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Page 84
Wellington whimpered as he stood with his fore-feet on the book.
She ran to him and twisted the folded paper into the steel ring of his
collar, hugged him closely, and turned away.
With a lace veil over her head, concealing her face, with the
sable-trimmed cloak wrapped close about her, she slipped from the hotel
without being recognised, and down to the quay.
Almost uncanny is the intuitive power of the native.
Without hesitation, a boatman stepped forward and salaamed to the
ground before her.
"By the sign of the Hawk-headed Harakat."
He repeated the phrase his master had taught him, and which he had
repeated over and over again for many days.
And Damaris never once looked back as the boat crossed the blue-green
Nile, which, for all she knew, would stretch forever, an impassable
barrier, between herself and those she loved.
Acting as in a dream, she could never clearly recall what happened
until she stood at the Gate of To-morrow. She had a vague recollection
of crossing the great river, and of being helped out of the boat, and
of four gigantic Nubians who stood near a litter and salaamed as she
approached; she remembered, too, that the litter was lined and hung
with satin curtains and piled with satin cushions, and that she had
been carried some distance at a gentle trot which had in no wise
disturbed her.
Then it had been gently placed upon the ground, and she had been handed
out, to find the _sayis_ of the stallion Sooltan standing salaaming
before her, with his hand on the bridle of the snow-white mare, Pi-Kay,
the glory of Egypt.
CHAPTER XXVIII
"_He made the pillars thereof of silver, the
bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of
purple, the midst thereof being paved with
love . . ._"
SONG OF SOLOMON.
Accustomed to the flowing robes of the Arab, it is not as difficult as
it might be imagined to break a desert-trained horse to side-saddle;
but the mare, Pi-Kay, spoilt and sensitive, behaved like a very demon
whilst the _sayis_ exchanged the _ma'araka_, which is the native pad
without stirrups, for the lady's saddle. She was not really bad, not
she! She was simply a spoilt beauty and inclined to show off, so that
every time her big, beautiful eye caught the sheen of the girl's satin
cloak, she backed and reared and plunged, but more out of mischief than
wickedness. For many days she had been ridden alternately astride and
side by the _sayis_, who loved her better than his wife and almost as
much as his son; ridden from the Tents of Purple and Gold--and not
over-willingly did she go--to the Gate of To-morrow at sunset, to be
taken back at a tearing gallop to the Tents, without restraining or
guiding hand upon the reins, at sunrise.
It was not sunrise now, and she did not like the person in the
shimmering satin who had, in some miraculous way, swung to her back and
stayed there; but she was headed in the direction of home, and the
moonlight was having just as much effect upon her temperament as it has
on that of humans.
A moon-struck horse or a moon-struck camel in the desert is a weird
picture and it were wise, as they are for the moment absolutely fey, to
give them an extremely wide passage.
"Guide her not, lady," shouted the _sayis_ to Damaris, who answered to
the movement of the mare like a reed in the wind, but otherwise seemed
to take no notice of horse, or man, or moon, or untoward circumstance;
he hung on for a moment to the silken mane and stared up into the
girl's unseeing eyes; then, with a ringing shout, let go and jumped
nimbly to one side.
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