Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/749

The Water-front at Luxor

Before the barrage was built at Assiut, on a certain day three sailing-dahabeahs, Maat, Herodotus, and Tih, left for Luxor within a few hours of each other, and a race for first arrival for the owners, and first choice of sheep for the crews, was a matter of course.

In the stretch of over two hundred miles all kinds of vicissitudes lurked among the curves and shallows. Heavy squalls roaring round the Arabian mountains drove us flying southward, or a flat calm enveloped the land in breathless haze and made necessary the back-breaking work of towing; or again, a light breeze gently swelling the enormous sails carried us slowly past the low-lying fields, where the plaintive song of the children came floating out to us in minor cadences, "Oh, boat with the great white sail, give as you gave before."

Where the principal food of a large crew is bread, which is never by any chance baked on board, the supply must naturally be replenished at certain intervals, and it was our misfortune to have one of these intervals at the halfway point in the race. The making of the loaves is an important matter, and it is usually the custom to give two or three days to the process, but the race fever held every one in its grasp to such an extent that the reis would only allow the crew twelve hours, with which, moreover, they seemed quite satisfied. During the evening we walked up through black tortuous alleys to the public ovens, ostensibly to urge the men to greater exertions, but in reality to find out how in the world they could do it.

Entering through a low doorway, we were shoved roughly into a corner as a great beast with hoarse gruntings and gurglings rushed past in the murky gloom. Once more, before we could move, this formless animal brushed by us, ere with the help of a match we found that a huge camel with bandaged eyes was dragging round a great beam which ran the mill in the centre of the room.