CHAPTER II

CLEOPATRA AND THE SHIP'S MYSTERY


Now, at last, I can skip over the three days at sea, and get to our
arrival at Alexandria, because, as I've said, the exciting part began
soon after, at Cairo.

They were delightful days, for the _Laconia_ is a Paris hotel disguised
as a liner. And no man with blood in his veins could help enjoying the
society of Brigit O'Brien and Rosamond Gilder. Cleopatra, too, was not
to be despised as a charmer; and then there was the human interest of
the _protegees_, the one with the eyes and the one who had reluctantly
developed into the Ship's Mystery.

Still, in spite of Biddy and Monny and the others, and not for them, my
heart beat fast when, on the afternoon of the third day out from
Naples, the ship brought us suddenly in sight of something strange. We
were moving through a calm sea, more like liquefied marble than water,
for it was creamy white rather than blue, veined with azure, and
streaked, as marble is, with pink and gold. Far away across this
gleaming floor blossomed a long line of high-growing lotus flowers,
white and yellow against a silver sky. The effect was magical, and the
wonder grew when the big flower-bed turned into domes and cupolas and
spires rising out of the sea. Unimaginative people remarked that the
coast looked so flat and uninteresting they didn't see why Alexander
had wanted to bother with it; but they were the sort of people who