“What are they doing here at all?” cried the Frenchman angrily.  “Let them go back to their island.  We cannot have them all over the world.”

“Well, certainly, to us Americans, who live all in our own land, it does seem strange how you European nations are for ever slopping over into some other country which was not meant for you.  It’s easy for us to talk, of course, for we have still got room and to spare for all our people.  When we begin pushing each other over the edge we shall have to start annexing also.  But at present just here in North Africa there is Italy in Abyssinia, and England in Egypt, and France in Algiers—­”

“France!” cried Monsieur Fardet.  “Algiers belongs to France.  You laugh, monsieur.  I have the honour to wish you a very good-night.”  He rose from his seat, and walked off, rigid with outraged patriotism, to his cabin.

CHAPTER II.

The young American hesitated for a little, debating in his mind whether he should not go down and post up the daily record of his impressions which he kept for his home-staying sister.  But the cigars of Colonel Cochrane and of Cecil Brown were still twinkling in the far corner of the deck, and the student was acquisitive in the search of information.  He did not quite know how to lead up to the matter, but the Colonel very soon did it for him.

“Come on, Headingly,” said he, pushing a camp-stool in his direction.  “This is the place for an antidote.  I see that Fardet has been pouring politics into your ear.”

“I can always recognise the confidential stoop of his shoulders when he discusses la haute politique,” said the dandy diplomatist.  “But what a sacrilege upon a night like this!  What a nocturne in blue and silver might be suggested by that moon rising above the desert.  There is a movement in one of Mendelssohn’s songs which seems to embody it all—­ a sense of vastness, of repetition, the cry of the wind over an interminable expanse.  The subtler emotions which cannot be translated into words are still to be hinted at by chords and harmonies.”

“It seems wilder and more savage than ever to-night,” remarked the American.  “It gives me the same feeling of pitiless force that the Atlantic does upon a cold, dark, winter day.  Perhaps it is the knowledge that we are right there on the very edge of any kind of law and order.  How far do you suppose that we are from any Dervishes, Colonel Cochrane?”

“Well, on the Arabian side,” said the Colonel, “we have the Egyptian fortified camp of Sarras about forty miles to the south of us.  Beyond that are sixty miles of very wild country before you would come to the Dervish post at Akasheh.  On this other side, however, there is nothing between us and them.”

“Abousir is on this side, is it not?”

“Yes.  That is why the excursion to the Abousir Rock has been forbidden for the last year.  But things are quieter now.”