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Ismaeen sat before me, answering the various questions which the scene suggested. He was a fine open-faced young man, without any of the clownishness of the fellah, and spoke in a free and easy but gentle manner.
For catching doves, and other small game, they had ingenious little traps. During my wanderings one day among the rocks with Ismaeen, who had constituted himself my especial guide, I felt somewhat fatigued at a distance from the boats, and sat down to rest under the shade of a projecting rock.
Our two guides, Ismaeen and Abd-el-Mahjid, had each a single-barrelled fowling-piece value from twenty-five to thirty shillings. They were both expert shots, as we had occasion to witness when we went hare-shooting with them. In fact, with their assistance, we had hare every day for dinner during our stay. They were very chary of their powder, and only fired when pretty sure of success.
He told me that he and Abd-el-Mahjid had been sworn friends from infancy; that they scarcely ever separated; that where one went, the other went; and that what one willed, the other willed. They were connected by blood and marriage the sister of Ismaeen having become the wife of Abd-el-Mahjid. Both had seen what to them was a good deal of the world.
Ismaeen at first did not seem to attach any importance to the subject, gave me but a cursory answer, and proceeded to relate how he had sold donkeys for sixty piastres at Siout which were only worth thirty at most at Fares; but I returned to the charge, and after looking at me somewhat slyly perhaps, to ascertain if I was not making game of him by affecting an interest in these things, the young Ababde, with the sublime inattention to positive geography and record history characteristic of Eastern narrative, spoke nearly as follows:
Ismaeen, it is true, did not seem to think much of these wild and romantic journeyings. He laid more stress on having seen the beautiful city of Siout, where I have no doubt he felt the mingled contempt and admiration ascribed to the Yorkshireman when he first visits London.
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