Asiatic Breezes Part 28

"I don't know, sir. The first time I saw him was on the lake. Spinner had the wheel, Don was in the engine-room, and the rest of the ship's company were on the upper deck looking at the sights. I inquired, but no one had seen him."

"Did you ever see him before?"

"I don't think I ever did, sir. He had on what looked like a new suit of Arab togs, and he kept his face covered up, as I said."

If Captain Ringgold was not troubled, he was perplexed. He had observed the stranger distinctly as he went up the steps, but he could not identify him as a person he had ever seen before. Of course it came into his head at once that the tall Arab was Captain Mazagan, and he said as much to Scott.

"We left him at the hotel at Port Said; how could he be here?" asked the captain of the Maud.

"He must have smuggled himself on board of the little steamer when we were at Ismalia; for he was first seen out in the lake."

"How could he have been at Ismalia?" Scott inquired.

The commander went to his cabin, and looked over his "Bradshaw," in which he found that a steamer left Port Said at seven o'clock every morning, and arrived at Ismalia at noon. It was possible that Mazagan had come by this conveyance; and he gave Scott the information.

"Probably he stopped at the station while we were on board of the Ophir, or your party had gone to the town," said the commander. "It was easy enough for him to stow himself away in the cabin of the Maud while no one but Philip was on board of her."

"I supposed we had got to the end of the pirate when I saw him trotted on sh.o.r.e to the hotel," added Scott.

"So did I, though he made some huge but very indefinite threats when I saw him last," mused the commander. "But why did he go on board of the Maud, when he could have gone to Suez by the railroad?"

"I don't see," replied Scott. "He is a Moor, and must be as revengeful as his 'n.o.ble master,' as he calls him. It was the Maud that did his business for him, and I was at the wheel of her when she smashed into the side of the Fatime. I only hope his grudge is against me and not against Louis Belgrave."

"You mention the idea I had in my mind when I asked why he went on board of the Maud, Captain Scott," said the commander. "Perhaps it is a lucky chance that I sent for the 'Big Four' so that they might hear all that was said about the scenes through which we were pa.s.sing."

"You mean that it may have been a lucky chance for Louis or for me; but I believe it is a luckier chance for the pirate, for I think I should have thrown him overboard if I had seen him on our deck," said Scott.

"Then there would probably have been a fight on board of the Maud, and work made for our surgeon in your party. It may have been lucky for all that you were called on board of the ship. But we must take care that he does not resume his voyage in the morning with us."

Captain Ringgold took all necessary precautions. A watch was kept on board of both vessels; and when they started on the remainder of the trip through the ca.n.a.l in the morning, nothing had been seen or heard of Mazagan. It was agreed that nothing had better be said about the matter; and when the cabin party, with the "Big Four," gathered on the promenade at five o'clock in the morning, not one of them, except the big and the little captain, suspected that an enemy was near, if the stranger really was Mazagan, of which they could not be sure.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TOY OF THE TRANSIT MANAGER

The village of Serapeum has had an existence of over twenty years; and its pleasant little gardens looked very inviting in the fresh morning air to the members of the cabin party as they took their places on the promenade, which had come to be about as well defined as their seats at the table. The air was soft and agreeable; and after their refreshing sleep the tourists were in excellent condition to enjoy the continued pa.s.sage through the ca.n.a.l, of which, however, there were only about forty-one miles left, and the commander expected to be at Suez by noon.

Captain Ringgold had not said anything to any person except Scott about the mysterious stranger with a veil over his face; but the ship and her consort had been well guarded over night, and a search for stowaways was made when the morning watch came on duty. Not even an Arab tramp could be found, and the commander was confident the tall Mussulman had not again found a hiding-place on board of either vessel.

"We shall soon have a change of scene," said Captain Ringgold, as he joined the party on the promenade. "We are still in the desert, though the fresh-water ca.n.a.l makes a streak of green along its banks, for it extends to Suez, and even across the bay to the entrance of the ca.n.a.l."

"The prospect is not very exciting just now," added Mr. Woolridge, as the screw began to turn, and the ship moved away from her moorings.

"We shall come to the larger of the Bitter Lakes in less than an hour,"

replied the captain. "There is nothing very exciting about them; but Brugsch identifies these lakes with the Marah of the Bible, though others do not agree with him. In Exodus xv. 23 we read," and the speaker took a paper from his pocket: "'And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters ... for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.' But the bitter spring which Moses sweetened by casting into it a tree is in the peninsula of Sinai."

"Shall we go there?" asked Mrs. Blossom, beginning to be excited, as she always was when scriptural subjects came up in connection with the journey; and she had studied the Bible more than any other book, and probably more than all others combined.

"At the proper time I shall have something to say about Mount Sinai, and I hope to place you in a position to see it in the distance; but at present we are not prepared to consider the matter. You can now see through the cutting an expanse of water, which is the great basin, as the larger lake is called.

"As stated before, the Red Sea formerly extended to Lake Timsah, over forty miles farther than now, and the lakes before us were then a part of the sea. The deepest water was twenty-four to forty feet below the Mediterranean, with a heavy crust of salt on the bottom, though the smaller basin required a great deal of dredging. In the spring of 1869 the Prince and Princess of Wales were present in this locality, and took part in the ceremonial of 'letting in the waters.'"

"'Wails for the mult.i.tude of Egypt,'" added Uncle Moses.

"Ezekiel, chapter and verse forgotten," replied the commander.

"Thirty-two, eighteen," said the bulky lawyer.

"Are there any whales in the lake?" asked Felix.

"You can fish for them, my lad; but the particular Waleses of whom I spoke were not 'in it,'" continued the captain. "These Wales did not spout, though they probably said something; but they let in the water instead of blowing it out, as respectable whales do at sea. The waters of the two seas came together, and notwithstanding the joyousness of the occasion, the meeting was not altogether amiable and pleasant at first.

Each representative of the different bodies seemed to pitch into the other, and the onslaught created a great commotion for a time. If they were ever united before in the distant past, they appeared to have forgotten all about it.

"The war was short and decisive, and the waters soon settled down into a peaceful condition, as you will find them to-day. They have apparently shaken hands, and accepted the task of promoting the commerce of the world. But here we come to the great basin. The lake is about six miles wide. Here is the lighthouse, and there is another at the other end of it, each of them sixty-five feet high."

The sh.o.r.es of the lake are flat and sandy, and the water is of a bluish green hue. There is a well-defined channel through it. As there is no longer any danger of washing the banks of the ca.n.a.l, steamers increase their speed, and the Guardian-Mother made the next twenty miles in less than two hours. As the captain had promised, it was a change of scene, and it was very agreeable to the party. In the distance could be seen the Geneffeh range of hills, which were a relief in the landscape from the desert. In them are rich quarries of marble and limestone which are profitably worked.

The pa.s.sage through the ca.n.a.l had become monotonous to the travellers after they had pa.s.sed through the lakes, for it was a desert on both sides. Shortly after, the water-way was cut through sandstone, and after that the soil was clay, or a mixture of it with lime; but the last part of the course was through depths of sand again. The tide on the Red Sea rises from five to seven feet, and its flow extends about four miles up the ca.n.a.l.

"Looking ahead, you can see an expanse of water, which means that we are coming to the end of our ca.n.a.l travel," said the commander. "I suppose no one will be sorry for it; for we have had all our social arrangements as usual, and there has been something to see and much to learn all the way."

"It has not been at all like my ca.n.a.l travel at home," added Uncle Moses, who was the oldest person on board of the ship by one month, by which time Dr. Hawkes was his junior, and they were only fifty-four. "I went from Syracuse to Oswego by a ca.n.a.l boat when I was a young man. The trip was in the night, and I slept on a swinging shelf, held up by ropes; and we were b.u.mping much of the time in the locks so that I did not sleep so well as I did last night. But what water have we ahead, Captain?"

"It is an arm of the Gulf of Suez, which is itself one of the two great arms of the Red Sea."

"It appears to be well armed," said Uncle Moses, who could be guilty of a pun on extreme provocation.

"Like yourself, it is provided with two arms, but it does not shoot with them," replied the captain. "On our left are the ruins of Arsinoe, which was an ancient port, once called Crocodilopolis; and, by the way, Lake Timsah was once Crocodile Lake, and doubtless the saurians formerly sported in its waters."

"About Arsinoe?" suggested the professor.

"Probably you know more about it than I do, Professor."

"I know little except that it was a commercial city of Egypt, built by Ptolemy II. The name is that of several females distinguished in one way or another in the ancient world, and the word is usually written with a diaeresis over the final _e_, so that it is p.r.o.nounced as though it were written Arsinoey. The city thrived for a time, and was the emporium of eastern Egypt; but the perils of the navigation in the north of the Red Sea diverted the trade into other channels, and the place went to decay.

It was named by Ptolemy after his sister, who was married at sixteen to the aged king of Thrace. There is a b.l.o.o.d.y story connected with her life, which I will not repeat; but in the end she fled to the protection of her brother in Egypt, and after the fashion of that age and country, he made her his wife."

"You have not been in Asia any of you yet, or even as near that continent before as you are at this moment," continued the commander, as the ship pa.s.sed out of the ca.n.a.l into the gulf.

"I thought we had been in Asia," interposed Mrs. Belgrave.

"Certainly we have," added half a dozen others.

"Isn't Scutari in Asia, Captain?" asked the lady.