Jewish steward, who
are friends unto death. The second of the four parts or books into which
the novel is divided opens in England in 1914. We have to do with John
Hazel, the descendant of Hazael Aben Hazael, and with the lovely Katharine
Forbis, whose ancestor was a Roman, Hazael Aben Hazael's sworn friend.

A story of exciting action certainly; it has elements that would
ordinarily be called melodramatic--events which are focussed down into
realities against the tremendous background of an incredible war. The
exotic settings are Egypt and Palestine. It must not be thought that the
story is bizarre; the scenes in England, the English slang of John Hazel,
as well as the typical figure of Trixie, Lady Wastwood, are utterly
modern. I do not find anything to explai