110 THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES far away in fantasy from the unlovely landscape, and rest upon an English tennis lawn, beside the cool Cherwell or under the cedars of the Wadham Gardens—the pleasant game, the refreshment of shade and drink which follows it! | As there was absolutely nothing else to do on the island—and it is always a good thing to engage in some more or less arduous work when one is inchned to take a pessimistic view of one’s surroundings—I scrambled up to the top of Gebel Rojan, a rocky hill about three hundred feet high. From this Pisgah height one could trace far away to the south the faint outlines of the hills of Omdurman, our Promised Land! Below, on the desert plain, three Egyptian battalions were marching forward, their right flank guarded by squadrons of cavalry. The rifle barrels and steel scabbards glinted brightly in the rising sunlight, and the columns themselves looked like sinuous lines of ants threading their way through the scrub.

We were all very bad- tempered when the El Tahra returned once more; but this time, mercifully, the steamer was no longer in the