to come to the _Loulia_ as
quickly as possible. She had implied to Isaacson that he would arrive
about four the next day. Perhaps she had forgotten, or had not known how
the trains ran from Assouan.

However that was, Doctor Hartley arrived many hours before the time
mentioned by Mrs. Armine for a consultation, and was in full possession
of the case and in command of the patient while Isaacson was still on
the _Fatma_.

Isaacson had not slept all night. That dream of the Nile into which he
had softly sunk was gone, was as if it never had been. His instinct was
to start for the _Loulia_ at daybreak. But for once he denied this
instinct. Cool reason spoke in the dawn saying, "Festina lente." He
listened. He held himself in check. After his sleepless night, in which
thought had been feverish, he would spend some quiet, lonely hours.
There was, he believed, no special reason, after the glance he had sent
to Mrs. Armine just before he went out of Nigel's cabin, why he should
hurry in the first hour of the new day to the sick man he meant to cure.
Let the sleeping draught do its work, and let the clear morning hours
correct any fever in his own mind.

And so he rested on deck, while the sun climbed the pellucid sky, and he
watched the men at the shaduf. The sunlight struck the falling water and
made it an instant's marvel. And the marvel recurred, for the toil never
ceased. The naked bodies bent and straightened. The muscles stood out,
then seemed to flow away, like the flowing water, on the arms under the
bronze-coloured skin. And from lungs surely made of brass came forth the
fierce songs that have been thrown back from the Nile's brown banks
perhaps since the Sphinx first set his unworldly eyes towards eternity.

But though Isaacson deliberately paused to get himself very thoroughly
and calmly in hand, paused to fight with possible prejudice and drive it
out of him, he did not delay till the hour fixed by Mrs. Armine. Soon
after one o'clock in the full heat of the day, he set out in the tiny
tub which was the only felucca on board of the _Fatma_, and he took
Hassan with him. Definitely why he took Hassan, he perhaps could not
have stated. He just thought he would take him, and did.

Very swiftly he had returned with the tide in the night. Now, in the eye
of day, he must go up river against it. The men toiled hard, lifting
themselves from their seats with each stroke of the oars and bracing
their legs for the strain.