There was a man in our company—­a young Englishman—­who had just been granted his heart’s desire in the shape of some raw district south of everything southerly in the Sudan, where, on two-thirds of a member of Parliament’s wage, under conditions of life that would horrify a self-respecting operative, he will see perhaps some dozen white men in a year, and will certainly pick up two sorts of fever.  He had been moved to work very hard for this billet by the representations of a friend in the same service, who said that it was a ’rather decent sort of service,’ and he was all of a heat to reach Khartum, report for duty, and fall to.  If he is lucky, he may get a district where the people are so virtuous that they do not know how to wear any clothes at all, and so ignorant that they have never yet come across strong drink.

The train that took us to Cairo was own sister in looks and fittings to any South African train—­for which I loved her—­but she was a trial to some citizens of the United States, who, being used to the Pullman, did not understand the side-corridored, solid-compartment idea.  The trouble with a standardised democracy seems to be that, once they break loose from their standards, they have no props.  People are not left behind and luggage is rarely mislaid on the railroads of the older world.  There is an ordained ritual for the handling of all things, to which if a man will only conform and keep quiet, he and his will be attended to with the rest.  The people that I watched would not believe this.  They charged about futilely and wasted themselves in trying to get ahead of their neighbours.

Here is a fragment from the restaurant-car:  ’Look at here!  Me and some friends of mine are going to dine at this table.  We don’t want to be separated and—­’

’You ‘ave your number for the service, sar?’ ’Number?  What number?  We want to dine here, I tell you.’

‘You shall get your number, sar, for the first service?’

‘Haow’s that?  Where in thunder do we get the numbers, anyway?’

’I will give you the number, sar, at the time—­for places at the first service.’

‘Yes, but we want to dine together here—­right now.’

‘The service is not yet ready, sar.’

And so on—­and so on; with marchings and counter-marchings, and every word nervously italicised.  In the end they dined precisely where there was room for them in that new world which they had strayed into.

On one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the other at the black Canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the night-running steamers.  Then came towns, lighted with electricity, governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton.  Such a town, for instance, as Zagazig, last seen by a very small boy who was lifted out of a railway-carriage and set down beneath a whitewashed wall under naked stars in an illimitable emptiness because, they told him, the train was on fire.  Childlike, this did not worry him.  What stuck in his sleepy mind was the absurd name of the place and his father’s prophecy that when he grew up he would ‘come that way in a big steamer.’