presently one of the little
fellows, who appeared to be the youngest of their new friends, stood up
and related the following story:--

'We are all brothers and sisters, and lived, until yesterday, with our
good parents upon a sandbank in the mouth of the river Blim which, as
you know, is one of the smaller tributaries of the river Nile. Our
father was a fisherman, and upon the only spot on the bank which
remained invariably high and dry, the clever man had erected a shed
which served us for home, and which, at least, protected us from the
showers of spray blown from the rough seas, and the chill winds that
blew across the neighbouring marshes, as well as the cold rains that, in
the fall of the year, flooded the adjacent country for miles around. A
dozen stout beams, that had been cast up by the waves, served, each with
one end deeply embedded in the wet sand, as a framework for our humble
mansion. These were covered over with numerous skins of fish and pieces
of old rag, all neatly stitched together by our industrious mother, or
pinned by fish-bones skilfully sharpened by grinding their ends between
two stones. Our good dad's stock-in-trade consisted of one long piece of
frayed string, with a sharpened fishbone, bent in the form of a hook,
fastened at one end, a small boat and a paddle, the former of which he
had skilfully fashioned out of an old basket that had been washed
ashore, and over which he had stretched more of the rags and fish-skins,
of which we always possessed a goodly supply saved over from our meals.

[Illustration: They came upon a great stone sphinx]

'During the long winter months we were entirely cut off from our fellow
creatures by the floods and the terrible storms at sea, and were
compelled to subsist entirely upon our own resources; and thus we
learnt, after many a bitter trial, to make almost everything we required
from the spoils brought home by our hard-working father. The flesh
of the fish, of course, served us for meat, either fresh or pickled in
brine, and then dried in the sun. The roes, prepared in the same way,
were our only delicacies, and, by an indulgence in these, we used to
celebrate our many birthdays. Fish dripping we had in plenty, and the
bones were dried and ground between two rocks, making the finest flour
for bread and pies. The tails and fins were always saved, and, after a
simple drying process, made excellent fuel, easily set alight with
sparks kindled by knocking two