discusses _la haute politique_," said the dandy diplomatist. "But what
a sacrilege upon a night like this! What a nocturne in blue and silver
might be suggested by that moon rising above the desert. There is a
movement in one of Mendelssohn's songs which seems to embody it all--
a sense of vastness, of repetition, the cry of the wind over an
interminable expanse. The subtler emotions which cannot be translated
into words are still to be hinted at by chords and harmonies."

"It seems wilder and more savage than ever to-night," remarked the
American. "It gives me the same feeling of pitiless force that the
Atlantic does upon a cold, dark, winter day. Perhaps it is the
knowledge that we are right there on the very edge of any kind of law
and order. How far do you suppose that we are from any Dervishes,
Colonel Cochrane?"

"Well, on the Arabian side," said the Colonel, "we have the Egyptian
fortified camp of Sarras about forty miles to the south of us. Beyond
that are sixty miles of very wild country before you would come to the
Dervish post at Akasheh. On this other side, however, there is nothing
between us and them."

"Abousir is on this side, is it not?"

"Yes. That is why the excursion to the Abousir Rock has been forbidden
for the last year. But things are quieter now."

"What is to prevent them from coming down on that side?"

"Absolutely nothing," said Cecil Brown, in his listless voice.