had travelled up together from Cairo to Assouan, and even Anglo-Saxon
ice thaws rapidly upon the Nile. They were fortunate in being without
the single disagreeable person who, in these small boats, is sufficient
to mar the enjoyment of the whole party. On a vessel which is little
more than a large steam launch, the bore, the cynic, or the grumbler
holds the company at his mercy. But the _Korosko_ was free from
anything of the kind. Colonel Cochrane Cochrane was one of those
officers whom the British Government, acting upon a large system of
averages, declares at a certain age to be incapable of further service,
and who demonstrate the worth of such a system by spending their
declining years in exploring Morocco, or shooting lions in Somaliland.
He was a dark, straight, aquiline man, with a courteously deferential
manner, but a steady, questioning eye; very neat in his dress and
precise in his habits, a gentleman to the tips of his trim finger-nails.
In his Anglo-Saxon dislike to effusiveness he had cultivated a
self-contained manner which was apt at first acquaintance to be
repellent, and he seemed to those who really knew him to be at some
pains to conceal the kind heart and human emotions which influenced his
actions. It was respect rather than affection which he inspired among
his fellow-travellers, for they felt, like all who had ever met him,
that he was a man with whom acquaintance was unlikely to ripen into a
friendship, though a friendship, when once attained, would be an
unchanging and inseparable part of himself. He wore a grizzled military
moustache, but his hair was singularly black for a man of his years.
He made no allusion in his conversation to the numerous campaigns in
which he had distinguished himself, and the reason usually given for his
reticence was that they dated back to such early Victorian days that he
had to sacrifice his military glory at the shrine of his perennial
youth.