saw-two Ibis perched, snowy white, upon the back of a buffalo?

Then, for the first time in their lives, the Howadji sat quietly smoking in the open air upon Christmas evening: but hunted no slipper, nor was misletoe hung in the cabin.

IX.

FLYING.

THE wind rose cheerly, the tricolor fluttered and dropped behind, and leaving all rivals, the eager Ibis ran wing and wing before the breeze.

The bold mountains did not cease to bully. Sometimes they receded a little, leaving spaces of level sand, as if the impatient desert behind had, in some spots, pressed over and beyond them; but they drew out again quite to the stream, and rose sheerly in steep, caverned cliffs from the water, housing wild fowl innumerable, that shrieked and cried like birds of prey before the mighty legions.

Over these mountain shoulders, the winds not only sing, but, bloated into storms and sudden tempests, they spring upon the leaning lateen sails that fly with eagerly-pointing yards beneath, as if to revenge themselves upon the river, in the destruction of what it bears. Under the Aboofeyda and the Gebel Shekh Hereedee, and the Gebel Tookh, and wherever else the mountains pile their frowning

fronts in precipices along the shore, are the dangers of Nile navigation.

A tranquil twilight breath wafted us beneath the first, and another sunset breeze ran us dashingly toward the Shekh Hereedee. But just when the evening was darkest, a sudden gust sprang upon us from the mountain. It shook the fleet, bold Ibis into trembling, but she succeeded in furling her larger wing, and, struggling through, she fled fast and forward in the dark, until, under Orion in the zenith and his silent society, she drew calmly to the shore, and dreamed all night of the serpent of Shekh Hereedee, who cured all woes but those of his own making.

Neither was the Gebel Tookh our friend. The mountainous regions are always gusty, and the Ibis had been squall-struck several times, but ran at last free and fair before the wind, between shores serene, on which we could hear the call of women to each other, and, not seeing their faces, could fancy their beauty at will, and their worthiness to be nymphs of the Nile.

We were still slipping swiftly along under the foresail, and the minarets of Girgeh glittered on the southern horizon.

66

Why not the mainsail," cried the Pacha, "in this lulling wind ?"

The Ibis shook out her great wing, and stood across, bending with the river, straight toward the Gebel Tookh. She plowed the water into flashing foam-furrows as we swept on. The very landscape was sparkling and spirited for that exciting speed. The half human figures upon the shore paused to watch us as we passed. But in the dark gulf under the mountain, where, on the steep strip of shore, the Nile had flung down to its foe a gauntlet of green, the gale that lives in Arab tradition along those heights, like an awful Afreet, plunged suddenly upon us, and for a few moments the proud Ibis strained and quivered in its grasp.

The dark waves dashed foam-tipped against her side, and seethed with the swell of a small sea, as the Ibis spurned them and flew on. Behind, one solitary Cangie was struggling with a loosely flapping sail, through a narrow channel, and before us was the point, round which, once made, we should fly before the wind. It was clear that we had too much canvass for the pass. The crew squatted imbecile, wrapped in their blankets, and stared in stupid amazement at the cliff and the river. The ancient mariner, half crouching over the tiller, and showing his two surviving teeth to the gale, fastened his eye upon the boat and the river, while the wild wind danced about his drapery, fluttering all

his rags, and howling with delight as it forced him to strain at his tiller, or with rage as it feared his mastery.

I did not observe that the Muslim were any more fatalists than the merest Christians. Mere Christians would have helped themselves a little, doubtless, and so would the Muslim, if they had known how to do it. Their resignation was not religion, but stupidity. The golden-sleeved Commander was evidently averse to a sloping deck, at least to slopes of so aggravated an angle; and the crew were clearly wondering how infidels could rate their lives so justly as the Howadji did, in suggesting the mainsail at the very feet of the inexorable Gebel Tookh.

Twice the squall struck the Ibis, and twice, pausing and shivering a moment, she stretched her wings again, and fled foamingly mad before it. Then she rounded the point, and, passing a country boat fully laden with men and produce, lying to under a bank, drove on to Girgeh. The baffled gale retreated to its mountain cavern to lie in awful ambush for Nero, and the blue pennant, whom we had passed already-yes, O Osiris! possibly to hunt the hunting Messieurs, nor to let them off for their legs alone. Then the Ibis furled neatly and handsomely her wild wings before the minarets of Girgeh.