d when it was also agreed that he, too, might embark on the
sea-voyage he shook hands with Rufinus on the bargain. Then, giving
himself a shake, as if he had thrown off something that cramped him, and
sticking his leather cap knowingly on one side of his shaven head, he
drew himself up to his full height and scornfully shouted back to the
Arab--who had before now treated him and other Egyptian natives with
insolent haughtiness--that if he wanted anything of him he might come
and fetch it.

The Moslem's patience was long since exhausted, and at this challenge
he signed to his followers and sprang first into the river; but the
foremost horses soon sank so deep in the ooze that further advance was
evidently impossible, and the signal to return was perforce given. In
this manoeuvre a refractory horse lost his footing, and his rider was
choked in the mud.

On this, the men in the boat could see the foe holding council with
lively gesticulations, and the captain expressed his fears lest they
should give up all hope of capturing the boat, and ride forward to
Doomiat to combine with the Arab garrison to cut off their further
flight. But he had not reckoned on the warlike spirit of these men, who
had overcome far greater difficulties in twenty fights ere this. They
were determined to seize the boat, to take its freight prisoners, and
have them duly punished.

Six horsemen, among them the leader of the party, were now seen to
dismount; they tied their horses up, and then proceeded to fell three
tall palms with their battle-axes; the other five went off southwards.
These, no doubt, were to ride round the morass, and ford the river at
a favorable spot so as to attack the vessel from the west, while the
others tried to reach it from the east with the aid of the palm-trunks.

On the right, or eastern shore, where the Arabs were constructing the
raft, spread solid ground-fields through which lay the road to Doomiat;
on the other shore, near which the boat was lying, the bog extended for
a long way. An interminable jungle of papyrus, sedge, and reeds, burnt
yellow by the heat of the sun and the extraordinary drought, covered
almost the whole of this parched and baked wilderness; and, when a stiff
morning breeze rose from the northeast, the captain was inspired with a
happy thought. The five men who had ridden forward would have to force
their way through the mass of scorched and dried up vegetation. If the
Christians could but set