United States or Côte d'Ivoire ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Had the dervishes, or even the "Safieh's" people who were drumming up recruits, been granted a fortnight to do it in the Marchand expedition would have been totally destroyed. The "Tewfikieh" arrived in a dust-storm and passed the Sirdar's gunboats unseen, and it was not until she got to Omdurman that the dervish reis and crew realised what had happened.
He found at the wharf a small steamer, the captain of which agreed to take him off to the ships; but there was some delay in getting up steam. During this pause, some one as yet unidentified, but evidently a friend of Dos Reis, rushed down to the wharf and shouted to him that the revolt was crushed and all was lost.
He was about half grown, and in an instant about twenty men jumped into the water in search of him, thinking him a mere baby; but as he suddenly appeared, and was about three times as large as they had expected, they were not very eager to close. However, the reis Diabb pluckily led the way and seized him by the hind leg, when the crowd of men rushed in, and we had a grand tussle.
Carli and Merolla make them equivalent to brass money; the former were grass-cloth a yard long, and ten = 100 reis; in 1694 they were changed at Angola for a small copper coin worth 2 1/2 d., and the change caused a disturbance for which five soldiers were shot. The only liquor was palm wine in huge calabashes. I did not find the plant growing, as did Dr.
"There," said he, turning to Wilkinson, "that is what we call a pastoral visitation in this country. We can do nothing without it." The poor reis picked himself up, and picked up also his turban, which had been knocked off, and said not a word more about the piastres.
Our captain, Reis Hamaya, turned out an excellent fellow, as also did the seventeen sailors he had under him; and though at times they would quarrel loudly enough amongst themselves, the only points of discord which arose between them and us always had reference to the length of time they wished to stop in harbour and the length of distance they wished to go in a day.
But already a new feeling was stealing over him; already he was forgetting the turmoil of Luxor. The Reis stood on the raised platform in the stern, still as a figure of bronze, with the gigantic helm in his hand. The huge sail hung limp from the mast. Then there came a puff of wind. Slowly the shore receded.
But he knew when to be angry; he could pulverize by fiery outbreaks the Reis Effendi and his master, Abdu-l-Mejid; but as Plenipotentiary to the United States he could "quench the terror of his beak, the lightning of his eye," disarming by his formal courtesy and winning by his obvious sincerity the suspicious and irritable John Quincy Adams.
He had intended, when he was writing it, to convey to her the impression that the whole matter was a trifle and that he took it lightly. But he, too, had put his postscript. And this was it: "P.S. I look forward to a real acquaintance with you at Assouan." And now, if he gave the word to the Reis to untie, to pole off, to get out the huge oars, and to cross to the western bank of the river!
So we had to let him pass, the old rascal of a `reis' grinning over her stern at us as the bagala made off, running before the wind; the hook- nosed Arab looking as pleased as Punch, and yet having a sort of sly, malicious twinkle in his eye, like that `Old Nick' probably puts on `when he catches a churchwarden robbing a till, as Larrikins said.
Word Of The Day