training college is beastly uneventful, taken all round; not even your keen sense of the romantic could long survive it. The duties are not very exacting, certainly, and in our own way, I suppose we are empire builders of a sort. But when you ask me for a true story of Egyptian life, I find myself floored at once.
We all come out with the idea of the mystic East strong upon us, but it is an idea that rarely survives one summer in Cairo. Personally, I made a more promising start than the average. An adventure came my way on the very day I landed in Port Said; in fact, it began on the way out.
On my first trip out, then, I went aboard at Marseilles, and saw my cabin trunk placed in a nice deck berth, with the liveliest satisfaction.
Walking along the white promenade deck, I felt no end of a man of the world. Every Anglo-Indian that I met seemed a figure from the pages of Kipling and when I accidentally blundered into the ayas'
quarters, I could almost hear the jangle of the temple bells, so primed was I with traditions of the Orient--the traditions one gathers from books of the lighter sort, I mean.
You will see that in those days I was not a bit blase; the glamour of the East was very real to me. For that matter, it is more real than ever, now. Near or far, the East has a call which, once heard, can never be forgotten, and never unheeded. But the call it makes to those who have never been there is out of tune, I have learned, or rather it is not in the right key.
Well, I had a most glorious bath--I am sybarite enough to love the luxuriance of your modern liner--got into blue serge, and felt no end of an adventurer. There was a notice on the gangway that the steamer would not leave Marseilles until ten o'clock at night; but I was far too young a traveler to risk missing the boat by going ashore again. You know the feeling?
Consequently I took my place in the saloon for dinner, and vaguely wondered why nobody else had dressed for the function. I was a proper Johnny Raw, but I enjoyed it all immensely, nevertheless. I personally superintended the departure of the ship, and believed that every deck hand took me for a hardened globe-trotter. When, at last, I sought my cozy cabin, all spotlessly white, with my trunk tucked under the bunk, and, drawing the little red curtain, I sat down to sum up the sensations of the day, I was thoroughly satisfied with it all.
Gad, novelty is the keynote of life! Don't you think so? When one is young, one envies older and more experienced men, but what has the world left of novelty to offer them? The simple matter of joining a steamboat, and taking possession of my berth, had afforded me thrills which some of my fellow passengers--those whom I envied the most for the stories of life written upon their tanned features--could only hope to taste by means of big- game hunting, now, or other farfetched methods of thrill giving.
It wore off a bit the next day, of course, and I found that once one has settled down to it, ocean traveling is merely floating hotel life. But many of my fellow passengers--the boat was fairly full-- still appealed to me as books of romance which I longed to open. And before the end of that second day I became possessed with the idea that there was some deep mystery aboard. Since this was my first voyage, something of the sort was to be expected of me; but it happened that I stood by no means alone in this belief.
In the smoking room, after dinner, I got into conversation with a chap of about my own age who was bound for Colombo--tea planting. We chatted on different topics for half an hour, and discovered that we had mutual friends--or rather, the other fellow discovered it.
'Have you noticed,' he said, 'a distinguished- looking Indian personage, who, with three native friends, sits at the small corner table on our left?'
Hamilton--that was my acquaintance's name--was my right-hand neighbor at the chief officer's table, and I recollected the group to which he referred immediately.
'Yes,' I replied; 'who are they?'
'I don't know,' answered Hamilton, 'but I have a suspicion that they are mysterious.'
'Mysterious?' I asked. 'Well, they joined at Marseilles, just before yourself. They were received by the skipper in person, and two of them were closeted in his cabin for twenty minutes or more.'
'What do you make of that?'
'Can't make anything of it, but their whole behavior strikes me as peculiar, somehow. I cannot quite explain, but you say that you have noticed something of the sort yourself?'
'They certainly keep very much to themselves,' I said.
Hamilton glanced at me quickly. 'Naturally,' he replied.
Not desiring to appear stupid, I did not ask him to elucidate this remark, although at the time it meant nothing to me. Of course I have learned since, as every one learns whose lines are cast among Orientals, that iron barriers divide the races. But at the time I knew nothing of this.
During breakfast on the following morning, I glanced several times at the mysterious quartet. They had been placed at a separate table and were served with different courses from the rest of the passengers. I was not the only member of the company who found them interesting; but the Anglo-Indians on board, to a man, left the native party severely alone. You know the icy aloofness of the Anglo-Indian?
My second day at sea wore on, uneventfully enough; the bugle had already announced the hour for dressing, and the deck outside my berth, where I had ordered my chair placed, was practically deserted, when something occurred to turn my thoughts from the four Indians.
It was a glorious evening, with the sun setting out across the Mediterranean in such a red blaze of glory that I sat watching it with fascination, my book lying unheeded on the deck beside me. Right and left of me men occupying the other deck cabins had lighted up, and were busily dressing. Right aft was a corner cabin, larger than the others, and suddenly I observed the door of this to open.
A slim figure glided out on the deck, and began to advance toward me. It proved to be that of a woman or girl dressed in clinging black silk, and wearing a yashmak! She had a richly embroidered shawl thrown over her head and shoulders, and in that coy half light she presented a dazzlingly beautiful picture.
It was my first sight of a yashmak, and, because it was worn by a marvelously pretty woman, the thousands seen since have never entirely lost their charms for me. I could detect the lines of an exquisitely chiseled nose, and the long, dark eyes of the apparition were entirely unforgettable. The hand with which she held her shawl about her was of ivory smoothness, and, like a little red lamp, a great ruby blazed upon the index finger.
With her high-heeled shoes tapping daintily upon the deck, she advanced; then, suddenly perceiving that the promenade was not entirely deserted, she turned, but not hastily or rudely, and glided back to her cabin.
I have endeavored to outline for your benefit the state of my mind at this period, hinting how keenly alive I was to romance of any sort, provided it wore the guise of the Orient; so it will be unnecessary for me to explain how strong an impression this episode made upon me.
The Indian party was forgotten, and as I hastily dressed and descended to dinner, I scarcely listened to Hamilton when he bent toward me and whispered something about the 'strong room.'
My look was roaming about the spacious saloon. Even in those days, I might have known better; I might have known that no Mohammedan woman would take her meals in a public saloon. But I was too dazzled by my memories to summon to my aid such fragments of knowledge respecting Eastern customs as were mine.
II. Like A Phantom.
WELL, some little time elapsed before I saw or heard anything further of the houri. I began to settle down to the routine of the trip, and--you know how news circulates through a ship--it was not long before I knew as much as any of the other passengers.
Hamilton was a sort of filter through which it all came to me, and, of course, it was not undiluted, but colored with his own views. The lady of the yashmak, he informed me, was a member of the household of a wealthy Moslem in the neighborhood of Damascus. She was traveling via Port Said, taking a khedivial boat from there to Beirut.
Hamilton was a perfect mine of information, but his real interest was centered all the time in the party of four Indians.
'They are emissaries of the Rajah of Bhotona,' he informed me confidentially. 'The mystery begins to clear up. You must have read about a month ago that Lola de l'Iris was selling some of her jewelry and devoting the proceeds to the founding of an orphanage or something of the kind; quite a unique advertisement. Well, the famous Indian diamond presented to her by one of the crowned heads of Europe was among the bunch which she sold; and after staying in the West for over fifty years, it is again on its way back to the East where it came from.'
I began to recollect the circumstances now; the historic Indian diamond--I do not know Hindustani, but the name of the diamond translated means 'Lure of Souls'--had been in the possession of the dancer for many years,
