They Carried
Things Too With A High Hand, Laughed At Us, And Seemed Quite Ready To
Fight.
My Indian boy, who happened to let slip the word "Muarras,"
narrowly escaped a blow with a palm stick, which would have felled a
camel.
They outnumbered us, and they were armed; so that, on this
occasion, we were obliged to put up with their insolence.
Our Pilgrim Ship, the Silk al-Zahab, or the "Golden Wire," was a
Sambuk, of about 400 ardebs (fifty tons), with narrow, wedge-like bows,
a clean water-line, a sharp keel, and undecked, except upon the poop,
which was high enough to act as a sail in a gale of wind. She carried
two masts, raking imminently forwards, the main being considerably
larger than the mizzen; the former was provided with a huge triangular
latine, very deep in the tack, but the second sail was unaccountably
wanting. She had no means of reefing, no compass, no log, no sounding
lines, no spare ropes, nor even the suspicion of a chart: in her
box-like cabin and ribbed hold there was something which savoured of
close connection between her model and that of the Indian Toni,[FN#2]
or "dug-out."
[p.189] Such, probably, were the craft which carried old Sesostris
across the Red Sea to Deir; such were the cruisers which once every
three years left Ezion-Geber for Tarshish; such the transports of which
130 were required to convey AElius Gallus, with his 10,000 men.
"Bakhshish" was the last as well as the first odious sound I heard in
Egypt.
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