In his heart he hated this slim small exquisite as he had never hated
Fielding. His eyes became like little pots of simmering blood, and he
showed his teeth in a hateful way, because he was sure he should glut his
hatred before the moon came full.

Little Dicky Donovan knew, as he sleepily told Ibrahim to go, that for
months the Orderly had listened to the wholesome but scathing talk of
Fielding and himself on the Egyptian Government, and had reported it to
those whose tool and spy he was.

That night, the stern-wheeled tub, the Amenhotep, lurched like a turtle
on its back into the sands by Beni Hassan. Of all the villages of Upper
Egypt, from the time of Rameses, none has been so bad as Beni Hassan.
Every ruler of Egypt, at one time or another, has raided it and razed it
to the ground. It was not for pleasure that Fielding sojourned there.

This day, and for three days past, Fielding had been abed in his cabin
with a touch of Nilotic fever. His heart was sick for Cairo, for he had
been three months on the river; and Mrs. Henshaw was in Cairo--Mrs.
Henshaw, the widow of Henshaw of the Buffs, who lived with her brother, a
stone's-throw from the Esbekieh Gardens. Fielding longed for Cairo, but
Beni Hassan intervened. The little man who worried Ibrahim urged him the
way his private inclinations ran, but he was obdurate: duty must be done.

Dicky Donovan had reasons other than private ones for making haste to
Cairo. During the last three days they had stopped at five villages on
the Nile, and in each place Dicky, who had done Fielding's work of
inspection for him, had been met with unusual insolence from the Arabs
and fellaheen, officials and others; and the prompt chastisement he
rendered with his riding-whip in return did not tend to ease his mind,